95 Sodobni vojaški izzivi, september 2016 – 18/št. 3
Contemporary Military Challenges, September 2016 – 18/No. 3
ŽENSKE	V	OBOROŽENIH	SILAH:	
MED	NASILJEM	IN	RANLJIVOSTJO
Nadja Furlan Štante
WOMEN	IN	MILITARY	SISTEM:	
BETWEEN	VIOLENCE	AND	VULNERABILITY
Povzetek
Ključne 
besede
Abstract
Prispevek poskuša združiti vprašanje posledic napačnega razumevanja in tolmačenja 
ranljivosti žensk ter vprašanja negativnega vpliva spolnih stereotipov in predsodkov 
na položaj žensk v vojaškem sistemu. Emancipacijski vidik v kontekstu vprašanja 
žensk v vojaškem poklicu in žensk na kriznih, bojnih (vojnih) žariščih in v 
kriznih situacijah je soočen s posledicami vpliva negativnih spolnih stereotipov 
in predsodkov, ki so jih oblikovale in favorizirale zahodne družbeno-religijske 
agende, in posledično izzvan z vprašanjem razumevanja ženske kot ofenzivnega in 
defenzivnega vojaškega orožja. V popularnem diskurzu se namreč ženska telesa, 
menstrualna kri in ženska seksualnost zaradi učinkovitosti združevanja predsodka 
nevarnosti žensk z nevarnostjo narave pogosto uporabljajo kot vojaška taktika. V tem 
smislu bi lahko ranljivost ženskih teles razumeli v kontekstu tistih, ki so zlorabljena 
in podvržena nasilju nasilnih drugih (moških, sistema itn.). 
Žensko telo, ženska seksualnost, ranljivost, predsodek, religija, vojna.
The paper brings together perceptions and concerns about the practical consequences 
of the misconceptions of the concept of women’s vulnerability and the question of 
negative gender stereotypes and prejudices regarding women in military profession. 
The emancipation viewpoint within the context of women in the military profession 
and women confronting cobat (war) situations and equivalence, is introduced within 
the universal orientation of the impact of negative gender stereotypes and prejudices 
formed and perpetuated within religion-society cyrcle and confronted with the issue 
of understanding women as both offensive and defensive weapons of war. 
Within popular discourse, women’s bodies, menstrual blood, and female sexuality 
can be used as tactics of war because of the potency of their association with the 
DOI:10.33179/BSV.99.SVI.11.CMC.18.3.8
 96 Sodobni vojaški izzivi/Contemporary Military Challenges
Nadja Furlan Štante
danger of nature. To that extent the vulnerability of women’s bodies could be 
understood as the one being violated and abused to violet others. 
Women’s bodies, female sexuality, vulnerability, prejudices, religion, war.
The question of a woman, of her role in the society is still inexhaustible and more 
and more present subject of different psychological, sociological, social and other 
scientific researches and debates. The whole society is faced with new view of a 
woman and also of a man. The world is in the middle of the important place of 
transformation or new valuation and formation of gender’s identity. At that point the 
instutionized religion plays an important role, as a meaningful system for producing 
the meaning is (so)responsable for (non)ethical behaveour of society and vice-
versa. The culture and religion are not just the area of passive influences but also 
a meaningful system for producing the meaning. The culture and religion give the 
notions, the beliefs which become unnoticed and non-rectified patterns by which 
the people live by. That is why in the sphere of cultural society beside the positive 
life phenomena also negative gender stereotypes and prejudices are formed and 
we absorb them non critically. The important role here have the religions which, 
according to Majella Franzmann, are the main key which in a individual social-
political structures open the door to harmful gender stereotypes and prejudices and 
consecutively to a patriarchal mentality (Franzmann, 2000, p. 60). Stereotypical 
conceptions which are linked mostly to gender stereotypes have a very important 
role here. These stereotypes have a destroying influence on the comprehension and 
notion of oneself, of the other gender and consecutively of all relations. They are 
creating a distance between a man and a woman and the ideal of symbiosis of gender 
differences and respectful-harmonious relation between sexes. Negative gender 
stereotypes and prejudices encourage, preserve and tolerate patriarchal hierarchical 
marks of human relations and spread class hierarchy of power on every field of life. 
