About the seminar:

Women’s military service has dual meanings: on the one hand, it includes women in the institution of citizenship and enhances their feelings of belonging to the national collective. On the other hand, the women’s encounter with the state at such a formative time, becomes an initiation process into gendered citizenship, where the women learn their (marginal) place vis-à-vis the state.

The aim of my paper is to analyze women soldiers’ testimonies about their military service to the anti-occupation movement “Breaking the Silence”. The lecture will open with introducing three analytical concepts that help us understand better women’s encounters with the state: Multi-level contracts, Contrasting gendered experiences and Dis/acknowledging violence. The second part will employ these concepts to analyze the soldiers’ testimonies, and explore what they teach us about the link between women’s military service, women’s political voice, and gendered citizenship.

About the speaker:
Orna Sasson-Levy serves as the head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, as well as an associate professor at the Program of Gender Studies at Bar-Ilan University. Her main research focuses on the field of gender and militarism. Her most recent publication is Women Soldiers and Citizenship in Israel: Gendered Encounters with the State, with Edna Lomsky-Feder, (2018), Routledge.