Wāhine toa: a feminist historical institutionalist analysis of women's service in the New Zealand Defence Force

Abstract

Military institutions are masculine institutions, whether they exclude women from participating in their ranks, or maintain no formal barriers to women’s participation. Between 1977 and 2007 New Zealand abolished all formal barriers to women’s employment in the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF). This followed a period of intensive policy development ostensibly concerned ostensibly with eliminating barriers to women’s ability to serve under equitable conditions. Despite this, persistent gendered disparities in service patterns endure. Women’s service rates remain low, and both the proportion and number of women in the NZDF is in decline. With regards to horizontal and vertical employment segregation, both “armoured” and “brass” ceilings are significant and tenacious. This feminist historical institutionalist approach assesses the contribution to these disparities made by the formal and informal institutional architecture of the NZDF, and state institutional domain. This analysis locates diverse antecedents for the elimination and maintenance of barriers to gendered service patterns, and for the tempering or aggravation of disparities. I explore the military institution as a gendered, exclusionary institution in order to highlight how gender as organising principle is manifest in the NZDF. It is evident that critical junctures during times of crisis have seen the NZDF formally expand its candidate pool to include women, but that such junctures have not rendered fundamental or long-term change. When institutional crises lessen, exclusionary practices begin again to take effect. Progress towards gender equity has been both piecemeal and contingent. While improvement in the elimination of overtly formal barriers is evident, formal rules continue to operate under tacitly gendered assumptions. Gender-blind policies persist in relying on masculine understandings. These formal barriers are bolstered by potent informal, cultural conventions. This is most evident in the division between military and civilian realms, and combat and non-combat tasks. The persistence of a masculine, physical culture based around combat activities has resulted in the differential valuation of labour and skills on a gendered basis.