Innocent patriarchy’s parasites live and transfer through the language, images and 
thoughts. Negative gender stereotypes and prejudices paraliyse and prevent healthy 
mutual relations. These are heart and health of a person, of partner and family 
relations and also of the whole net of relations and society. Healthy relations mean 
healthy society and vice versa.
The question of parity and equality of women and men in a view of the impact of 
negative gender stereotypes, is one of the basic and complex questions which our 
era has to think about. Because the more we non critically accept the norms around 
us, the more we become limited: victims of our environment, less capable to doubt 
about the beliefs which were unconsciously taken from our environment. That is 
why it is important to find a liberation from life’s captivity in which the people live 
as passive products of this culture.
This problematical feeld introduce the paper in the sense of ethical model: two 
integrities of a man and of a woman which are two different totalities and from 
constructive differencies it is not possible to create a relation moreworthy – manly 
Key words
Introduction
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WOMEN IN MILITARY SISTEM: BETWEEN VIOLENCE AND VULNERABILITY
and lessworthy, which in the past has always been womanly. The modern progressive 
conception and understanding of gender order is certainly rather significantly related 
to the issue of socio-cultural paradigm of power and power distribution. The present 
paper also results from the progressive view that the roles of men and women were 
mainly shaped by influences arising from the history, culture, society, religion and 
therefore change as the society itself changes.
The starting point of the approach in the paper is problem based. The emancipation 
viewpoint within the context of women in the military profession and women 
confronting cobat (war) situations and equivalence, is introduced within the 
universal orientation of impact of negative gender stereotypes and prejudices formed 
and perpetuated within religion-society cyrcle and confronted with the issue of 
understanding women as both offensive and defensive weapons of war, a notion that 
is symptomatic of age-old fears of the “mysterious” powers of women, maternity, 
and female sexuality. (Oliver, 2007, p.19).
Soo, the research question of these paper is the urge to trace possible connection 
between the impact of the negative gender stereotypes on comprehension of women 
in military profession. The basic hypotesis would be that universal orientation of the 
impact of negative gender stereotypes and prejudices formed and perpetuated within 
religion-society cyrcle has strong negative impact on understanding of women as 
both offensive and defensive weapons of war. 
 1 NEGATIVE GENDER STEREOTYPES, PREJUDICES REGARDING 
WOMEN IN MILITARY PROFESSION
Anthropological and ethnographical research indicates that between human 
activities are very few of those who would be, in all human cultures performed 
exclusively by male or exclusively by female. Although there are a whole range of 
cultures, of which there is a strict division of labor between the sexes, but the views 
on which the work is male and which female, are usually very different. Equal 
work or acitvity can in some culture applies to extremely masculine and in other 
to extremely feminine gender role. One of the few exceptions is fighting because 
we can not cite a single living culture in which women had in it equally important 
or even more important role than men.1 The military profession until recently, 
certainly was considered as exclusively male profession, and as Igor Kotnik-
Dvojmoč has pointed out, it was not only because of the objective complexity of 
the profession, but also for tradition, stereotypes and prejudices. (Kotnik-Dvojmoč, 
2002, p. 33) Igor Kotnik-Dvojmoč also reveals particular attention of the impact of 
negative gender stereotype of the “relationship between the concept of masculinity 
and heroism”. In addition, he claims, that the general code, which assessed the 
members of the battle group is still “to be a man”. It is also one of the easiest ways 
1 Among the 122 cultures that were analyzed in terms of who produces the weapons, there was only one found in 
which women sometimes participate in this work. (Makarovič, Žvokelj, Kromar, 1986, p. 36)
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to encourage soldiers to implement a completely irrational procedures in the fight, 
which can also lead to certain death; with the reference to their “masculinity” being 
put into question as the crucial element. The man, according to Kotnik-Dvojmoč, 
is much more afraid of losing masculinity as women fear their loss of femininity. 
