Man är inte starkare än den svagaste länken : En kvalitativ studie om varför kvinnor utgör minoritet i Försvarsmakten

Those who worked in the Armed Forces feel that many women feel fleeced by their malecolleagues, for example, a promotion, the organizational structure is not favored women andthat many had to sow sexual harassment and derogatory comments. On the Armed Forceswebsite you can read that they engage in active work for gender equality, women stillrepresent a minority of the organization and only 6% of women are in higher positions. Thepurpose of this paper is to describe and analyze women's experience of armed forces in thehope of identifying factors that can contribute to maintaining that women are a minority in theorganization. This is a qualitative empirical essay which consists of eight interviews withwomen around Sweden, who work or have worked in the Armed Forces. The theories that thethesis is based on are the Connell & Pearse gender theory, Joan Ackers theories of “Inequalityregimes” and “Gendered processes”, Germain and others theory of women in male-dominatedfields, Moss Kanter token concept and the concept homosociality. From the result of theinterviews can eg to infer that the majority of respondents do not experience the ArmedForces as equal and that the organization has a lot left to work with to achieve genderequality. Furthermore, it appears that six of the eight respondents have chosen to quit theArmed Forces and the other two plan to quit this fall. Reasons for this include that they feelthat the Armed Forces have bad personnel policies, low wages and they are tired of the lowpossibility for advancement. It is clear that factors such as the inequality organization, lower advancement opportunitiesthan men, that the armed forces have historically been male dominated, lack of female rolemodels in higher positions, and that it is a very special work may mean that minority womenare maintained in the Armed Forces.Validerat; 20160615 (global_studentproject_submitter