Women have always been central to the waging of war. However, the increase and expansion of their military roles (including combat) is a relatively recent phenomenon in the West, and one marked by decades of contention and struggle. The historic shift in women's military participation demands careful feminist attention. Feminist international relations and security studies scholars as well as feminist sociologists and historians have long asked, Why are militaries so resistant to women's inclusion as full-fledged soldiers? And more recently, many of us have wondered, Does women's unprecedented participation in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan indicate a game changer, or is it just more of the same—militaries in need of (wo)manpower?

Here I review two new books that examine women in the military at the start of the 21st century. Both authors are hopeful (but not Pollyanish) about the state of women's military integration. They argue that substantive and positive change has happened over the past decades in the United States and across NATO member countries. While they agree in their overall assessment, the two authors examine the issue of women's military integration from two different vantage points. Obradovic takes a bird's eye view in her comparative, cross-country study of how NATO militaries have dealt with the issue of women's integration. Eager offers a more intimate account by focusing on the U.S. military women who fought in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Her book Waging Gendered Wars paints a personal picture of the hopes, struggles, deaths, and families of female soldiers in the United States. In contrast, Gender Integration into NATO Military Forces aims for a detached, scientific inquiry into the factors that determine changes in military policy toward women.

Obradovic asks, Why are there differences in the timing and degree of women's military integration across NATO member countries? Why has there been substantial policy change in some NATO countries, but limited progress in others? Critiquing and building on previous models (such as Carreiras’ Reference Carreiras2006 or Segal's Reference Segal1995) developed to explain women's military integration, Chapter 2 proposes a theoretical framework consisting of four explanatory categories: military manpower requirements, political and economic factors, cultural factors, and international pressures. Chapter 3 then goes on to measure and compare gender integration policies by using an Index of Gender Inclusiveness, consisting of six indicators of women's military status, such as the percentage of female personnel, restrictions on women's service, or military family policies. The author finds that the greater the shortage of men due to the termination of conscription, the more inclusive militaries become; that states with autonomous women's movements are more likely to open their ranks to women; and that for Eastern European member countries, the timing of NATO membership is the determining factor in the shift toward more women-friendly policies.

The quantitative analysis is followed by in-depth qualitative analyses in Chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 4 looks for the reasons behind the vast differences in women's military integration in the U.S. (15% female) and Italy (4% female). Obradovic argues that the termination of conscription in the U.S. (in 1973) and in Italy (in 2000) paved the road for women's military integration but that the existence and strength of an autonomous liberal women's movement and women's labor force participation were determining factors of the degree of women's military integration. In Italy, the post-World War II women's movement that grew out of resistance to Fascism was antimilitarist and critical of liberal feminist arguments and therefore did not push for or even support women's military integration. By the 1990s a group of women aspiring to be soldiers took up the cause of changing military policy on women.

Chapter 5 examines the integration of women into the militaries of two recent NATO members, Poland and Hungary, where 2% and 20% of military personnel are female, respectively. For these countries, the author finds that external factors were crucial. NATO membership (rather than termination of conscription, as in the case of older NATO member states) determined the timing of policy change on women in the military. However, as Obradovic argues, the degree of integration is linked to perceptions of external threats and the operational demands put on the military. In the case of Poland, the military's perceived role in the defense against a potential Russian aggressor has led to a low reliance on women, while women could more readily integrate into a largely unpopular and marginal Hungarian military.

The strength of this book lies in its comparative and international scope. It asks us to think beyond “our” military and consider both domestic and international factors that shape gendered military policies. This cross-national analysis is a major contribution to feminist scholarship on militaries. But Obradovic also underutilizes important feminist work in her attempt to be scientific. The author's goal was “to make this a scientific project, with clear and discernible hypothesis, empirical testing, and evidence-based conclusions—so that we can claim “progress” in our understanding of why some states integrate gender and why others do not” (146–47). This does not allow her to seriously engage feminist work that rejects such a narrow definition of science, which in turn leads her to somewhat overstate the novelty of her findings, at least for feminist scholarship.

Eager's book more firmly locates itself within feminist scholarship and begins with Enloe's (Reference Enloe2000) question: “where are the women?” The book focuses on the unprecedented roles of U.S. female soldiers in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking how these women shaped and were shaped by the wars. The author notes that more than 280,000 women were deployed to these wars, some more than once, and the current figure is likely higher. Significantly, her book challenges the masculinized norm of the soldier, veteran, or war casualty. Eager refuses to adopt one particular feminist approach or to tell a singular story about U.S. military women. Instead, she seeks to examine women's stories “at face value” without applying a particular feminist label (3).

Chapter 2 traces the winding road of policy change since the American Revolutionary War, highlighting the many incremental steps (and at times, steps back) on the path to women's integration into the U.S. military. Chapter 3 examines women's roles in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, relying on first-hand accounts and second-hand interviews as well as documenting recent policy changes. Chapter 4 looks at what happens to women when they return from war. Eager details a number of challenges—from homelessness to PTSD, military sexual trauma, and suicide—that have gender-specific manifestations. We learn that female veterans are the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. veterans’ homeless population and that female veterans struggle for social recognition as veterans and face higher rates of unemployment, homelessness, and suicide compared to U.S. women without military service. The chapter ends with a list of important questions for future research into the role of gender in veterans’ transition from military to civilian life, a neglected area of feminist study.

Chapter 5 represents the core of the book (and its initial rationale according to the author). The chapter is based on a database that Eager and her students put together of the stories of 145 women soldiers killed in the two wars (the count of female deaths rose to 150 after completion of the research). In retelling 50 of those stories in the chapter, she paints a picture of diverse women, many of them young, who joined the military for different reasons. The stories are heart-wrenching and disturbing—shedding light on the personal, social, and familial costs of war. Eager tells the stories of single mothers who deployed to war, of soldiers who suffered military sexual trauma, of women who found fulfillment in their military role, and many others. I appreciate that the author does not detach us (or herself) from the realities of war and includes her personal reactions to the wars and to female casualties in the pages of the book.

This book breaks new ground by chronicling women's stories, including the stories of their deaths, and by bringing the contemporary female veteran into feminist research. Compiling the stories of female deaths was an organizational feat, I am sure. As a reader, I learned from the multiple stories of women (and my reactions to them), but I would have liked to see a more systematic approach to explaining why certain stories were selected over others, about how themes were identified as relevant and important, or about why we should think of female soldiers as heroes. The integration of all major feminist perspectives into the analysis allows for a consideration of many aspects and reasons for women's military experiences but leaves the reader wanting more guidance.

Both of these books are optimistic about women's military roles. Obradovic argues that military masculinity is crumbling under the trend of gender integration, while Eager states that women have established themselves in the military. While some feminist scholars may be skeptical of such optimism and the lack of a critical stance toward militarism found in these books, there is nonetheless much to be gleaned from them. They tell us that change is happening, both across countries and within militaries. Looking at women in the military from above and from the bottom-up as one can do when reading these books in conjuncture, will prevent any reader from assuming simple or straightforward answers to the question of whether change is happening. Together these books show that the story of women's military integration is a policy and a human story, a domestic and an international one, and a political and deeply personal one, all at the same time.