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Gender and Military Memoirs

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Abstract

This chapter explores how military memoirs, the published autobiographical books written by military personnel about the experience of military participation, might be used to inform our thinking about the relationships between gender and military phenomena. We consider how the genre is itself gendered, and establish its defining features. We then discuss how memoirs portray particular ideas about the constitution and expression of gender identities within military forces. We look at how memoirs inform arguments about the roles and functions of armed forces within liberal democracies. We consider how memoirs engage with questions about women’s military participation. We conclude with some reflections on military memoirs as a data source in the context of social scientific research on gender and the military.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We exclude from consideration here books written by journalists about their coverage of armed conflict. We also exclude books written about the experience of being the spouse or parent of a serving military operative (which has its own small genre).

  2. 2.

    As this book went to press, we discovered a sixth, which we have yet to read: Lorna McCann’s How Not to be a Soldier: My Antics in the British Army. London: Ant Press, 2015.

  3. 3.

    Rachel still has her copy of a letter to her from publishers Leo Cooper, dated 2nd February 2000, requesting return of her copy of the book. She still has her copy of the book.

  4. 4.

    BBC Radio 4 is a popular British radio station, with around 10 million listeners; although not all will tune in to Book of the Week, the selection of a soldier’s memoir for the programme indicates the popularity of ‘herographies’ with the general public in 2000s Britain.

  5. 5.

    Research interview with authors (Woodward and Jenkings 2009). Eddy Nugent is the pseudonym used by two former soldiers writing together.

  6. 6.

    One of the deceased was a woman, Corporal Sarah Bryant; see also Basham (2008) on media representations of gender and this fatality.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography, Politics & Sociology, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

    Rachel Woodward & K Neil Jenkings

  2. Department of Politics & International Relations, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

    Claire Duncanson

Authors
  1. Rachel Woodward
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  2. Claire Duncanson
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  3. K Neil Jenkings
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Correspondence to Rachel Woodward .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography, Politics & Sociology, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

    Rachel Woodward

  2. Department of Politics & International Relations, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

    Claire Duncanson

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Woodward, R., Duncanson, C., Jenkings, K.N. (2017). Gender and Military Memoirs. In: Woodward, R., Duncanson, C. (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Gender and the Military. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51677-0_32

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