To stand in line and fit in—About military men's (un)reflected navigation in the armed forces

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to investigate how the everyday experience of being a man in a male-dominated organization and what navigating the organization is like. The study builds on 15 interviews with men of various ages and ranks in the Swedish Armed Forces. The findings revealed three major themes that illustrate how men, and their actions, contribute to producing and re-producing gendered norms. First, the ideal military person is seen to have characteristics that are predominantly male and even though respondents only identify with these characteristics to some extent, the typical male ideal is still prevalent within the Armed Forces. Second, this image is reproduced by an uncritical stance towards the internal workings of the organization, relating to career paths and their reliance of traditional gendered roles. Third, the Armed Forces encounter resistance to gender equality work from within the military organization, in both action and inactions. We suggest this is due to a resistance to change and that work with gender equality is minimized to a shadow task that lacks committed men. We conclude that men's reality seems both obvious and unreflected, and these structures are upheld within the Armed Forces.

Organizational resistance through organizing principles: the case of gender equality in the military

“…The entry of women into the military, as well as political and societal demands for gender equality, have meant that resistance to these “new” norms is increasing (Holyfield et al , 2017; Muhr and Slok-Andersen, 2017). Men are privileged in the military and military organizations can be expected to hinder gender equality work, because for the privileged, gender issues are invisible, and therefore, ignored (Linehagen, 2018; Kimmel and Ferber, 2018; Linehagen and Wester, 2023).…”