Boutron, Camille

The “feminization” of the French military: Institutional commitment and internal resistance - 2022.


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Women’s integration in the French military appears to be an unfinished process. Initiated as early as the Second World War, it accelerated with the end of conscription and the professionalization of the armed forces in the late 1990s. However, it was not until the 2010s that the subject became a public issue. The feminization of the French military has been the subject of an explicit institutional commitment. However, it still encounters significant resistance within the military world. Beyond the logic of reproducing sexist discrimination, our hypothesis is that the presence of women in the military, especially when it comes to assuming explicitly combatant functions, upsets a set of representations that endanger the regime of hegemonic masculinity organizing military organizations and legitimizing the use of armed violence in the name of the public good.