“If they call me, ‘sir’: American newspaper representations of military women”

ABSTRACT

Drawing on content analyses of 175 newspaper articles about repealing the ban on American women serving on the front lines of combat, this paper explores how news media portrayed military women. Historically, media depicted women in war as damsels in distress, yet after a decade of women’s service in blurred front lines, media had ample opportunities to frame women differently. The news media have a powerful role in reinforcing or challenging hegemonic masculinity when presenting women as warriors. Using an intersectional lens, this paper finds that news media portray women as legitimate warriors; however, media do not discuss military women’s race, ethnicity, sexuality, or family roles, rendering women as one-dimensional. Implications of one-dimensional representations of military women make diversity indiscernible and reinforces the double-bind, which upholds hegemonic masculinity and limits women’s career potential both within the military and the labor force, more broadly.

KEYWORDS:

• Gendered double-bind
• hegemonic masculinity
• intersectionality
• military
• race
• representation

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Abigail Saguy, Darnell Hunt, Aliza Luft, M.J. Hill, Lucrecia Mena, Rebecca Kaufman, Tess Banko, Christina Chica, Carla Salazar-Gonzalez, Mallory Reese, Angela Clague, Margot Brooks, Irene Del Mastro, Crystal Housman, Jack Nation, and Alexis Garfinkel for their insightful comments and support for this paper. Special thanks to Eddie Huerta. An additional note of gratitude for two anonymous reviewers for their support in previous versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded in part from the Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellowship and the Pat Tillman Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Jessica A. Huerta

Jessica A. Huerta is a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles. She studies sociology, specializing in gender, men and masculinities, family, organizations, military and veterans. She is a veteran of the Air Force and the California Air National Guard. She became a Tillman Foundation Scholar in 2020. E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]