Women in the Barracks: The VMI Case and Equal Rights 1st Edition

by Philippa Strum (Author)

2 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0700613366

ISBN-10: 0700613366

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In June 2001, there was a decidedly new look to the graduating class at Virginia Military Institute. For the first time ever, the line of graduates who received their degrees at the "West Point of the South" included women who had spent four years at VMI.

For 150 years, VMI had operated as a revered, state-funded institution—an amalgam of Southern history, military tradition, and male bonding rituals—and throughout that long history, no one had ever questioned the fact that only males were admitted. Then in 1989 a female applicant complained of discrimination to the Justice Department, which brought suit the following year to integrate women into VMI.

In a book that poses serious questions about equal rights in America, Philippa Strum traces the origins of this landmark case back to VMI's founding, its evolution over fifteen decades, and through competing notions about women's proper place. Unlike most works on women in military institutions, this one also provides a complete legal history—from the initial complaint to final resolution in United States v. Virginia—and shows how the Supreme Court's ruling against VMI reflected changing societal ideas about gender roles.

At the heart of the VMI case was the "rat line": a ritualized form of hazing geared toward instilling male solidarity. VMI claimed that its system of toughening individuals for leadership was even more stringent than military service and that the system would be destroyed if the Institute were forced to accommodate women.

Strum interviewed lawyers from Justice and VMI, heads of concerned women's groups, and VMI administrators, faculty, and cadets to reconstruct the arguments in this important case. She was granted interviews with both Justice Ginsburg, author of the majority opinion, and Justice Scalia, the lone dissenter on the bench, and meticulously analyzes both viewpoints. She shows how Ginsburg's opinion not only articulated a new constitutional standard for institutions accused of gender discrimination but also represented the culmination of gender equality litigation in the twentieth century.

Women in the Barracks is a case study that combines both legal and cultural history, reviewing the long history of male elitism in the military as it explores how new ideas about gender equality have developed in the United States. It is an engrossing story of change versus tradition, clear and accessible for general readers yet highly instructive and valuable for students and scholars. Now as questions continue to loom concerning the role of state funding for single-sex education, Strum's book squarely addresses competing notions of women's place and capabilities in American society.

Women in the Barracks: The VMI Case and Equal Rights

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Product Details

Series: Cultureamerica
Paperback: 428 pages
Publisher: University Press of Kansas; 1 edition (April 24, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0700613366
ISBN-13: 978-0700613366
Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.9 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #574,537 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #54 in Books > Law > Legal Theory & Systems > Gender & the Law
- #381 in Books > Textbooks > Law > Constitutional Law
- #675 in Books > Law > Legal History

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Arguing past each other

By Andrew S. Rogers VINE VOICE on July 29, 2002

Format: Hardcover

Philippa Strum's sympathies clearly lie with those who argued for admitting women to the Virginia Military Institute. However, they haven't prevented her from giving us a comprehensive and fairly balanced look at the VMI case from start to ... if not finish, at least to the graduation of the first women to begin the school in the rat line.
One area where Strum's analysis is particularly strong is in tracing the history of anti-discrimination and equal rights law in the United States. She shows the jurisprudential evolution of the idea that, rather than women requiring special protection, all people are entitled to the rights and benefits of equal citizenship, regardless of sex. Indeed, following the trend of relevant Supreme Court cases as the author lays it out for us, it's hard to see how VMI's defenders could have believed the Court would ever do anything *but* order the publicly-funded military academy to admit women on an equal basis.
But believe it they did, and Strum shows how the two sides in the case were arguing fundamentally different points: VMI, that tax-funded single-sex education served a public good, and the Justice Department that, whether single-sex education is good or not, public funding of it (VMI being a government school) is unacceptable under the 14th Amendment. Neither side seemed fully to understand the other, and Strum does a thorough job of showing how the two sides in many ways failed to confront one another's arguments head-on.
Strum frames VMI as a defender of outmoded stereotypes and anachronistic ways of thinking (notably the 'women-as-lady' myth, as she calls it).Read more ›

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Eye-Opening

By LillyDale on August 12, 2012

Format: Hardcover

As a girl, I very much wanted to attend VMI to study history, but was told that women were not accepted. Period. There was no understanding, no appeal, only horrified faces from parents, teachers, local politicians, and worst of all, other girls my age.

Thirty-five years later, this book revealed the whys. The patrician Virginia old-boy network thought that its grip on societal mores would last forever. I am happy to report that it has not. Through no fault of my own I was raised there, and having left thirty years ago, I have no plan to return. This book helped me come to terms with my feelings about my adolescence and the differences between educational choices for women today and the non-choices offered to women in the past.

Even better, I passed this book along to my father, who really sank his teeth into it, and challenged himself to look at his daughter's dreams and the goals of all women differently. When he finished it, I shipped it to my brother, a veteran of the U. S. Army. He loved it, too, from a historical standpoint and as raising awareness of gender bias. It resides now in his military history book collection, and I am happy that it will be there when his two sons are old enough to discover it.

This book needed to be written, but the best news is how well-written it is. It covers all aspects - legal, emotional, academic and societal. It is not to be missed.