"One of the Guys": Military Women, Paradoxical Individuality, and the Transformations of the Argentine Army

In this article, I examine institutional life in the Argentine Army today from the perspective of female soldiers, with particular emphasis on the opportunities for agency available to these women in the army and the possibilities of institutional change they unintentionally produce. I show how female soldiers have made possible the concept of a military subject open to values from different dimensions of their identities. The agency of these female soldiers does not contain any explicit intentionality to resist or subvert institutional norms and values associated with military masculinity; rather, this agency is to be found in the different kinds of individuality that female soldiers bring into view inside and outside the army. Through their practices, ideas, and conceptions of military activity, female soldiers pave the way for discussing a key dimension in the redefining of the relations among the armed forces, the state, and society at large in present-day Argentina: soldiers as citizens. In this way, the experiences of women in the Argentine Army mirror internal changes within the military institution, where they also chart the scope, ambiguity, and contradictions present in the ongoing democratization of Argentine society.