This is probably due to the fact that it is necessary to pove “real manhood, or real 
masculinity” with achievements. Moreover, men are much more pronounced need 
to prove their masculinity through various roles and profession. (Kotnik-Dvojmoč, 
2002, p. 33)
The hardest issue for women in the military profession is to resist traditionally 
and culturally conditioned opposition. Due to culturally marked stereotypical 
gender roles man are thought aggressiveness through socialization, while women 
are constantly thought non-aggression. In line with this, the male ego requires to 
keep themselves protectors. Musek is also convinced that the observed differences 
between the members of both sexes reflect the life situation, the process of 
socialization and experiences that prevail in a given environment. Quite clearly these 
differences are expressed through gender roles and performances, the individuals 
during development creates about their sexual identity, stereotypes and roles. On 
the other hand, it is again difficult to defend the impression that gender roles and 
gender schemes are not completely independent of the actual nature and objective 
characteristics of members of both sexes. However, the marginalization of women 
in the military profession, is the result of the predominance of male centered culture. 
(Musek in Kotnik-Dvojmoč, p. 34)
Women entering into public activities, that were considered as exclusively men, 
is still very limited. The cult of masculinisation, which is dominated by a strict 
principle of exclusivity, commands women to be considered as “outsiders” and 
represents a negative phenomenon in a man’s world. Women’s professional career 
is, despite numerous attempts of emancipation, still largely dependent on traditional 
prejudices and cultural norms. Although in the last fourty years, women massively 
penetrated in so called “man’s world of army” of Western European and North 
American armed forces, women in the military occupation which applies to be 
“most male centered profession” are still burdened with strong impact of prejudices 
and negative gender stereotypes. These prevent them from equal oportunity to 
perform a profession of a soldier without barriers. Instead, they must cope with the 
remarks of their fellow men that contain negative stereotypical idea of women as 
dependent, helpless, weak, man’s slave property. For the reason of “threats to his 
manhood” male soldiers repeatedly disable and make difficulties to their female 
colleagues. Thus, for example. Slovenian soldier that wants to remain anonymous 
says: I often receive various ridicule accusations by male colleagues. Perhaps 
even worse, however, I find the comments and reactions of other people when I tell 
them that I am a professional soldier. (Furlan, 2005, p. 189) Undoubtedly, this is 
due to the gender stereotype of specific gender role played by a woman imprinted 
in the collective consciousness of our society. On the other hand, military colonel 
Damjana Jurkovič, responds that she did not think of feel any disadvantages of 
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being a woman among her male colleagues in the workplace. In connection with 
the question of the presence of prejudices about women in the army or military 
occupation, she argues: In 1991, there were non (prejudices), because the war 
made us equal. (...) In the following years, gender differences and prejudices 
began to appear, but I can say for myself, that in my surroundings, I have never 
felt them. The differences may be traced when command responsibility comes into 
question ... (Jurkovič, 2003, p. 26)
The reason for increasing number of women who, despite of the impact of negative 
gender stereotypes and prejudices opt for military occupations, could be seen 
mainly in new roles and tasks of the armed forces. With the spread of non-war 
military operations in which the military performs the role of peace-building, 
peacekeeping, humanitarian tasks in aid during natural disasters, the interest of 
women to military profession increases. These tasks often take place in areas where 
the military crisis has passed, or even in environments where there is no threat of 
use of military force, and allow the participation of a large number of women. 
These tasks do not assume great physical strength and the use of weapons, but 
on the contrary, requires the large capacity of the negotiations, understanding of 
different cultures, understanding the civilian population in the area of operations ... 
Soo called “machomilitarism” trend, which we are familiar with from some of the 
modern aggressive armies, is nothing but cultural cockpit cover to the the soldiers 
in peacekeeping operations. Feminization of the military, is not understood only 
in terms of the increased number of women in the military, but also brings with it 
a qualitative change. Feminization of army presupposes re-conceptualization of 
masculinity and transformations of gender identities and relations between them, 
and thus the ability and willingness of the acts of violence has dramatically dropped. 
