Women in Organizations: Case of Thailand’s Military Institutions

Abstract

For most of the woman rights activists, woman entering into military career is a crucial step forward sexual equality. Female soldier represents the symbolic of the more open opportunity for woman to do something that has always been considering as a male dominated job. However, for many feminist scholars, particularly Critical Feminist, woman soldier is just another disguise of gendered inequality in male dominated institutions. This documentary research, therefore, aims to explore the role of women in Thailand’s military institutions and examine the linkage between masculinized culture of the military and the struggling of women to reach their position in the Thai army. The findings suggest that there are particular institutional manner and cultivation approaches that reinforce gender differences by giving the specific distinctive training that favors the idea of gendered hierarchy and sexual inequality in the army. The result also reveals some discrimination issues where most of the time the servicewomen would only predominate in clerical, administrative, or supportive specialist and are rarely assigned to job specialties that require them to carry and use arms unless to defend themselves. As a recommendation, it is more useful to look over the female soldier's “obvious agency” of exercising a rational choice to pursue career in the military, and rather focus on how these women can truly be encouraged to exert their agency over the determination of achieving career advancement and overcome the mentioned obstacles by revising the process of “making a soldier” in the Thai military institutions.