Army, at least in its public representations, has mainly been offering to women the same things it
has been offering to men, including roles, behaviors, and characteristics that have been
associated with masculinity, but showing fewer women and showing them less frequently than
men.
NAVY
The Navy has responded to the challenge of maintaining an all-volunteer force by focusing
its efforts almost exclusively on young men. Over the course of the AVF, the Navy has used
several different approaches in its recruiting advertisements. Some Navy ads have promised
travel and adventure, some have focused on career advancement and skills training, and some
have offered personal fulfillment through responsibility and mental and physical challenges.
Many ads in the latest campaign (“Accelerate Your Life”) have featured particularly martial
forms of action and adventure, as opposed to the adventure inherent in life at sea. All of these
advertising efforts, however, have for the most part been aimed at men, and the Navy has tended
to present itself as a male world. Navy recruiting has expressed ambivalence about women,
making token reference to the possibility that they might be sailors, but mainly using them, when
they picture them at all, as a way to attract potential male recruits, by associating them with the
pleasures of travel and shore leave. The Navy’s mixed messages about women aren’t very
surprising, since the Navy has generally been ambivalent about women’s service. Of course, all
of the services have been ambivalent about women’s participation, but the Navy has a reputation
for traditionalism and independence
, both of which may lead to greater conservatism on
questions of women’s participation. The Navy has relied on women’s labor and used their
images as a recruiting tool, but has tried strenuously to keep them off ships and thus away from
the core of the service’s culture and functions.
Several World War I recruiting posters by Howard Chandler Christy used the image of a
young woman to entice young men into joining the Navy. One showed an attractive young
woman dressed like a sailor next to the words “Gee!! I Wish I Were A Man. I’d Join the Navy.”
Half of her wide collar is blowing around her head and the open neck on the blouse reveals quite
a bit of skin. Below her, the poster reads, “Be A Man And Do It. United States Navy Recruiting
7
Rand analyst Carl Builder (1989) considers traditionalism the hallmark of Navy culture, based on its growth as an
institution out of the British Royal Navy. Independent command at sea is another important element of Navy
culture, and according to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies: “In one sense, the Navy’s
fierce streak of independence may insure its world-renowned professionalism, but it also may have insulated the
service from social trends and sensitivities felt more keenly by the other services and society in general” (CSIS,
2000:12).
16
Convention