“Follow us into basic training” - Discourse analysis on the construction of female soldiers in the German Armed Forces’ recruitment advertising

After ending the formal exclusion of women from the German Armed Forces (GAF) in 2000, female soldiers continued to retain an outsider status through a marginalizing visual representation in public self-imaging by the GAF. For this reason, the research explores whether the currently constructed image of public self-advertising alters the previous exclusionary practice. Using theoretical concepts of gender and discourse in combination with different categories female soldiers are frequently placed into and the method of discourse analysis I, this study shines light onto 17 videos of the GAF’s basic training web-series "Die Rekrutinnen" featuring seven female recruits. The analysis suggests that the recruits, though frequently presented as professional and equal on several occasion, are still constructed as subordinate, focusing on perceived difference, vulnerability and a ridiculed learning process especially in regards to weapons training, presenting an important domain of the military. Therefore, the current constructions of female soldiers in the material, though globally more balanced regarding previous research, yet subtly places women into a symbolically inferior position and thereby maintains a dominant male status of the German military