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Resistance and refusal in women veterans’ memories of misogyny, violence, and discrimination in Western militaries in the War on Terror
In the 21st century, Western militaries have attempted to recruit more women by promoting the military as an empowering career, yet these same militaries have also faced widespread reports of misogyny, sexual violence, and discrimination toward women. In this paper we draw on oral history interviews with women veterans in the US (Veterans’ History Project), UK (Women in Uniform), and Australian militaries (author’s interviews) who served in the War on Terror, exploring how women veterans have made sense of these gendered experiences.
Many women claimed that misogyny in the military was a relic of the past, and made efforts to divorce their experiences from gendered identities by expressing judgements about other women. Yet there were instances where individual memories of military misogyny broke through in the interviews, and some highlighted pervasive cultures of machismo and sexism. Similarly, many interviewees rejected that gender-based violence was a widespread issue in the military and deployed victim-blaming to make sense of incidents in their community. Yet they also spoke of individual experiences of harassment, assault, and rape culture. Finally, while many women praised the flexibility offered by the military to couples and parents, there was also difficulty in being recognised as both wife – or widow – and soldier. Some women revealed that their military careers effectively ended upon becoming mothers.
Significantly, many interviewees expressed frustration or resentment when asked about gender dynamics in the military, sometimes refusing to accept the premise of the question. They emphasised that demeaning treatment was not representative of their military as a whole, and drew on wider narratives about the military as a model equal-opportunity employer, suggesting a common desire not to damage their military’s reputation. These interviews thus reveal how women veterans resisted what they saw as stereotypes about gender and the military, even when their experiences aligned with those stereotypes. This resistance was closely linked with interviewees’ pride in their service and sense of loyalty to their military. This paper thus suggests that even when women veterans experience misogyny, violence, and discrimination in the military, they struggle to see themselves as victims of it.
19 August 2026, 11am AEST
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Dr Mia Martin Hobbs is an oral historian of war and its legacies. She completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne in 2018. Based on her dissertation, her first book, Return to Vietnam: An Oral History of American and Australian Veterans’ Journeys (Cambridge University Press, 2021) won the Oral History Australia Book Award in 2022. She has published on veterans’ experiences in Journal of American Studies, Australian Journal of Politics & History and The Oral History Review, and she edited Challenging Anzac: Stories that don’t fit the legend (NewSouth, 2026) with Carolyn Holbrook and Joan Beaumont. She is presently an ARC DECRA fellow at Deakin University.
Eliza de Burgh is a PhD candidate at Deakin University, researching securitisation and dehumanisation of people in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in mainstream media. She is the Research Assistant working on Dr Martin Hobbs’ DECRA project, ‘Race, Gender, and Violence in Western Militaries in the War on Terror’.
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