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The Kinder, Gentler Military: Can America's Gender-Neutral Fighting Force Still Win Wars? By Stephanie Gutmann. New York: Scribners, 2000. 299 pp. $24.95. Reviewed by Earl H. Tilford, Jr., Director of Research, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College.
Thirty years ago I served my Southeast Asia tour with my wife, who was an Air Force lieutenant. Just before we deployed to from Colorado to Thailand, then Colonel Jeanne Holm, the commander of the Women's Air Force (WAF), visited my wife's WAF squadron with advice for female officers headed to Southeast Asia. "You are a woman in a man's world," was the gist of the message; "put up with language, ignore the pinups on the walls, and be ready to make the coffee." How far we have come in 30 years.
Indeed, we have traveled a ways down the road to achieving gender integration, and one day the armed services may "look like America" with a near 50-50 balance between the sexes. In The Kinder, Gentler Military, Stephanie Gutmann asks if that is what the armed services should be about. What about fighting effectively to prevail decisively over enemies who, in addition to being insensitive to your self-esteem, are trying to kill you? Gutmann argues...