This dissertation addresses women's incorporation to the United States' armed forces by placing it in political, historical, and social context. From common roots in the women's movements of the 1960s and 1970s, women have been approaching the military from two perspectives: feminist antimilitarists have been criticizing the military for its masculinist culture, while women interested in joining the military have insisted that it is their right to participate, and that the military is the sine qua non of full citizenship. This project explores a series of questions about women soldiers, women's citizenship, feminist antimilitarism, and the culture of patriarchal militarism to untangle some of the interesting and troublesome questions about women and the military.The method of analysis used in the dissertation is interdisciplinary, combining historiography, sociology, ethnography, and political theory in the United States' context to view a series of historical moments in congressional testimony, court cases addressing equality, feminist movements for equality, feminist antimilitarist perspectives on and responses to the military, and histories of martial citizenship, including women's. These materials are investigated for their political importance in shaping public understandings of the military as gendered, for their importance in building a discourse of expanded citizenship claims, and for their contributions to shifting the terrain of citizenship and equality.The dissertation suggests, in view of these materials, that feminist scholars of the military, and of militarism, must account for the changing demographics of the armed forces by examining the contested meanings of citizenship, the effects of technological advances, and the economic imperatives that together comprise the conditions through which women access advancement in the military. Furthermore, the dissertation demonstrates that women's entry to the military is a critical juncture for several reasons: (1) It is a challenge to the structured masculinity of military culture, (2) It informs studies of the international economies in which women become the primary, but low-waged, workers, and (3) It marks a need for feminist antimilitarists to re-evaluate their approach to the topics of soldiering, women, and peace.
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