Feminization of the military also brings new perspectives to the conception of 
masculinity. It also brings liberating concepts that break down prejudices such as: 
brave fighters do not cry, fear or retreat. With the entry of women into the army 
and the units on the front lines, such samples are disrupted. It is permissible for a 
man to cry, allowed to consider whether it is wiser to attack or retreat. By changing 
the definition of courage and fear transformation of the operation in the frontline 
occures as well. This is precisely what bothers some military experts which 
believe that the presence of women reduces the effectiveness of the army. Greater 
presence of women reduces combative intentions of the army and this helps to 
lower glorification of violence in the army, and consequently also in wider society. 
In this regard, Maca Jogan questiones whether feminization of the armed forces 
may be a first step towards changing patterns of everyday life in the direction of 
decreasing violence and as an agent of mutual coexistence. (Jogan, 2002, p. 24)
Despite of increasing involvement of women in the military occupation, women 
are far from equal with men, which is mainly reflected in the functional (inequality 
in access to tasks and their implementation) and positional (inequality in the 
dynamics of acquiring rank and level) differentialisation of women. Igor Kotnik-
Dvojmoč concludes that the problem of functional differentiation and positioning 
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of women in the military occupation, both in its quantitative as well as qualitative 
aspect, reaches such a magnitude that it would be appropriate instead of using term 
differentiation for labeling this phenomenon entitled to use term discrimination. 
(Kotnik-Dvojmoč, 2002, p. 58) We could conclude that women in a male-designated 
occupation of soldiers, are therefore visibly exposed to non-equal distribution of 
power, discrimonation and negative impact of gender stereotypes and prejudices, 
and all this is also manifested in the form of disadvantage in promotion and 
payment. Kelly Oliver alerts: Even as the presence of women in the military seems 
to signal their liberation from patriarchal traditions, the retoric surrounding their 
involvment betrays the lingering association between women, sexuality, and death. 
(Oliver, 2007, p. 19)
And this connection is ecpecially noticeable in the phenemenon of vulnerability.
 2 WOMEN’S VULNERABILITY: VIRGIN / SEDUCTRESS, LIFE / DEATH, 
PEACE MAKER / WARRIOR 
Fearing women’s power and authority, even Christianity often made women 
scapegoats and subjected them to men. In his work Violence, Society and the 
Church, Gerald A. Arbuckle arrives at similar conclusions and points out the 
patriarchate as the oldest form of supremacy of one gender over another, that 
is, of men over women (Arbuckle, 2004). He believes that gender oppression 
stems from deeply rooted anti-women prejudices preserved and strengthened 
throughout history. And the origin of all these prejudices and the patriarchate as an 
oppressive form of power and men as possesiors of power, is – in the opinion of 
anthropologists Edwin Ardener and Sherry Ortner – to be sought in men’s feeling 
of loss of power and inferiority. The two anthropologists argue the following 
thesis: in pre-modern cultures pregnancy and birth were understood as spheres 
of dangerous secret wrapped in a veil of mystery. Despite or perhaps precisely 
because of this, the phenomena of pregnancy and birth aroused envy among men, 
as they made them feel helpless. The fact that men could seemingly establish and 
determine the rights related to the offspring had to kneel down in front of the actual 
ability to create a life, which was outside men’s power. Precisely because of their 
lack of this capability or power (to bear children) men pushed women aside and 
confined them to the wild sphere of nature, while assigning other men the superior 
position in the area of social decision making and order. Women were thus ousted 
from the orderly social world of decision making and public social life, with their 
wild nature representing the main obstacle and excuse for men to chase them away 
from this sphere. Consequently, women’s position in the society became marginal 
and only restricted to their primary function, which was supposed to be ensuring 
procreation, that is, bearing offspring (Arbuckle, 2004, pp. 39-40). Femininity, 
woman and her body become extremly vulnerable.
