Women for the Army?

This article written by Anita Fetz appeared in the February, 1980 issue of the Swiss women's magazine, Emanzipation. It has been translated for Isis from the German.

Recently a study has been commissioned by EMD*on "The place of the woman in all fields of national defense". The study has been been completed and will be published this year. It contains recommendations for a broader incorporation of women in the army on voluntary and obligatory basis. This shows that the decrease in number of the army caused by the "pill kink" causes the EMD some preoccupation. The numbers must therefore be increased by women. But how to get women into the army? Behold the nice coincidence! Virtually at the same time, the Union of Swiss Women Organizations (BSF) addresses the public with its request for a national service for women. (Both EMD and BSF assure us, of course, that there is no link at all between them). The BSF considers the equal rights issue of women so important that it requests
the obligatory military service as a women's right.

Thus, how do you get women into the army these days? By selling obligatory service as emancipation. How were women excluded from the obligatory service in the past? By labeling them as "peaceful by nature", by propagating as deeply meaningful the labour division between man as the defender of the fatherland and woman as the mother of the fatherland.Today we are told: equal rights, equal duties. But is should be evident to anybody that women do not yet enjoy equal rights and that males do not carry an equal share of burdens.

This is therefore the background for the discussion whether women should join the army or not. A discussion which has to be led by the women's - movement in order to reach a clear standpoint on this explosive and delicate issue. As for me, the problem must be posed on two levels: the relationship of women to weapons, and the relationship of women to the army.

Weapons mean power.

Some reflections on weapons: The incapacity of women to carry arms was an essential reason in the middle ages to exclude women from public life and to subjugate her totally under the tutelage of the male. Incapacity of carrying arms equaled incapacity of rights.

An essential instrument of the feudal system was the disarming of the rural masses. Possession of arms means power. Power either to subdue others or, in the positive sense, to defend oneself or to obtain one's freedom. Women are excluded from the possession of arms, this guarantees a monopoly of power for the male. Not for nothing are weapons the highest expression .of male mania and ostentatiousness of potency. "Power comes through the barrel of the phallus". It is significant in this context that both BSF and EMD are contrary to an armed service of women! This monopoly should be preserved for the male, in this they are supported by their female vanguard. Armed women cause phobias and excite male phantasies (amazones, gun-women, freedom fighters).

Patriarchalistic Army

But military service is next to training in the use of arms, above all drill for obedience. It achieves what family and school possibly failed to achieve namely the drill for total
adaptivity and the absence of criticism.

The discussion is not about an abstract and general problem. The army is not an abstract institution. It is always embedded in a concrete situation, in a specific country with a definite ideology within a definite policy. The army is the military arm of the state, i.e. of male domination. It is also an instrument for the preservation of the status quo of power structures, hierarchies and mechanisms of oppression. As long as there exists in our society a balance of forces to the disadvantage of women, it can not be in their interest to serve in an institution (normally, as always, in the lowest ranks) which is principally opposed to all emancipatory efforts.

If emancipation of women does not mean adaptation to a certain form of society but entails a qualitative leap, then the request for the incorporation of women into the army is not a progressive, but an anti-feminist demand. What do you think?

•Military Department of the Swiss army.