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Copyright © 2005 Alliance for National Defense. All rights reserved |
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A Starter Reading List on Military Women
Women in the Military: An Unfinished Revolution (revised edition) by Major General Jeanne Holm, U.S. Air Force (retired), Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1992.
Seminal work on the history and role of women in the U.S. Armed Forces from the American Revolution through the 1991 Persian Gulf War. This book is distinguished by clear writing, thorough research, common sense and commitment to equality for women and strength in the armed forces.
Side-by-Side: A Photographic History of American Women in War by Vickie Lewis, New York, NY: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1999.
From the American Revolution to Operation Desert Storm, American women have served on the battlefield, side-by-side with men. Lewis highlights the strength and courage of women in military service through photographs and personal narratives, drawing on hundreds of personal interviews and historical journal entries.
Crossed Currents: Navy Women in a Century of Change (third edition) by Jean Ebbert and Marie-Beth Hall, Washington, DC.: Batsford Brassey, Inc., 1999. (Note: the first and second editions of this book have the title Crossed Currents: Navy Women from WWI to Tailhook.)
This history of Navy women begins with the Yeoman (F) of World War I and concludes in the present day, including the integration of Navy women into crews of combatant ships and tactical aviation squadrons. Extensively researched and engagingly written, it focuses on the Navy's struggle to accept change and women's struggles to be accepted by the Navy.
The Civil War marked the first time a significant number of women took direct roles in an American military conflict. Women disguised themselves as men and enlisted as soldiers and many others followed male relatives to the front. Women were spies and couriers, but also did mundane work as cooks and laundresses. Probably most importantly, women were nurses and their organizations in the North would be the precursors to what would become the Army and Navy Nurse Corpses.
It was not until World War I that women who were not nurses were enlisted or commissioned by the U.S. military, specifically the Navy and Marine Corps. This book details these women’s backgrounds, training, responsibilities and personal and social challenges as well the official and unofficial responses to the women’s presence. An example of Ebbert and Hall’s meticulous research was their discovery that African-American women served in the Navy.
This short history of the almost 400,000 women who served in the U.S. military during World War II covers women’s participation in all of the Services, the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS) and others who served in organizations supporting the military, such as the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army. It begins by putting these women in the context of the United States going into a worldwide war and concludes with a discussion of the legacy of these women.
All This Hell: U.S. Nurses Imprisoned by the Japanese by Evelyn Monahan and Rosemary L. Neidel, Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2000.
Monahan and Neidel describe the plight of 84 women nurses stationed in the South Pacific whose lives went from idyllic to horrific when they were interned by the Japanese during World War II. Based on both oral histories and published biographical and autobiographical accounts, the book provides an introduction to the topic.
What a Way to Spend a War: Navy Nurse POWs in the Philippines by Dorothy Still Danner, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press. 1995.
Dittie Danner tells her personal story as one of the military women who were POWs in World War II. Danner, a Navy nurse who was held by the Japanese for three years in the Philippines, describes how she and her comrades endured deprivation of even basic necessities and lived in constant fear for their lives. Danner’s story shows how determination and toughness got her through the ordeal.
To Serve My Country, To Serve My Race: The Story of the Only African-American WACs Stationed Overseas During World War II by Dr. Brenda Moore New York, NY: New York University Press. 1996.
This work provides a look at what it was like to be African-American and female in the military during World War II. Moore recounts the formation of the Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only group of black members of the Women's Army Corps (WACs) to serve overseas in World War II, She also covers their training and service in Europe in 1945-46, highlighting the discrimination the women faced because of their race and gender.
A Defense Weapon Known to Be of Value: Servicewomen of the Korean War Era by Linda Witt, Judith Bellafaire, Britta Branrud and Mary Jo Binker, Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2005.
Chronicling the virtually unwritten history of the role of women in the Korean War, this book highlights the crucial work of servicewomen and other uniformed women who helped support that war and the worldwide Cold War. Particularly powerful is the chapter on the nurses who served with caring, courage and dedication under the most hazardous and austere conditions.
Stronger than Custom: West Point and the Admission of Women by Lance Jana, Portsmouth, NH: Greenwood Publishing, 2001.
This comprehensive book tells the story of the women who entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1976 as the first female cadets. Based on more than one hundred interviews, thousands of pages of Academy documents and a wide array of secondary sources, it covers what the admission of women at West Point meant for the Academy, for the Army, and for the United States.
First Class: Women Join the Ranks at the Naval Academy by Sharon Hanley Disher, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998.
Written by a woman member of the Class of 1980 who broke the gender barrier at the Naval Academy, this book reads like a novel, but the facts are real. Disher generally offers a balanced account of the women’s first year at the Academy, but she is also unflinchingly frank in her descriptions of the prejudice and abuse the women frequently encountered which mostly went unreported and unpunished.
It’s Our Military, Too!: Women and the U.S. Military edited by Judith Hicks Stiehm, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1996.
This collection includes accounts by women on active duty, retired officers, women who have worked for the military in a civilian capacity, and civilian academics. It offers insights on a variety of issues including minority women, lesbians, combat, the role of gender in weapons design, and the changing mission of the military.
Ground Zero: The Gender Wars in the Military by Linda Bird Francke, New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1997.
This book concentrates on the two years following the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the issues raised in the debate over women in combat. In Franke’s view, the women in combat issue revolves around military culture and not whether women can perform combat roles but whether they should. She also details the process by which Congress repealed the law excluding women from flying aircraft with a combat mission.
Opposing views about whether or not American service women should be assigned to combat roles, especially ground combat, is the focus of this book. On the one hand, Colonel Lorry M. Fenner, an Air Force officer, calls for opening all aspects of military service, including combat, to women arguing that democracies require all citizens to compete in public endeavor and share in civic obligation. Marie deYoung, a former Army chaplain, argues that keeping women out of combat is in the best interest of both sexes and crucial to the effectiveness of the military as a whole. |
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