Putting the Family Into the Military Mission: A Feminist Exploration of a National Guard Family Program

In: Cultural studies - critical methodologies, Volume 12, Issue 5, p. 424-437

Abstract

What are the challenges of doing feminist research within a military institution? This became the guiding force of my research with the Midwest Family Program of the National Guard (MWFP). This article examines both my experiences as a feminist scholar conducting research in a military institution as well as the gendered tensions within the MWFP. While in the field, my research shifted from a traditional ethnographic study to a deeply personal autoethnographic project. Analyzing my interviews, documents from MWFP, and published books by military wives, I consider how hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity shape the MWFP and public discourses of the military family. Simultaneously, I reflect on my own relationship with social power as an academic conducting research on a military institution. What my analysis exposes is how the National Guard relies on a complementary set of gender identities, at both the individual and institutional-level, reinforcing the position of hegemonic masculinity in society.