Unpacking the Complexity of Gender Integration in the U.S. Military Using Discourse Analysis: The Case of Servicewomen’s Talk Around Having to Prove Themselves

Abstract

A quasi-idiomatic expression ‘women have to prove themselves’ reflects various performance pressures and heightened visibility of women functioning in gendered professional spaces as advocated by tokenism theory. It is an example of how discriminatory practice – according to which competent and qualified women entering the culturally masculine professions are explicitly and implicitly expected to work harder for any recognition – gets discoursed in language and becomes a “rhetorically powerful form of talk” (Kitzinger 2000: 124).

Keywords

• women
• gender
• military
• qualitative interviews
• discourse analysis
• conversation analysis