The root of the word vulnerability is the Latin vulna, which means “wound”. The 
term is used in a variety of ways: economic, geopolitcal, emotional. In one side it 
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describes the fragility of our bodies, and the terror, confusion and fellow-feeling 
that can come from our perception of our shared embodiment. As Sarah Hagelin 
refers “both to the physical fact that a thin layer of skin separates the inside of our 
bodies from the outside world and also s coplex structures of feeling in this case 
those that define our sense of ourselves as vulnerable”. (Hagelin, 2013, p. 13)
Kate Brown summarizes three distinct but interrelated concerns about the practical 
consequences of the concept of vulnerability: (1.) vulnerability is a patronizing, 
paternalistic, and oppressive concept; (2.) vulnerability becomes a premise for an 
instrument of social control; and (3.) vulnerabity has stgmatizing and exclusionary 
consequences. (Brown, 2011, p. 316)
Through the body, we are exposed, opened onto the world and to others, even 
as for others we are the ones to whom they are exposed and vulnerable. In this 
sense, vulnerability is universal, an invitable part of embodiment. Or in the words 
of Judith Butler:“the body implies mortality, vulnerability, agency: the skin and 
the flesh expose us to the gaze of others, but also to touch, and to violence, and 
bodies put us at risk of becoming the agency an instrument of all these as well”. 
(Butler, 2004, p. 26) The theme of vulnerability is implicit in all Butler’s work, yet 
it is treated most directly in Precarious Life. Butler’s idea of precarity, which is 
politically conditioned and precariousness as “the condition of being conditioned” 
is definitive of life itself and reveals “life as a conditioned process”. (Butler, 2006, 
p. 23) Precariusness is akin to an exsistential sense of finitude in that it emphasizes 
the fragility of existance, but it serves a different purpose. Precariusness calls our 
attention to the way any of us might be substituted for another. Understood in 
this way precariusness is an ungrounded ground for “positive social obligations”. 
(Butler, 2006, p. 22) To the extent that I am vulnerable and my life is precarious, it 
is also because I am bound to others. Social bonds condition my existence.
The other posible understanding of vulnerability would be also the one that deals 
with emotions. Psychoanalyst, phlosopher, feminist Julia Kristeva describes 
vulnerability not primairly as the result of heaving bodies that can be wounded, 
but rather exists because we occupy a place between being and meaning, between 
bodies and words. And precisely tis gap between bodies and words, the ways in 
which words are never quite adequate to capture bodily experience, is fugured as 
a wound. And according to Kristeva, this wound is the seat of our vulnerability. 
She suggests that the encounter with other pust us face to face with our own 
vulnerability with and for others. In this view, it is the fear and denial of our 
own vulnerability that causes us to hate and exploit the vulnerability of others. 
(Kristeva, 2010, p. 115) 
Vurnerability in this sense, usually means a system of beliefs, images and narratives 
that imply a capacity to be harmed (either physically or emotionally). Generally 
the word has also implied a powerlessness or victimization that strip from our 
understanding of the term, especially in regard to images of the female body. Or as 
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Erinn C. Gilson has stated female vulnerability is manifest in the way women are 
portrayed as submissive, powerless objects that are acted upon and often harmed 
by men. (Gilson, 2014, p. 157) 
From the perspective of feminist critique there is always something both risky 
and true in claiming that women are especially vulnerable. The claim can be 
taken to mean that women have an unchanging and defining vulnerability, and 
that kind of argument makes the case for paternalistic protection. And yet, there 
are good reasons to argue for the differential vulnerability of women; they suffer 
disproportionately from poverty and literacy, two very important dimensions of 
any global analysis of women’s condition. Women disproportionately suffer also 
the impacts of disasters, severe weather events, and climate change because of 
cultural norms and the inequitable distribution of roles, resources, and power, 
especially in developing countries.
In some ways, vulnerability has been regarded as a value in feminist theory and 
politics. This means neither that women are more vulnerable than men nor that 
women value vulnerability more than men do. Rather, certain kinds of gender-
defining attributes, like vulnerability and invulnerability, are distributed unequally, 
and for purposes of shoring up certain regimes of power that subordinates women. 
