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Women in the Military in Argentina: Nationalism, Gender, and Ethnicity

Gender Panic, Gender Policy

ISBN: 978-1-78743-203-1, eISBN: 978-1-78743-202-4

Publication date: 27 October 2017

Abstract

Purpose: This chapter analyzes the gender/sexuality/race system through which the Argentine Army was constructed as the representative of the nation and guardian of its essential values. I will focus on the challenges faced because of the implementation of gender policies by the Ministry of Defense from a rights-based perspective in the institutional matrix of the military, structured through gender and race hierarchies.

Design/methodology/approach: This chapter is based on findings obtained through my experience as a member of the Gender Policy Council for Defense (GPC), from its creation in 2007 to the present, and my fieldwork on the Argentine Armed Forces.

Findings: The resistance to the implementation of gender policies in large part stems from the defiance of the “national ideal” – incarnated by the Argentine Army – constructed upon gender and race inequalities.

Research limitations/implications: Gender inequalities have generally been excluded and ignored in political analysis and in the study of nations and nationalism. For this reason, it is difficult to recover the missing links of history and give women’s lives and gender relations the importance they deserve in analyses of power. The chapter contributes to this task.

Practical and social implications: The resistance to the implementation of the policies sponsored by the GPC of the Ministry of Defense should be evaluated from a gender and ethnoracial perspective.

Originality/value: Research on women in the Argentine Armed Forces is still limited.

Keywords

Citation

Masson, L.E. (2017), "Women in the Military in Argentina: Nationalism, Gender, and Ethnicity", Demos, V. and Segal, M.T. (Ed.) Gender Panic, Gender Policy (Advances in Gender Research, Vol. 24), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 23-43. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1529-212620170000024002

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017 Emerald Publishing Limited