Women in the Military Negotiating Work and Family Conflicts While Reproducing Gender Inequality

Through a qualitative study of military women who are mothers, this article examines decision-making processes mothers undergo while negotiating the competing devotions of work and family. Subjective experience and the women’s individual life worlds are often overlooked in research on juggling work and family. The military and family are competing institutions (Segal 1986) and consequently, women confront contradictory expectations of the roles they play. This article addresses the following questions: What is the lived experience of the women interviewed in this study as mothers and soldiers? How do they negotiate the competing demands of work and family, and how do they justify not meeting the demands when compromise is necessary? These questions are important as this segment of the population is both growing and ignored. Research on women in the military as mothers is virtually nonexistent. The limited literature that does exist focuses on gender discrimination (Harris 2009) and ignores mothers all together.