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Gender and the US military in the Korean War era, 1950-1953
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Date
2023
Authors
Crunden, Rebecca
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University College Cork
Published Version
Abstract
This thesis argues that the US military’s conduct, both at home and abroad, throughout the Korean War era (1950-1953) not only propagated but exacerbated harmful stereotypes surrounding gender roles and sexuality that became crucial elements of US military culture in the early years of the Cold War. Where women’s roles transitioned from auxiliary roles with the military to volunteer roles in the military during WWII, the Korean War allowed for a reframing of the sex-gender dynamic between the military and society once more by redefining the idea of a soldier to include women, which could only be done by restricting servicewomen’s roles to femininised ‘pink collar’ work. The military subsequently framed its recruitment methods through a gendered lens such as having servicewomen host fashion shows and by disseminating propaganda that painted a rosy, feminine view of servicewomen’s duty to assure parents that their daughters were not going to be ‘camp followers’ or ‘mannish lesbians’ but were instead learning skills that would ultimately benefit them in a domestic setting. Fears of communist infiltration worsened the adherence to these stereotypes, however, and those who did not conform to traditional, heteronormative gender roles came to be viewed as a threat to national security. Consequently, US officials pushed back against women contributing to the war effort in ways deemed ‘unfeminine’ and sought to remove or bar them from the war effort altogether.
Juxtaposed against this drive to ensure the safety and femininity of ‘good’ American women, Korean women who encountered US soldiers in the warzone faced a form of racialised stereotyping which echoed historical US narratives of Japanese and Chinese women, one that placed Korean women in the unfortunate position of sexual exploitation. The slanderous accusations made against servicewomen during WWII that suggested they were there to service soldiers sexually thus became a lived reality for Korean women.
By providing the first intersectional, primary-source based examination of the Korean War era’s women, both at home and in the warzone, this thesis reveals how negative gendered stereotypes in the US set the stage not only for the often-overlooked female experience of the conflict, but for the war effort as a whole. This thesis further explores several interrelated themes such as femininity, sexuality and gender, and concludes that the US military’s engagement with these themes contributed to an inherently gendered war effort that at once overemphasised the military’s need to ensure American women’s experience was safe and femininised and held no hints of sexuality, whilst tolerating a sexually exploitive situation for civilian Korean women in the theatre of war. Ultimately, in the US military’s first war against communism, the American government and military learned how to weaponise gender, too.
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Keywords
Korean War , Women , Gender , Sexuality
Citation
Crunden, R. 2023. Gender and the US military in the Korean War era, 1950-1953. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.