Gendered divisions of military labour in the British armed forces

Abstract

This paper examines statistical data on the employment of women in the British armed forces. It reviews some of the issues shaping debates about women’s military employment, in order to establish the on-going significance of the topic. It looks at patterns of female military employment across the three services, and places discussion of this in the context of observations about gendered divisions of labour in the wider UK labour market. It examines data for the gendered divisions of labour within different corps, branches and occupational groups within each of the three armed services, and looks at gender patterns across ranks. It concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for both policy and conceptual work on women’s military participation.

Keywords:

• Gender
• armed forces
• division of labour
• military
• feminisation
• war

Acknowledgements

Our thanks to the Defence Statistics (Tri-Service) team at the Ministry of Defence for their assistance in providing the unpublished data used in this paper. All interpretation of data remains our own. Our thanks to Matthew Scott for research assistance with House of Commons Defence Committee publications.

Notes

1. Note that this survey does not distinguish between gender-based discrimination, harassment or bullying and such activities rooted in other forms of social discrimination.

2. Brigadier Moffat was speaking in the context of the US lifting of the combat exclusion for women, noting that “The [US] policy change will, in my view, ensure that a wider pool of talent is available to maintain a capable and operationally-relevant force, fit to meet the challenges of 21st century warfare. It will also remove bars to employment and progression which, hitherto, will have held women back from competing for more senior roles.” http://www.channel4.com/news/women-served-in-male-only-british-ta-combat-roles

3. Note also the parallels and discontinuities with policies on ethnic diversity (see Ware 2012).

4. For a range of viewpoints on this issue, see contributions to Woodward and Duncanson (forthcoming).

5. This data is Unrestricted, but does not exist in published form at the present time as far as we are aware. In accordance with academic protocols for data transparency, a copy of the data-set is available from the authors on request.

6. We use the data for 1 April for consecutive years; data for April 2015 was not available at the time of writing, hence the use of 1 April 1014 figure as the last point in the time series (9.9%), rather than the figure of 10.1% given above (1 January 2015).

7. Direct comparisons are difficult as there are no civilian equivalents of many military occupations. To complicate things further, the Standard Occupational Classification system allocates military personnel to one of two possible categories (depending on whether they are Officers or Other Ranks). Nonetheless, we feel it is worthwhile trying to illuminate the patterns of military employment by reference to the civilian labour market because it is the only way to gain a sense of the distinctiveness (or not) of the pattern of women’s employment in the military.

8. We note, however, that there may be various differences between corps in terms of the availability of promotion opportunities and the application of promotion criteria, which may affect this data, but which we have not been able to allow for.

9. The data was classified by Defence Statistics as “Territorial Army” rather than Army Reserve at point of delivery. Group A TA personnel can be deployed. Group B (Officer Training Corps cadets attending UK universities) cannot.

10. The proportions of military musicians who are women may also be significant, given their high levels of public visibility because of their public performance roles.

11. Research interview, Gendered Bodies, Personnel Policies and the Culture of the British Army. ESRC research project, R000223562 Rachel Woodward and Trish Winter, Newcastle University, UK, 2001–2002.

12. This and other issues are currently under research through Keeping enough in Reserve: the employment of hybrid citizen-soldiers and the Future Reserves 2020 programme. ESRC research project, ES/L012944/1. Rachel Woodward, Tim Edmunds, Paul Higate, Antonia Dawes and K. Neil Jenkings, 2014–2017. This project is one of four which constitute the Future Reserves Research Programme funded by the ESRC in collaboration with the MoD and British Army, which is exploring a wide range of Reserves issues under Future Force 2020; see http://www.esrc.ac.uk/news-and-events/press-releases/31573/what-is-the-future-of-reservists-in-the-armed-forces.aspx.