Religion (Christianity) has been one of the patriarchal structures that have 
objectified women and denigrated their bodies. At this point we should breefly 
mention the strong negative impact of prejudice of percieving women’s body 
as the seed of carnal wickedness and seductive wilderness, imprinted negative 
stereotype by church fathers and perpetuated throughtout church history. (Furlan, 
2006, p. 117)
And that brings us to the problem of vulnerability and its myths and common 
misconceptions about weakness of women on one hand, and the danger of their 
sexuality, on the other. The prejudice of the virgin-whore dichotomy setup within 
cultures that historically have excluded female bodies from the properly social and 
political realm is well known. Women have been figured as either innocent virgins 
or dirty whores. 
Among other negative consequences that negative gender stereotypes regarding 
women’s bodies have had on the perception of women as embodied subjects, the 
vulnerability of women’s bodies and their abuse is fare more destructive.
Athough the paper will not focusse on the question of vulnerability of women’s 
bodies furtheron, it would be appropriate to stress out three aspects of women’s 
vulnerability in terms of embodied experience: (1.) on women’s disproportial 
suffering from poverty and literacy, (2.) on feminicide (the phenomenon of the 
female homicides in Ciudad Juárez, called in Spanish feminicidio (feminicide) 
involves the violent deaths of hundreds of women and girls since 1993 in the 
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northern Mexican region of Ciudad Juárez,Chihuahua2) and (3.) on women’s 
involvment in abuse (be it sexual abuse in terms of rape) or in terms of Kelly 
Oliver’s Women’s as wapons of war. Within popular discourse, women’s bodies, 
menstrual blood, and female sexuality can be used as tactics of war because of 
the potency of their association with danger of nature. Oliver states that akin to a 
natural toxin or intoxicant, women’s sex makes a powefful weapon because, within 
our cultural imaginary, it is by nature dangerous. (Oliver, 2007, p. 31)
And that brings us to the problem of the figures of women from wars in the Middle 
East, speaking of Palestinian women suicide bombers, strating with Wafa Idris in 
January 2002. An editorial published in Egypt’s weekly newspaper Al-Sha’aba few 
days after the bombing, stated: It is a woman who teaches you today a lesson in 
heroism, who teaches you the meaning of jihad, and the way to die a martyr’s death ... 
It is a woman who has shocked the enemy with her thin, meager and weak body. It is 
a woman who blew herself up, and with her exploded all the myths about woman’s 
weakness, submissiveness, and enslavement. (Whaley Eager, 2008, pp. 188-189)
While women are obviously capable of the most heinous abuse and torture, the 
myth or prejudice of women more savage than men continues today with stories of 
women torturers and women interrogators in Iraq (shocking images of Pfc. Lynndie 
England and Army Spc. Sabina Harman at the Abu Gharib prison in Iraq) as well as 
in Guantanamo Bay prisons. There women have been identified with sex and their 
sexuality has been figured as a weapon by the military. The prejudice of that so-called 
dangerous natural sexuality can be harnessed by the military to break and “soften 
up” recalcitrant prisoners. That suggests that the presence of women in Abu Gharib 
prison allowed for even more humiliating forms of abuse supposedly used to “soften 
up” prisoners before interrogation. Because of their sex and its seemingly natural 
effect on men, women become the means to compound not only sexual and physical 
abuse but also abuse of religious and cultural beliefs. The use of menstrual blood in 
2 The phenomenon of the female homicides in Ciudad Juárez, called in Spanish feminicidio (“feminicide”) 
involves the violent deaths of hundreds of women and girls since 1993 in the northern Mexican region of Ciudad 
Juárez, Chihuahua, a border city across the Rio Grande from the U.S. city of El Paso, Texas. The number of 
murdered women in Ciudad Juarez since 1993 is estimated to be more than 370. After surveying 155 killings 
out of 340 documented between 1993 and 2003, a government committee found that roughly half were prompted 
by motives like robbery and gang wars, while a little more than a third involved sexual assault. The murders of 
women and girls in Ciudad Juárez since 1993 have received international attention, primarily due to perceived 
government inaction in preventing violence against women and girls and bringing perpetrators to justice. More 
