Waging Gendered Wars

Paige Whaley Eager received a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Delaware in 2003. Since 2005, she has taught at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland and is currently the Chair of the Political Science Department and Co-Director of the Global Studies program. Her research interests include: Gender and War, Global Governance, and Gender and Political Violence. Professor Eager is the author of three monographs: Global Population Policy: From Population Control to Reproductive Rights (2004), From Freedom Fighters to Terrorists: Women and Political Violence (2008), and Waging Gendered Wars: U.S. Military Women in Afghanistan and Iraq (forthcoming).

’This book breaks new ground, revealing the complex issues that face women in military service, such as heroism, combat, sexual assault, PTSD, and as veterans. Through her research and interviews, the author provides us with surprising, uplifting, and sometimes alarming facts about the role of women in peacetime and war.’ Margaret Gonzalez-Perez, Southeastern Louisiana University, USA 'Waging Gendered Wars provides a much-needed exploration of the agencies and subjectivities of U.S. women military in multiple contexts, including: symbolically within and apart from the U.S. national narrative of patriotism; as soldiers fighting abroad in Iraq and Afghanistan; and as veterans struggling to rebuild their lives upon their return home. Whaley Eager’s research into the lives of 150 U.S. women soldiers makes a valuable contribution to understanding the multiple, multi-layered wars that they battle in their everyday lives-not only against the violence pervading their experiences as women in patriarchy, but also against the violence surfaced against them by their entrance into the hyper-masculine space of war.' V.G. Julie Rajan, Rutgers University, USA

• Contents: Preface; The road to research; History of US military women; The second sex at war in Iraq and Afghanistan; Female veterans: challenging dominant paradigms; The ultimate sacrifice; The long wars. Bibliography; Index.