1st Edition
Waging Gendered Wars U.S. Military Women in Afghanistan and Iraq
Waging Gendered Wars examines, through the analytical lens of feminist international relations theory, how U.S. military women have impacted and been affected by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although women were barred from serving formally in ground combat positions within the U.S. armed forces during both wars, U.S. female soldiers are being killed in action. By examining how U.S. military women's agency as soldiers, veterans, and casualties of war affect the planning and execution of war, Whaley Eager assesses the ways in which the global world of international politics and warfare has become localized in the life and death narratives of female service personnel impacted by combat experience, homelessness, military sexual trauma, PTSD, and the deaths of fellow soldiers.
Biography
Paige Whaley Eager received a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Delaware in 2003. Since 2005, she has taught at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland and is currently the Chair of the Political Science Department and Co-Director of the Global Studies program. Her research interests include: Gender and War, Global Governance, and Gender and Political Violence. Professor Eager is the author of three monographs: Global Population Policy: From Population Control to Reproductive Rights (2004), From Freedom Fighters to Terrorists: Women and Political Violence (2008), and Waging Gendered Wars: U.S. Military Women in Afghanistan and Iraq (forthcoming).
’This book breaks new ground, revealing the complex issues that face women in military service, such as heroism, combat, sexual assault, PTSD, and as veterans. Through her research and interviews, the author provides us with surprising, uplifting, and sometimes alarming facts about the role of women in peacetime and war.’ Margaret Gonzalez-Perez, Southeastern Louisiana University, USA 'Waging Gendered Wars provides a much-needed exploration of the agencies and subjectivities of U.S. women military in multiple contexts, including: symbolically within and apart from the U.S. national narrative of patriotism; as soldiers fighting abroad in Iraq and Afghanistan; and as veterans struggling to rebuild their lives upon their return home. Whaley Eager’s research into the lives of 150 U.S. women soldiers makes a valuable contribution to understanding the multiple, multi-layered wars that they battle in their everyday lives-not only against the violence pervading their experiences as women in patriarchy, but also against the violence surfaced against them by their entrance into the hyper-masculine space of war.' V.G. Julie Rajan, Rutgers University, USA
