Armed but not dangerous: Women in the Israeli military

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.