Content area
Full Text
Sex Roles, Vol. 50, Nos. 1/2, January 2004 ( 2004)
Book Review
War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa. Joshua S. Goldstein, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press; 2001. 523 pp. $39.95.
Throughout the ages, war has been waged primarily by men. One can point to exceptions in which women have been active combatants in war, but most societies have restricted the role of warrior to men. This raises the question of why the warrior role has been designated as male and why women have been relegated to ancillary roles.
In his new book, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa, JoshuaS. Goldstein draws on various disciplines to examine the interconnections between war and gender. These range from biology and psychology to history and international relations. His purpose is to examine the evidence in support of various hypotheses for the gendering of war. For example, are men better equipped to serve as soldiers because of their superior size and strength? Although each of the hypotheses he explores is supported by some evidence, he concludes that none is sufcient to explain the sharp division of roles for men and women in wartime.
Certainly there are differences in mens and womens biology, particularly in physical strength, but Goldstein maintains that these small differences are not extreme enough to explain the strict allocation of war-related roles along gender lines. The problem here is that some factors, such as physical strength, may have been important at an earlier point in time, but are...