A Few Good Women? Gendered Socialization and Norms of Civilian Protection in United States Military Training

Many professionalized militaries seek to train combatants in “norms of restraint” (NoR) based on international legal principles of noncombatant immunity. Does training in NoR affect the attitudes of women and men toward the protection of civilians differently? Drawing on unique surveys of United States Army officer cadets at the US Military Academy (USMA), we find that while women and men held similar attitudes at the start of their academy training, women’s attitudes shifted more toward civilian restraint, despite receiving identical formal training in international humanitarian law (IHL), combat ethics, and officership. To explore the causes of this gender divergence, we conduct open-ended, in-depth interviews with former USMA cadets. We find that socialization at USMA is deeply gendered, and that differences in norm socialization are linked to a prevailing “gender order” constructed by formal and informal rules, practices, and norms that attribute distinct roles to women and men in military settings. Despite the seemingly “ungendered” nature of USMA’s intensive training in IHL and combat ethics, this gender order creates different socialization experiences for women and men, resulting in divergent attitudes toward civilian restraint. These findings shed light on how socialization and gender interact to shape combatant attitudes toward NoR, and are especially notable given the USMA’s status as the US Army’s “flagship of ethics education.”