Abstract
ABSTRACTThe feminized imaginary of “home and hearth” has long been central to the notion of soldiering as masculinist protection. Soldiering and war are not only materialized by gendered imaginaries of home and hearth though, but through everyday labors enacted within the home. Focusing on in-depth qualitative research with women partners and spouses of British Army reservists, we examine how women’s everyday domestic and emotional labor enables reservists to serve, constituting “hearth and home” as a site through which war is made possible. As reservists – who are still overwhelmingly heterosexual men – become increasingly called upon by the state, one must consider how the changing nature of the Army’s procurement of soldiers is also changing demands on women’s labor. Feminist IPE scholars have shown broader trends in the outsourcing of labor to women and its privatization. Our research similarly underscores the significance of everyday gendered labor to the geopolitical. Moreover, we highlight the fragility of military power, given that women can withdraw their labor at any time. The article concludes that paying attention to women’s everyday labor in the home facilitates greater understanding of one of the key sites through which war is both materialized and challenged.
Highlights
This article examines how everyday gendered forms of labor in the home, the labor of the women partners and wives of reservists, reproduce and challenge the state’s capacity to wage war
Regardless of whether or not these women are fully aware of just how dependent military power and their partners are on their labor, their knowledge of the volunteer nature of Reserve service, their refusal to “toddle behind” partners like the wives of regulars are expected to do, and their use of their partner’s military service as an opportunity, all suggest these women are not merely subjected to geopolitical power, they are agents of it
Whilst previous work on military families suggests that, “the more the military services adapt to family needs, the more committed will be both service members and their families to the institution” (Segal 1986, 34), our research suggests that not adapting to Reserve families’ needs could be more beneficial to the Army, because it can assume that a certain level of support from families will be forthcoming, that women will “just get on with it.”
Summary
This article examines how everyday gendered forms of labor in the home, the labor of the women partners and wives of reservists (hereafter “women partners”), reproduce and challenge the state’s capacity to wage war. As Enloe (1989) has shown, the wives of regular soldiers are arguably more in control of their contributions to sustaining the military than some scholarship suggests, and family federations have utilized this knowledge to gain recognition and support for their unpaid labor that non-military women and reservists’ women partners can only dream of, from schooling and childcare support to subsidized travel, adult education and training Whilst many of these services are not available to reservists’ partners, the voluntary nature of Reserve service, and their lack of reliance on the Army for housing and other basic needs, means they arguably have more scope to determine when and how to withdraw their labor, should they wish to. Regardless of whether or not these women are fully aware of just how dependent military power and their partners are on their labor, their knowledge of the volunteer nature of Reserve service, their refusal to “toddle behind” partners like the wives of regulars are expected to do, and their use of their partner’s military service as an opportunity, all suggest these women are not merely subjected to geopolitical power, they are agents of it
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