Kronsell Case Study

Annica Kronsell's "Methods for Studying Silences: Gender Analysis In Institutions

of Hegemonic Masculinity" focuses on studying the "silent” oppression which

helps her to problematize masculinity and highlight instances of male hegemony

that may not be explicitly promoted. Kronsell's case study centers upon the

Swedish Armed Forces, in which she first looks to the "universal conscription"

(2006, p.113). Kronsell comments that the so-called "information problem," in

which the male proportion of the draft dropped, was never a problem when the

female proportion was not presented. She concludes that this reinforces male

hegemony - that men are therefore given a superior status to women as the

appropriate defenders of the nation and the only citizens capable of being

entrusted with knowledge concerning security and defense matters (p.113,

p.115). A second issue Kronsell highlights, is the use of language that maintains

"masculinities and the hegemony of men" (p.110) in the Swedish Armed Forces.

For example, military documents used terms like "officer" or "conscript without

explicit gender associations, but it was known socially that those roles belonged

to men exclusively (p.113). Other documents also never mentioned women,

which indicates that only men were considered "real" citizens (p.115). Another

group excluded fro the army is the "male" LGBT community (p.116).. Overall,

Kronsell found that women’s presence had a positive influence on the Armed

Forces. Among them, in line with Kronsell’s concern about silences, there was a

"shaping up" of language (p. 120): e.g., sexualized language was reduced as

pornographic images were taken down from bunks (p.120).

Kronsell, A. (2006) Methods for Studying Silences: Gender analysis in institutions

of hegemonic masculinity” In B. Ackerly, M. Stern and J. True (Eds.) Feminist

Methodologies for International Relations (pp. 108-128). Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Maria, Kortney, Ienna