This project began with a mix of academic interest and personal frustration. As I moved through my doctoral work, I kept returning to the disconnect between the Canadian Armed Forces’ public commitment to gender equity—especially the Chief of the Defence Staff’s goal to reach 25% women in the force—and the persistent culture that seems unwilling to question its deep-rooted masculinized norms. It’s one thing to increase numbers; it’s another to create space for femininity to be seen as legitimate, valuable, and necessary within the military.

My motivation for this work is grounded in feminist politics and lived experience. I’ve seen and heard how femininity—whether expressed through emotion, care, collaboration, or resistance—is often sidelined, dismissed, or coded as weakness in institutions built around hierarchy, control, and discipline. The military is an especially stark example. What does it mean for service women to be asked to assimilate into a culture that often erases or suppresses key parts of who they are? And how does that shape how they are represented, included, or excluded?

These questions pushed me to explore not just representation in terms of numbers, but representation in terms of meaning: what forms of gender expression are allowed to be visible, and which ones are pushed to the margins? Through this research, I’m hoping to challenge the idea that inclusion is simply about recruitment targets, and instead ask what it would take to reimagine military culture in ways that actually value the full spectrum of gendered experience.