recently, prosecutors from the state of Chihuahua reported that in 2010, 270 women were killed within the 
state, of these murders 247 occurred in Juarez. In 2011, Chihuahua’s Attorney General, Carlos Manuel Salas, 
announced during a briefing in August 2011 that 222 women had been killed in Chihuahua since January of 
that year. Of these 222 murders, 130 of them occurred in Ciudad Juarez. In total, more than 300 women were 
murdered in the city in 2011. It is believed that the femicide in Ciudad Juarez may be related to organized 
crime (like prostitution rings) given the presence of the powerful drug cartels in the region. Further, criminal 
gangs have become a permanent threat particularly to women on the border. Gang activity creates high risk 
for women especially due to very little institutional protection. This patriarchal backlash may indeed be the 
result of lack of employment opportunities for men and more women entering the workforce which has altered 
traditional gender dynamics and created a situation of conflict between the sexes. (Overall, in considering the 
potential motives for gendered violence against women, academic Mercedes Olivera has argued that femicide is 
a mechanism of domination, control, oppression, and power over women. (Olivera, 2006, 113).
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the interrogation of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay is especially telling. Patriarchal 
cultures have traditionally regarded menstrual blood as unclean and disgusting. Now 
the imagined abject power of menstrual blood is being used as a weapon of war. It is 
not just that we suppose that our Muslim prisoners will think they are unclean being 
exposed to menstrual blood, but also that within our own culture and the rhetoric of 
the soldiers and media reporting these incidents, menstrual blood is seen as unclean. 
(Oliver, 2007, p. 20-22) Patriarchal culture demeans and denies the elemental power 
of the female body. So the taboo of impurity and inferiority of women’s body, 
dangerous and impure in ritual is stigmatized and pathologized. Menstruation is 
regarded by many, as a sickness, a blank spot, a non-event that the women must 
endure and would be better without, an evil time. Menstrual taboos, are defined not 
by moral distinctions (negative-positive; pure-impure), but by the logic of separation 
inherent in both. The most common explanation for the taboo of menstruation is 
“primitive” association of menstrual blood with “demonic powers”, which thus puts 
the menstrual prohibitions with a kind of superstition. (Furlan Štante, 2014, p. 40)
In these regard Kelly Oliver examines various ways in which women involved in war 
in Middle East have been imagined as dangerous weapons linked with death. Within 
popular discourse, women’s bodies, menstrual blood, and female sexuality can be 
used as tactics of war because of the potency of their association with the danger of 
nature. To that extent the vulnerability of women’s bodies could be understood as the 
one being violated and abused to violet others. 
Despite of increasing involvement of women in the military occupation, women 
are far from equal with men. They are visibly exposed to non-equal distribution of 
power, discrimonation and negative impact of gender stereotypes and prejudices, and 
all this is also manifested in the form of disadvantage in promotion and sometimes 
also payment.
We could conclude that unequal oportunities of women in military profession 
are practical consequences due to misconceptions of the concept of women’s 
vulnerability and negative impact of gender stereotypes and prejudices regarding 
women that have become strong platform of our collective memory. The issue of 
understanding women as both offensive and defensive weapons of war has arose, 
and that has everything to do with stereotypes of femininity and female sexuality. 
With women entering military arena, women have started to tell their own stories, 
they have started with deconstruction of those negative gender stereotypes. In the 
framework of the women’s liberation movement this could be understood as attempt 
to revive her-story, that has been, suppressed in the markedly masculine his-story 
of military service. Within her story, the face of military arena is slowlly begane to 
change, embracing also feminine side. 
Conclusion
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1. Arbuckle, Gerald A., 2004. Violence, Society and the Church: A Cultural Approach. 
Minnesota: Liturgical Press.
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Bibliography
WOMEN IN MILITARY SISTEM: BETWEEN VIOLENCE AND VULNERABILITY