Australian Army Journal

GENDER AND SEXUALITY
Sexuality, Cohesion, Masculinity and
Combat Motivation: Designing Personnel
Policy to Sustain Capability
an example of a relatively liberal attitude to sexual relations on operations.
The infantry and artillery units deployed to Kosovo and Bosnia had a small
number of embedded women as well as support attachments. A unit commander
commented that ‘it’s hard to choose between women’s contribution by softening
the masculine atmosphere and the (mainly sexual) dramas that they create.’ 85
Interestingly, despite more liberal (application of) Dutch regulations, descriptions
of the challenges of the sexualisation of the work environment and the level of
relationships are very similar to those in US units where sexual interactions were
actively repressed. However, in the Dutch account, serious harassment and sexual
assault do not appear as prevalent as in US accounts. The notion that liberal
policy is associated with reduced harassment is supported by research showing
that Dutch servicewomen experience less harassment than British, although other
cultural factors are also at play. 86 Conversely, a strong link between a repressive
attitude to sex and high interpersonal aggression has also been recognised since
the 1970s. 87 Given an ADF-wide direction to eliminate harassment, this linkage
deserves further investigation.
Enculturation
An enculturation or social re-engineering approach would be based on the
regulations of a liberal approach, perhaps expanded to exclude relationships
between members of defined larger work groups such as platoons. However, the
disciplinary tools would be regarded as secondary to a large-scale enculturation
program that sought to build sexual taboos. This would be a major evidence-based
effort to communicate the problems of sexual relationships within the chain of
command and small work teams, presenting such behaviour in terms of letting the
team down and articulating the desired behaviour. As is currently done with suicide
awareness, all members would be told they have a role in counselling or advising
their peers, such that discouraging relationships within a small team is seen as a
group responsibility of the team itself.
To be effective, such a program should also quite explicitly indicate between whom,
when and where sexual relationships are to be considered healthy and normal.
It would be key to communicate the notion that those who happened to be in
a position to pursue a sexual relationship would be in a position of privilege and
that they have an obligation to act in a way that is considerate of others. A social
re-engineering approach might also need mechanisms that allowed the transfer of
members between work groups to deal with tensions arising from relationships.
The advantage of this approach is that it would probably not only achieve
Australian Army Journal
Culture edition 2013, Volume X, Number 3 Page 71