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GUARDING AGAINST WOMEN?

Responses of Military Men and Their Wives to Gender Integration

Based on in-depth interview questions with security guards and their wives in the U.S. Air Force, this article looks at attitudes toward women's integration into a male career field prior to the occurrence. For men, the impending integration of women into this work setting poses two challenges: one threatens the solidarity of the work culture where the influx of outsiders would dilute, if not eradicate, the trust and camaraderie that helps the men get through the shift; the other threatens the content of the culture, especially a distinct orientation to an alliance of equality (among men) and dominance (of men over women). Although wives shared with their husbands a concern about the effects of women's integration on job equity—especially fairness of assignment and safety, wives' concerns went beyond the workplace. They feared that women's integration crossed not only an occupational boundary but a temporal one in that their husbands would be working night shifts with other women. The possibility of challenges to sexual fidelity in marriage was a major concern for wives. The perception of a threat to a traditional gender division of labor not only devalued men's work; wives also became advocates for defending the gendering of the job.

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