Gender relations in the Australian Defence Force (ADF) "family" Event as iCalendar

Associate Professor Kate Huppatz | Western Sydney University

This paper makes use of pilot research with veterans to explore the complex ways in which "family" is implicated in gender inequity in the Australian Defence Force (ADF). In our analysis of women's ADF career experiences from the 1970s to today we propose that Segal's concept of "greedy institutions" and Bourdieu's understanding of family and "doxa" help to elucidate women's conditional membership in the ADF.

The data show that collective ADF identity is established through women's entry into a "Defence family". This representation of the organisation inspires loyalty and trust, and veterans report experiencing the organisational family both relationally and emotionally. However, for women, this experience of family sits uneasily alongside awareness of their gendered difference within an organisation that features strongly masculinist cultural norms. Within the institutional division of labour women are expected to offer pastoral care to colleagues and yet are marginalised as auxiliary and domestic workers, must labour to produce a bounded femininity and remain unencumbered by care responsibilities outside of the organisation.

A confused commitment to women's participation and to the notion of "family" thereby exists, where women are accepted into the ADF on limited terms that mirror the gendered dynamics of the patriarchal nuclear family and yet are exclusionary of maternity.