Women in the Line of Fire: What You Should Know About Women in the Military

by Erin Solaro

In 2004, Erin Solaro went to Iraq to study American servicewomen — what they were doing, how well they were doing it, how they were faring in combat. In 2005, she went to Afghanistan on the same mission. Having spent time embedded with combat troops and conducting stateside interviews with numerous analysts and veterans, Solaro is convinced that the time to drop all remaining restrictions on women's full equality under arms is now. The Army, the country, the women of America — and of the world — need it.

Women in the Line of Fire details why this will not be an easy task. Although 15 percent of the military is female, the Army and Marines still resist acknowledging what is, in fact, already happening — women are fighting, and fighting well. For the Religious Right and the cultural conservatives, women in combat is a hot-button issue in their campaign to “take back the culture.” But for the young men and women on the lines, brought up in an America where equality between the sexes was never second guessed and where making up the rules as you go along comes with the territory, it's the new reality.

Genres: Military Fiction

416 pages, Paperback

First published August 9, 2006

About the author

I have withdrawn from self-publication both Someone Else's War because it was overtaken by events, rendering basic premises absurd, and Now You Know, because subsequently published academic research, as well as my own, has greatly reshaped my understanding of Erwin Rommel.

A full-length novel version of Now You Know, incorporating that research, is now close to completion.

Reviews

[G · Rating 2 out of 5]

Women in the Line of Fire could have been an enlightening book addressing the historical role of women in the military, how that's changing today, and shedding light on the validity of arguments for and against opening opportunities to women servicemembers. Unfortunately, It isn't. In the first chapters, the author talks about how awesome she is, recounts her failed attempt to become a commissioned officer (going through ROTC only to be rejected for active duty AND reserve positions, which makes you wonder what she did so terribly wrong), her marriage (???) and how she decided to become a journalist, and her trips to Afghanistan and Iraq as an embedded journalist. During these trips, she recounts how nearly everyone has it in for her, from the young soldier quietly reading the sinister Maxim magazine in his rack to the people in the hotel bars during her UAE and Kuwait stopovers, against the threat of whom she barricades herself into her hotel rooms with a chair under the door knob.

When she's done talking about herself, Solaro begins to discuss servicewomen and their experiences. The history provided is a reasonable overview, although muddled with information about private schools like the Citadel. Unfortunately the history lesson devolves into a bizarre thesis on maternal mortality driving the opposition to women in combat (and to women's rights in Islamic societies)...this argument is made with some truly, bizarrely bad math. She gets a few anecdotal numbers from talking to doctors, interprets them incorrectly, and concludes that 45+% of women in Afghanistan are dying in childbirth. It's bizarre, it's an argument repeated again before the end of the book, and I shudder to think that it's possible to graduate from high school, let alone college, in this country thinking that if you have a 3% risk of dying during something you do 15 times over your life, your lifetime risk of death from it is 45%.

The much better analysis of PFT standards redeems Solaro's arguments slightly, and she makes an interesting case for tightening some standards for women and loosening others, and pointing out that restricting women's weight more than men but allowing them much higher body fat percentages doesn't encourage fitness or strength. This is a good case that she then caps off with an odd conclusion that people who weigh enough to train for strength are "unattractive" (did the military become a beauty pageant when I wasn't looking?). The discussion of pregnancy and its effects on deployment unfortunately lacks any data whatsoever, and the author interprets her inability to get a full descriptive database of maternity data as another example of the US Army's personal vendetta against Erin Solaro.

Other major flaws of Women in the Line of Fire include: her conclusion that anyone too busy to grant her an interview or who doesn't respond to her emails is clearly hostile to the cause of incorporating women into the armed forces, her failure to discuss special forces much or submarines at all, and an incoherent parting rant about human rights, China, and feminism.

[Greta · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is terrible. Horribly written, non-existent methodology, baseless claims, value-laden judgments. . . if she had stuck with the topic of women in the military it might have been tolerable. Instead she pretends to also be an expert on sexual violence, Islamic culture, the Arab world, American foreign policy, and the feminist movement, all of which she knows little about and about which she draws false conclusions. I'm sure people sitting next to me on the metro thought there was something wrong with me, as I got visibly agitated reading this book. Just don't read the book.

