Her Cold War is a historical analysis of structural changes in U.S. military gender laws after World War II. These changes began the process of integrating women into the services. The author, Tanya Roth, does a remarkable job contrasting U.S. gender norms during the war with those of subsequent years. She asserts that female military personnel during the war were satisfied with just being allowed to serve, albeit only temporarily. Equality during that period was based on the assumption that women and men are biologically different. This assumption had the consequence of shaping restrictions on women's participation in the military. Women were recruited to serve as non-combatants in support positions, whereas men served as combatants and went to war. Therefore, gender inequality in the armed services went largely unchallenged during World War II.For Roth, change began after the war with the Women's Armed Services Integration Act of 1948, which allowed women to serve in the military permanently and provided equal pay to men and women in the armed forces based on rank. Still, provisions of the act structured separate arenas for men and women, permitting women to serve only as non-combatants. All military combat jobs, as well as those in aircraft engaged in combat and ships other than transport or hospital ships, were off-limits to women. The legislation also excluded women from the ranks of general officers. Furthermore, unlike their male counterparts, female soldiers were not allowed to claim spouses or children as dependents. What is more, married women without prior military service were forbidden to serve.Following the Women's Armed Services Integration Act of 1948, removal of structural barriers to gender integration in the armed services continued. Starting in 1955, female officers were admitted to the army's Command and General Staff College. This allowed a small number of women to fulfill a prerequisite for career progression to lieutenant colonel in the Army. Hence, in the decade immediately after World War II, women's military service was drastically different from that of men—a situation that did not begin to change until the late 1960s. In 1967, Congress scrutinized military promotion policies and found gender discrepancies. By November of that year, President Lyndon Johnson signed the first law prohibiting gender differences as a way of defining women's military service. This new law (PL90-130) expanded military roles for women by eliminating the percent restrictions both on female officers and on the percentage of women who could serve in the total force.Expectations for gender equality based on the assumption that women and men are the same surfaced in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of several factors internal and external to the military. External to the military, gender norms were changing in civilian society, making it acceptable for women to work outside the home. In addition, sex discrimination in the civilian sector was given more scrutiny through the proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Internal to the military was a greater need for women to help meet personnel goals. With the end of conscription in 1973, the enlistment of women into the military was vital. Therefore, the Department of Defense (DoD) had to make military service more attractive to women by opening more career fields and offering them greater benefits.The 1970s witnessed several major changes that laid the groundwork for greater roles for women in the military. For the first time, two women, Elizabeth Hoisington and Anna Hays, were promoted to general. The Department of Defense issued a 1970 directive authorizing abortions in military hospitals for service members and dependents. The Supreme Court ruled in Frontiero v. Richardson that female military personnel could claim benefits for dependents. The assumption that motherhood and military service were incompatible came under serious scrutiny. Before May 1975, pregnancy or parenthood ended a female soldier's career. The Department of Defense revised regulations in 1975 making pregnancy and parenthood discharges voluntary. Public Law 94-106 opened the three major service academies to women in 1976. In subsequent years, Congress passed legislation ending the separate women's components of the services. The Navy merged its ranks in 1972, followed by the Air Force (1975), the Marine Corps (1977), and the Army (1978). This ended separate administrative structures for military women, further opening the pathway to gender integration.The diminution of gender inequities in the military was facilitated by the women's movement, the ERA, and the end of the draft. However, Roth argues persuasively throughout the book that servicewomen with established careers, and not feminists external to the military, initiated these changes. Initially, female military leaders defined gender equality on the basis of biological differences. But these servicewomen changed their position when they realized that limitations to full integration stemmed from the assumption that women are less capable than men.The focus of the book is on the U.S. military from 1945 to 1980, a period Roth refers to as the Cold War. In actuality, the Cold War ended in 1991, which leaves the reader to wonder what gender issues were raised in the military during the 1980s. Perhaps the biggest issue of the 1980s was sexual harassment. Congress held hearings and DoD adopted Equal Opportunity Commission guidelines to define the problem. By 1988, the Defense Department had begun surveying the military services on sexual harassment, and by 1991 it was examining strategies to address the issue. Roth does not discuss the issue of sexual harassment in the military that emerged during the last decade of the Cold War. She touches on current-day issues of sexual harassment and assault only tangentially in the conclusion.Roth does a good job highlighting some of the challenges faced by black servicewomen, including a lack of access to professional hairdressers and black hair products and cosmetics. Grooming or cultural items sought by African American servicewomen could not be found on or near most military installations. The book touches only briefly on the social isolation and racial discrimination experienced by African American servicewomen. As Roth states, African American women were often overlooked and ignored, and their concerns were often trivialized by military officials.Still, the experiences of African American servicewomen during the Cold War were far more complex than what is portrayed in the book. Roth correctly points out that in the first two decades after World War II, African American women constituted only a very small part of the military. Eventually, however, that drastically changed. A large increase in representation of black servicewomen, particularly in the Army, occurred in the late 1970s and 1980s. African American women served longer terms than white women and were less likely to leave the service before their terms had expired. Furthermore, the propensity of black women to enter the military was much greater than that of white women, leading to an overrepresentation of African American women in the Army's enlisted ranks. Black women even came to outnumber white women in the rank of sergeant major. These racial trends took place in the military during the final years of the Cold War, and their consequences for black servicewoman are not discussed in the book.Nonetheless, Roth has done an excellent job illuminating how military women have been integrated into the U.S. armed forces since the end of World War II. Drawing data from archival documents and personal interviews with female veterans, Roth reveals a wide array of gender issues, many of which have received little attention in academic literature. She offers a robust discussion of recruitment strategies used by the services and the early challenges to military policies on motherhood, abortion, marriage, and sexuality. Aside from the omission of racial trends and limited discussion of sexual harassment, the book is well researched and well written.