Students discuss military gender roles

By John Henry

Published March 7, 2008

Senior Claudia Liddle, a political science and peace studies major, spoke about the Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday in the MU Women’s Center.

Liddle presented her research in a presentation called “The Israeli Woman Soldier: The Under-Utilized Potential of Women in the Israeli Defense Forces,” which attracted an audience of students to discuss the issue.

Liddle said she researched the topic over the summer with the help of the MU Office of Undergraduate Research. She decided to research the Israeli Defense Forces specifically because she was interested in how women are involved in society and the military, she said.

In her presentation, Liddle gave a historic overview of women’s role in the IDF as well as statistics on their participation.

When Israel first became a country, it had a socialist view toward women’s rights, Liddle said. Early in the country’s history, women were expected to fight alongside men to protect the country’s constantly provoked borders. But, she said, as time went on women saw their role in the IDF diminish.

“It developed over time that men would go out and push the borders out farther and the women would go home and defend the core settlements,” Liddle said.

In the presentation, she pointed out that Israel has many gender-based discrepancies in its treatment of men and women in the military. She said women are expected to take only supporting roles, while men have the option of fighting on the front lines.

Despite its relegation of women to roles away from conflict, Liddle said, Israel is held in high regard internationally for how its military treats women.

“I think that Israel is regarded very highly internationally because when you first look at treatment of women in the military, the most resounding fact is women are drafted and women have compulsory military service which is different than any other country in the world,” Liddle said.

Women’s Center employee Lisa Bracciale, a first-year student, attended the event. She said she found a number of things at the presentation interesting.

“Because of the war in Iraq and how we are still there, I am more interested in the military than usual, especially regarding the role of women in the military,” Bracciale said. “So it is interesting to compare our military procedures with other countries’ military procedures and see how gender roles fit in.”

Bracciale said some things she learned at the presentation surprised her. She said she did not understand how some Israeli women felt they were being treated fairly in comparison to their male counterparts.

“Claudia said that their sentiment is that they are equal, and there was never any need for a women’s liberation movement, but with all of the things she was telling us, they are really not equal,” Bracciale said. “A lot of the things that women do there are motivated by pressure from men. That is pretty much how it happened here. Women’s liberation movements were a result of pressure from men to do what they wanted us to do and the desire for true independence.”

Liddle said she understands Bracciale’s feeling on the matter. She said there are areas in which the IDF can improve when it comes to reaching gender equality.

“Women need to be allowed in everything that men are allowed in, and if men are allowed to go to the front lines, then women should be allowed to go to the front lines,” Liddle said.

Junior Michael Fiscella also attended Liddle’s presentation. Fiscella, an inactive reserve who has served a almost five years of active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps, said he saw some similarities between the United States military and the IDF in terms of sexual segregation. He said he was interested in how Israel has taken steps back from progressing in gender equality.

Fiscella said it was interesting how men and women used to fight together in combat.

“They actually changed to a more segregated military,” he said.