Women in the Swedish Armed Forces: How Does the Swedish Armed Forces Promote Women in Order to Attract Them to Their Organisation?
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Women in the Swedish Armed Forces: How does the Swedish Armed Forces promote women in order to attract them to their organisation? Author: Ann-Sofie Andreasson School of Business, Economics and IT International programme in Politics and Economics Bachelor´s thesis in Political science 15 ECTS University West Spring term 2016 Supervisor: Tuba Inal Examiner: Fredrik Sunnemark Abstract The following Bachelor thesis is analysing how the Swedish armed forces promotes women in order to attract them to their organisation. Specifically it investigates (1) “How does the Swedish armed forces break the social norms of what it means to be a soldier?” (2) “How do they present a gender equal division of labour?” (3) “How do they try to affect women´s attitude towards the organisation?” This study investigates the Swedish armed forces, an organisation with a great underrepresentation of women. The underrepresentation of women is something that the Swedish armed forces openly tries to change through their marketing. This thesis is a single case study with both qualitative and quantitative approach, using Harding´s gender process theory in a descriptive design. By gathering television commercials from the Swedish armed forces user page on YouTube, I explore how the Swedish armed forces tries to minimize the underrepresentation of women. Their strategies are analysed by using Harding´s three gender processes. The results show that the organisation is active in all three processes, but focuses on breaking the social norms of what it means to be a soldier. Key Words: Women in the military, Promotion of women, The Swedish Armed Forces, Harding´s gender process theory, Gender norms. 2 Table of contents 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 5 2. Literature review: Prior scholarships on women in the military ..................................................... 8 2.1 Recruitment strategies ............................................................................................................. 8 2.2 Women in the Military .......................................................................................................... 10 3. Theoretical approach: Harding´s gender process theory ............................................................... 12 3.1 Encouragement ...................................................................................................................... 12 3.2 Gender norms ........................................................................................................................ 12 3.3 Harding´s Theory .................................................................................................................. 14 Table 1. Analytical framework – gender process theory. ........................................................ 17 4. Specified aim and research question ............................................................................................. 18 5. Research design and methods for gathering and analysing data ................................................... 19 5.1. Single case study and descriptive design ............................................................................... 19 5.2. Gathering data from commercials and theory ....................................................................... 20 5.3. Content analysis .................................................................................................................... 22 6. Harding´s theory: the Swedish armed forces promotion of women in order to attract them ........ 25 6.1 Swedish armed forces television commercials ...................................................................... 26 Table 2. Men and women in the Swedish armed forces television commercials .................... 27 6.2 The symbolic process ............................................................................................................ 31 6.2.1 Physical strength of women ........................................................................................... 31 6.2.2 Promotion of women ..................................................................................................... 33 6.2.3 Dangerous situations of women .................................................................................... 34 6.3 The structural process ............................................................................................................ 34 6.3.1 Mixed rank of women ................................................................................................... 35 6.3.2 Expected performance of women .................................................................................. 36 6.3.3 Representation of women .............................................................................................. 37 6.4 The individual process ........................................................................................................... 37 6.4.1 Stereotypic looks of women .......................................................................................... 37 6.4.2 Stereotypic acts of women ............................................................................................. 39 7. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 41 8. Bibliography .................................................................................................................................. 43 3 Acknowledgments First of all I would like to thank my thesis-advisor Tuba Inal, who have helped me develop this work. I would also like to thank all teachers at the International Programme in Politics and Economics at University West, for given me the most interesting, inspiring and rewarding three years of my life. Finally, I would like to thank my mother and my boyfriend, for their continuous love and support throughout this thesis. 4 1. Introduction In all times, strong men have been sent to fight in war. The image that slowly portrays is the image of the strong, brave men that is about to go off to war in a masculine arena and the women who wave their men off while staying back in the feminine area where they belong. The image of the strong man and the weaker woman (Eishtain, 1987: 3-5). In war and armed forces, women are rarely the first thing you think of. Even though women are often strongly connected to war through their relation to anyone in the military (Enloe, 2000: ix). Through times, there have been women fighting in wars as part of a military, but considering that roughly half of the world´s population are women and that the percentage of women in the military is not even close to that rate, we can clearly see that women are underrepresented in this field. This underrepresentation of women is present all around the globe, independent of what kind of standards of gender equality the nation has. And even in a nation as Sweden, a nation known for its gender equal society and laws, the underrepresentation of women in the military is present, standing with a representation of 13 percent (Försvarsmakten b, 2016). The Swedish armed forces is responsible for Sweden´s military defence and are very particular that they want to have more women in their organisation. The former supreme commander Sverker Göranson claims that the Swedish armed forces is more effective with an equal gender division and a broader recruitment, he means that the differences in people help the organisations development orientation and makes it a trustworthy authority (Försvarsmakten a, 2012). Despite that the Swedish armed forces are standing for equality, the percentage of women is still low, thus the Swedish armed forces implement various strategies to encourage the participation of more women. This thesis will investigate these strategies i.e. how they promote women in order to attract them to their organisation by using their television commercials. The question is summed up to: How does the Swedish armed forces promote women in order to attract women to their organisation? Women have been active in the Swedish armed forces since the beginning of the 20th century in civil services and voluntary organisations such as “Lottorna”, “Blå Stjärnan”. It was not until 1980 that women could apply for some of the military educations and services. So in 1980, 103 women applied for the basic education in air force, 30 women begun the education and 28 women completed it. The following year, the government decided that both men and women could be recruited to commanders, but women were not accepted in all branches of 5 the Swedish armed forces until 1989. But the women still had to finalise their officer education before entering the basic military service until 1994, which was not needed for men. Today the military service is replaced with a system where both men and women can apply on equal terms. Now women represent 13 percent of the total employment in the Swedish armed forces. Among the officers and special officers the representation is 5.5 percent, and among soldiers, group commands and sailors, the representation is 12 percent. The percentage of women among the civil employees are today at a level of 38 percent (Försvarsmakten b, 2016). By using Sandra Harding’s theory that gender equality is a process through three levels of symbolic norms, structure and individual gender, I will be able to investigate how the Swedish armed forces