Body-building, Character-building, and Nation-building: Gender and Military Service in Israel

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the relationship between gender and the military in contemporary Israel. By “gender,” we refer to a dominant system of meanings that a culture assigns to biological sex differences, thus influencing the way we interpret the world around us. In this system, human qualities are divided into hierarchically arranged sets of supposedly opposite (and mutually exclusive) categories of male and female: strong and weak, rational and emotional, or public and private. With regard to the “military,” we focus on social and cultural phenomena related to the armed forces, war, and “national security.” We begin with three theoretical formulations about the relationship between gender and the military in Israel in order to clarify our own position and show the ways in which we go beyond these other works.