Interesting post looking at the role of women serving in the military, courtesy of a couple of my members of my grad school cohort, Jessica Trisko Darden (School of International Service at American University), and Ora Szekely (Clark University).
“One implication of our comparison of the ongoing civil wars in Syria, Iraq and Ukraine is that variation in women’s participation in military operations may not follow the stereotypes we hold about gender roles across different societies. Research by Jessica Trisko Darden and Izabela Steflja has demonstrated that the support roles women take up in combat zones challenge our traditional categorization of them as civilians. The increasingly blurred line between combat and support roles in national militaries also poses a challenge for understanding the impact of female combatants on conflict dynamics.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/02/09/warfare-isnt-just-a-mans-game-anymore/
IR Theory & Practice 