“That’s what she said!” : gender integration in the Canadian Armed Forces with a focus on the experience of female soldiers in the combat arms

This thesis focuses on gender integration in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) based on veteran female combat arms soldiers' experiences. I argue that the military institution presents itself as progressive and gender neutral but is, in fact, a gendered institution with distinct organizational thinking that maintains gender segregation. The federal government's goal of increasing the number of female soldiers employed in the CAF to 25 % by 2026 is too broad and does not address the systemic issues rendered invisible when institutional change is desired. The division of labour, based on military occupations with the least number of female soldiers, exacerbates the social relations and the organizational logic, which maintains the low representation of female soldiers. I focus on the combat arms occupations because these occupations have historically had the most resistance to female integration and have the most prestige and proximity to the fighting. I treated the disembodied soldier as a universal category that is abstract and gender neutral and used to determine types of bodies acceptable for different military occupations. Therefore, I argue that the ideal soldier is, in fact, heavily gendered towards male bodies, masculinity, and male heterosexuality. This ideology shapes views on what bodies are most qualified to do the work of combat, fighting, and sacrificing for the nation. And only when the idea of females doing combat enters the conversation do we see the social relations and gender assumptions that maintain the CAF's gender order and foster a culture harmful to female soldiers. For example, the underlying sexualized culture in the Forces is conducive to more severe incidents of sexual harassment and assault (Deschamps, 2015). Therefore, for cultural change to occur, we need to see a fundamental shift in the CAF's thinking of the ideal soldier and show what social relations surrounding work as a soldier will look like.Arts and Social Sciences, Irving K. Barber Faculty of (Okanagan)Graduat