Armed But Not Dangerous

Women in the Israeli Military

Bibliographic Data

ID12309486
AuthorsMartin Van Creveld (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, corresponding author)
Year2000
Volume7
Issue1
Pages82-98
Publication date2000-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueWar in History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0968-3445 • E-ISSN: 1477-0385
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/096834450000700105
OpenAlexW2104678676
LanguageEN
Citations received5

Over the years, the fact that Israel has been the only country in history to conscript women for military service has given rise to many myths. This article will separate those myths from the facts. The facts are as follows. During pre-state days, women formed about 15% of the armed movements that opposed the British. When the War of Independence broke out, however, women were taken out of combat units. They were never allowed to return; instead, as in other armed forces, they filled `traditional' slots. The expansion of women's role in the military, which took place during the late 1970s, was the result of the Israel Defence Force's (IDF) desperate quest for manpower. This expansion of women's roles coincided with the incipient decline of the Israeli Army as a fighting force. As first the Lebanese adventure and then the need to put down the Palestinian Intifada accelerated that decline during the eighties, more women entered the IDF; the more women entered the IDF, the more its prestige declined. Thus, in the IDF as in the armed forces of all other developed countries, the entry of women into the military, far from representing a feminist triumph, is both cause and symptom of the decline of the military

Adventure · Criminology · Independence (probability theory · Military service · Mythology · Political science · Prestige · Sociology · State (computer science · Gender, Security, and Conflict · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law

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