[Jess]

I wanted so badly to enjoy this book. I would have loved to reach the conclusion and be able to write off all of the low ratings as misogynists attacking a hidden jewel of an argument. Unfortunately, i found this book to be repetitive and uncompelling.
The author started strong by acknowledging “this book does not regard the failures and limitations of other generations as a personal insult, or as a means of deriving unearned moral authority” however, there were quite a few other times in the book that personal insult was derived in other areas of research, a field that really should be impartial and unbiased. It appears that there were multiple people who refused interviews with her, and I don’t believe she fully gave credit enough to the chance that these individuals may have viewed her as the so-called feminista she harshly criticizes based upon the subject matter of her interviews. This is no hate to the author, simply just the observation that one word taken out of context can end a career, so I can understand why some people outright refused.

[Nez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not what I was expecting, so somewhat disappointing.

[20hrsinamerica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked a lot of things about this book. If you're interested in some history of and insight into the modern era of women in the military done in a prose-y, jaunting and fun style of writing, this is your book. It's got some data tables but no statistics. And while the author has her masters, she works as a journalist so the language is more colorful and less dry than an academics. She uses mythology, interviews, general public knowledge, and her own experiences to weave a good story about issues in the military related to women (the draft, combat exclusion, pregnancy stats, sexual harassment/assault) and why they should be allowed in combat (hint: they already are serving in combat, but exclusions simply stop their ability to progress in career (reminder that this book was written before the combat exclusion was dropped)).

However, I am side-eyeing her on her frequent talk of feminism. She identifies as a feminist, first as a "radical feminist" but currently (coined in 2002 she claims - which, addendum! this term existed some years before and in fact suggests antimilitarism and "peace politics", aka: they're actually pacifists!) a "civic feminist". Her description of the type of feminist she is (pg 354) is fairly understandable and supportable. But throughout the book she emphasizes the existence of the "feminista" who wanted nothing more but to tear down men and the military. Like pacifism is bad (??). She remains critical of the military, and notes she is anti-Iraq War. Yet she comes off sounding so supportive of the military, its fascinating how she walks that line; I suspect she does so as a way to appease to the military crowd - please don't reject me, honest I like you a lot, I'm not like "other" feminists! Suffice to say, she is not a pacifist, even if she is anti-particular wars. She sort of reads like a international relations (political science) "realist" feminist. Which is a strange communion of sorts. For her it seems, war is inevitable (realist view) and thus the military needs to be there and so no one should be a pacifist. I'm not sure that is her true intent, but that's how it reads. It comes off as though she's proclaiming to be a feminist, all while spending the book lambasting the popular feminism from the 60s and on. She also tends to be a bit judge-y; I note in particular her discussion of women who get pregnant to avoid combat. She recounts a story of a woman who was pregnant and thus leaving and she expressed sympathy for the servicewomen who then responded, "it's okay, I was tired of being deployed". The author then takes this to mean the woman deliberately got pregnant and states she turned away in disgust. Now, maybe that is exactly what that woman did. Or, maybe, it was an unplanned pregnancy, but the woman was okay with it because how many times soldiers were being deployed during the height of the Iraq War. She may not have asked for it, but may have been relieved. That, to me, is not the same. This ties in to my annoyance that the author discusses specific body fat percentage and how the military should change fitness testing...but fails to every suggest that the military provide emergency contraception or review the policy regarding overseas abortions.

So, generally a good book for its scope and data, but it isn't great because of the judgmentalness that flows through it, unlike (most) academic works.

[Deborah Coates · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot of good stuff in here. I found particularly interesting her thoughts on the mortality of women in childbirth compared to the mortality of men in combat in past generations. There's a bit too much 'author goes to Iraq, where guys are awesome to her and she herself is awesome as well' for me. Not what I was reading for.