Her Cold War: Women in the US Military, 1945-1980. Tanya L. Roth. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2021.

Her Cold War by Tanya Roth offers an insightful explanation of how, contrary to the popular narrative, Cold War-era servicewomen were the pioneers of the second wave feminist push for gender equality in the United States. The book focuses on the period between 1945 and 1980—a deceptively small window of time for such an impactful period both for women in the military and in U.S. culture more broadly. In 1945, there was no Department of Defense, separate Air Force, or a permanent place for women in any existing branch of the military. By 1980, only two generations later, the first groups of women were piloting military aircraft and graduating from military service academies.

Her Cold War creates and proceeds along a layered, thematic trajectory, and is divided into three parts. This organizational structure helps the book paint a large, yet still nuanced picture. Part One discusses how women’s service, recruitment, and training were defined during the early Cold War era. This section offers a foundational, top-down history to explain how “womanpower” was established and built. Part Two focuses on the narratives of servicewomen themselves and how they describe their  personal experiences of their service and its limitations. This section features information and experiences about both motherhood and regulations around homosexuality—topics that continue to evolve today. Part Three, titled “Integration Is Not Enough,” looks at how servicewomen and their allies have challenged limitations and sought to define equality for themselves. Roth does an excellent job of showing how the cultural evolution paralleled that of women in the military, as well as where they intersected. Through this she demonstrates that there is an inextricable tie between Cold War-era national defense and second-wave feminism.

Accurately depicting the Cold War-era historical narrative relies on acknowledging gender roles of that day. Her Cold War explains how, after the instability of the Great Depression and both world wars, Americans sought stability and comfort—a primary symbol of that being so-called traditional gender roles. Roth goes on to point out that while these trends were short lived, they were powerful ideas that shaped the collective for decades to come. These ideas served as the foundation for policies pertaining to servicewomen, some of which still impact servicemembers today.

The period immediately after WWII, with all its optimism and gusto because America was the new global superpower, was the archetypal fool or beginner, full of ideas on how the world and the people in it should look, think, and behave. Gender difference theory, and the policies based on it, was one of those ideas. Military and government leaders focused on creating “equality” in jobs where it was assumed women could perform as well or better than men. As Her Cold War explains, this particular interpretation of gender equality was based on the belief that men and women were inherently different and that women should, above all, be ladies. As the military started creating personnel policies for their new female service members, they made sure to account for contemporary feminine ideals (i.e.. white, middle class, a homemaker, wife, and mother). While this approach was largely to ensure effective female recruiting and retention, it also served to keep men and women as separate categories within the force. By applying a gender difference approach to the definition of equality, the military was able to keep itself categorized as a masculine institution.

As waves of social change built during the late 1950s, Americans, particularly women, began to redefine how they thought about equality and gender, issues that servicemembers had already been contending with for over a decade. Her Cold War argues that women in the military had greater “economic citizenship” and equality than civilian women during the time because their pay was equal to that of their male counterparts. However, this assessment does not factor in all the ways, monetary and otherwise, women were still not receiving equal compensation with men. Focusing solely on equal pay, as is often the case in popular culture, can be a disservice to the larger equality movement because it inherently limits the conversion to measurable externalities. In the case of servicewomen, military service is a lifestyle, making equal base pay less of a victory than one might assume. Differences in other types of pay, which women were ineligible to receive due to combat-related restrictions, such as benefits, housing accommodations, uniform availability, significant career and rank bottlenecks,  and prohibitions against pregnancy and dependents under the age of 18, impacted women’s lives and careers—none of which civilian women had to contend with. While servicewomen had the appearance of equality in many ways, they had their fair share of inequalities in places where civilian women did not. Roth speaks to this when she states that “although servicewomen were theoretically equal to servicemen, military policies limited which jobs women could perform, the ranks they could hold, and the benefits they could receive based on their sex and relationships with men,” but “as long as women had access to jobs deemed suitable for their sex, military leaders believed they offered women equality with men, and few people questioned this conception of equality.”[1]

Her Cold War also tackles the topic of racial discrimination and integration, explaining how the military’s focus on male racial desegregation meant that as race-based restrictions disappeared, sex-based restrictions took their place in shaping the military. Race and economic status were major factors when considering the construction of women’s components in the military. Lingering racial discrimination persisted, particularly against servicewomen of color, because military leaders believed changing policy and behavior, but not attitudes, was all they could or needed to do. I argue this same philosophy applied to women, particularly as policies began to change rapidly during the late 1970s and beyond.

The U.S. military is a microcosm of the larger American social and cultural environment and often ends up being the test ground for social change. As the trajectory of women in the military shows, true equality lies in beliefs and values. Ideas and policies aside, we cannot separate the mission from the people. And we cannot separate people from their values. The mission is inherently affected by the time and place in space in which it exists and therefore by the core values that motivate it. As Her Cold War shows, people conceptualize, plan, and carry out actions in alignment with the mission, but their values will naturally impact every phase and stage of it. Though service women were the first to secure a certain amount of gender equality under the practical justification of supporting national defense, ironically it was not until the 1970s era of détente that government officials began to recognize women as a potential or valuable source of manpower. Soon after, many of those previously mentioned policies concerning dependents, benefits, and the like were soon altered or rescinded entirely. Removing legal barriers to women’s integration is an important aspect of this story, but it is only  one aspect. As Roth discusses in the conclusion to the book, there are still underlying structural issues present today, stemming from those Cold  War-era perceptions and policies, that need to be addressed for women to be truly integrated into the force.

Overall, Her Cold War presents a well-rounded assessment covering a wide variety of topics that affect women in the military: appearance, motherhood, sexual orientation, fitness, education, race, sexual assault through the defined period and then up until 2020 in the conclusion. The work skillfully blends social and military history with first-hand narratives, providing the reader with a depth and breadth of understanding about “womanpower” and its prominent place in American history. This period, and work, is an important and relevant piece of the conversation concerning women in the military today, as all service members are still dealing with the legacies of cold war policies—many of which have reached their expiration date.

Roth successfully and effectively integrates both a military and civilian perspective of women’s integration into the US military, offering insightful analysis filled with historical context. Her Cold War is for both novice and advanced readers who are interested in gender studies, U.S. social history, and 20th century US military history. This book would be particularly beneficial for anyone seeking to better understand gender history over the last 75 years and is an important contribution to the ongoing gender equality discussion.

Marissa Kester is an officer in the Air Force Reserve and a senior staff historian working for the Air Force Reserve Command. She is the author of There from the Beginning: Women in the US Air Force (Air University Press, 2021). The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not represent the official position of the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

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Header Image: Marine Corps Air Stations, Miramar California (Lance Corporal Christopher Johns.)

Notes:

[1]  Tanya Roth. Her Cold War, Women in the U.S. Military, 1945-1980 (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2021), 99.