Less Than We Can Be: Men, Women and the Modern Military

From the beginning of history, war has been an almost exclusively male affair and those who took part in it were often extolled as the manliest of men. In this article, the author argues that the recent "feminization" of the armed forces of many developed countries does not prove that women's liberation is making progress, as most people believe. Rather, he argues, it is part symptom, part cause, of the decline of those armed forces. Other things being equal, this article claims, the fewer and less important the wars fought by any armed force the more women it has; the more women it has, the less likely it is to undertake serious wars.