Casualties of war and research: A case study of United States women veterans of Vietnam

Despite the proliferation in recent years of literature and scholarship which explore yet another new facet of the Vietnam war, women veterans remain largely invisible in academic research. With a few recent exceptions, if mentioned at all they are relegated to a chapter, a sub-section, a paragraph, or even a sentence or two. Unfortunately, this neglect is not limited to academia: veterans\u27 administrations, counseling centers, the courts, the general public, and the military organizations in which they served are just beginning to address the needs of women veterans. This dissertation undertakes a tripartite research agenda: to obtain missing information about the experiences of U.S. women in the Vietnam war; to examine the epistemological causes of their invisibility in research and its consequences in their lives; and to explore several hypotheses concerning relationships between gender-specific aspects of women veterans experiences and the development and manifestation of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other war-related problems. Primary focus is given to the first area in this dissertation. The second and third areas are explored here on a preliminary basis and constitute the groundwork for the research I plan to pursue in the future