Abstract
Children or War? A Military Anthropological Investigation of Becoming Pregnant and Becoming a Mother as an Officer in the Danish Army
In 2011 the Danish Armed Forces launched a diversity policy that identified the retention of female officers as a focus area. With a starting point in seven semi-structured interviews with Danish female army officers, this project identified the balancing of work and family life as an officer and a mother, as one of the major issues that may lead female officers to leave the army. Through an investigation of the experience of being pregnant and becoming a mother in the daily work of a Danish female army officer, this project shows that the female officers are torn between being a ‘good mother’ and a ‘good officer’ as they have to prioritize between the competing demands of the family and the army. This is a challenge to both fathers and mothers, but more so for mothers due to how women feel a greater requirement to prove themselves in the workplace as well as feel more responsible for family cohesion.
This project suggests the following initiatives that may help retain female officers: 1) The closest commanding officer should in collaboration with the pregnant soldier make an individual assessment of which tasks this employee may perform, based on a general pregnancy policy of the workplace. 2) Officers should be offered to participate in parent networks 3) Officers should not be expected to work excessive amounts of extra hours in positions that promote the career 4) Shorter deployments for the parent should be considered, in cases where this does not compromise efficiency 5) Parents of children below three years should not get ordered to get deployed.