The aim of the PhD study is to examine critically the integration of female personnel within the Permanent Defence Forces (PDF). Their integration is examined in light of the deployment of women in the international military, and in light of a liberal-feminist examination of the workplace in terms of its equality of opportunity agenda.\ud
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It is argued that the sex-role stereotyping used to recruit young men in to the military in the past along with socio-biological theories of women’s and men’s appropriate spheres of activity have combined to disempower women within military culture, i.e; women’s involvement represents a threat to the constructed masculinity the military embodies. Despite the persistence of patriarchal culture within the sphere of the military, there has been an unprecedented growth in the numbers of women within the military in the west due to the demands of modem total and technological warfare. Military planners are recruiting women not for reasons of equality of opportunity, but out of a strategically determined necessity.\ud
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In this light and in the light of the role of women in combat, the study examines the effect that women have had on the culture of the PDF. This effect is measured in terms of the roles and status assigned them and the policies evolved by the military authorities to deal with their recruitment, training, deployment and promotion.\ud
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A detailed sociological, and semiological analysis of PDF culture shows that as an institution the army is organised according to the values of patriarchy: the gender divisions within military culture extend from deployment to dress codes. From a liberal-feminist perspective, the ‘masculine’ patriarchal culture of the PDF could be said to be the antithesis of an equality of opportunity work environment.\ud
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Despite this and evidence of resistance from within the PDF to the recruitment of female personnel, the numbers of women within the PDF has trebled in recent years. This trend is continuing. The author has found evidence of the effects the advent of female personnel has had on PDF culture and evidence of the effects the growth in numbers of female personnel has had on recruitment, training and deployment policies.\ud
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In summary, the study examines a ‘women’s effect’ on PDF culture as their numbers increase. The study examines a culture in transition