The Conundrum of the Female Soldiers examines one of the most contested issues in contemporary gender studies: women in the military. Drawing on two decades of research and the author’s formative encounter with pioneering feminist scholar Cynthia Enloe, this book explores why women soldiers continue to unsettle both feminist theory and public debate.
Through a critical sociological lens, the book traces gendered assumptions that military institutions rely on—about masculinity, femininity, protection, vulnerability, and heroism—to justify their existence and mobilize society for war. At the same time, it reveals how women’s increasing participation in armed forces around the world disrupts these assumptions, challenging long-standing patriarchal structures while also risking new forms of militarization.
From Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to the war in Ukraine, the author demonstrates that women’s roles in the military cannot be reduced to simple narratives of progress or equality. Instead, they illuminate the complex, often paradoxical dynamics between militarism, gender, and society.
Bringing together essays and studies written over twenty years, this volume provides an essential guide for anyone seeking to understand how asking “gendered questions” transforms the study of war, the military, and power itself.

[Endorsements]

“As I read The Conundrum of the Female Soldiers, I kept thinking of all the readers it will excite globally. Fumika Satō’s expertise in the political sociology of women in both the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the US military is rare. Furthermore, she exposes both contested masculinities and femininities. By framing women soldiers (recruiting them, abusing them, constructing rival narratives about them) as posing cultural and political “conundrums” Satō reminds us all to pay more attention to gendered resistances to militarisms.”
------ Cynthia Enloe, author of Twelve Feminist Lessons of War

“Once faced with hostility from the feminist left to the conservative right, Fumika Satō could not have published The Conundrum of the Female Soldiers at a more pertinent moment. As Japan’s first female prime minister, along with leaders around the world, pursues massive remilitarization under newly critical conditions, Japan’s premier sociologist of war and the military delivers the results of a quarter century of dissecting both institutions through the lens of gender. A distinctive, persuasive, and provocative accomplishment and an essential contribution to the sociology of military establishments that richly deserves to be widely read.”

------ Sabine Frühstück, author of Uneasy Warriors: Gender, Memory, and Popular Culture in the Japanese Army

About Editors and Authors

SATŌ Fumika is Professor of Gender Studies at the Graduate School of Social Sciences, Hitotsubashi University. She received her B.A. from Keio University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University.

After serving as Assistant Professor at Chubu University, she joined Hitotsubashi University, where she served as Associate Professor from 2005 and has been Professor since 2015. She was a visiting scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute in 2011–2012.

Her research interests include social theory of gender, as well as the sociology of the military and war. She conducted sociological fieldwork at the Japan Self-Defense Forces for her doctoral research, which was published as Gender and the Military: Women in the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (in Japanese, 2004).

She has served as President of the International Society for Gender Studies, Representative of the Steering Committee of the Women’s Studies Association of Japan, and co-editor of the Iwanami “War and Society” series.

She was the recipient of the Showa Women’s University Prize for Women’s Culture Research in 2023 for the Japanese version of The Conundrum of the Female Soldiers.

Table of contents

Preface 

Part I: A Sociology of War and the Military from the Perspective of Gender 
Chapter 1: A Sociology of War and the Military from the Gender Perspective 
Chapter 2: Studies of Men and Masculinities in War and Militaries 
Chapter 3: Militarism, Militarization and Patriarchy

Part II: The Conundrum of the Female Soldiers 
Chapter 4: Difficulties Facing Women Soldiers 
Chapter 5: Are Women Soldiers a Sign of Gender Equality? 
Chapter 6: War, Militaries and Feminism 

Part III: Gender in the Self-Defense Forces 
Chapter 7: A Camouflaged Military: Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and Globalized Gender Mainstreaming 
Chapter 8: Gendered “Postmodern Militaries”:Femininity/Masculinity Mobilized around “Newness” 
Chapter 9: The “Benevolent” Japan Self-Defense Forces and Their Utilization of Women

Part IV: Gender in the US Military
Chapter 10: Women in the US Armed Forces
Chapter 11: Militarized “Equality” and “Diversity”: A Case Study of the US Military 

Part V: War, the Military and Sexuality
Chapter 12: War, the Military and Sexuality: Reading What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France 
Chapter 13: War and Sexual Violence: On the Legitimacy of Narrative
Conclusion: Critical Gender Studies in War and the Military

Afterword