Women in Combat

The book focuses on the importance of the study of women combat soldiers and veterans in the fields of Security Studies and International Relations. The chapter addresses this issue by bringing women’s voices and silences to the forefront of research in these domains and by presenting women soldiers as narrators of war and conflict through their alternative and very personal stories. The pivotal motif that runs through the book is the theoretical framework it provides for understanding the process of integration of women soldiers into combat and combat-support roles and the challenges they face. The research seeks to explore narratives of women as violent actors rather than as women struggling for peace. The book prompts scholars to be critical of widely accepted knowledge and binary conceptions in military studies. Chapter 1 outlines the book’s rationale, the research framework, the context of the research, and the contents of the subsequent chapters.