On 23 May 2012, Command Sergeant Jane Baldwin and I sued the Department of Defense over a policy that excluded U.S. servicewomen from accessing over 250,000 positions that were coded as direct ground combat positions. Six months later five more servicewomen filed a companion law suit. Eight months after we filed the first lawsuit and as we were preparing for our first day in court the Secretary of Defense rescinded the exclusionary policy and directed the services to remove all barriers to women’s full inclusion.
Why did we, 7 U.S. servicewomen who had never previously met, come together and take the extreme step of suing the institution that we had voluntarily joined and had served in for many years? What does this case reveal about organizational dissent? Furthermore, as the military moves forward with full integration how will the Department of Defense and its subordinate organizations accommodate this change? Academic literature sheds light on what may have motivated us to engage in dissent and the likely sources of organizational and inter-group resistance to the impending integration of women into historically all-male ground combat units. However, much of the existing literature is relies on traditional theories of security and power. Current literature posits that people dissent for economic, political or ideological reasons or because they feel disenfranchised but these categories fail to examine other, more important human motivations and resulting behaviors. This overgeneralization results in a less than optimal understanding of why and what motivates people to take action and how to respond to dissent.
The aim of this case study is to parse out the exact reasons that women in the military fought for the right to fight in ground combat units. Women in the military did not dissent for political, economic or ideological reasons and although we did feel disenfranchised what does that mean in a practical sense? We didn’t seek power or money. We didn’t disagree with the military’s foundational principals. Our motivations were, at the most basic level, fueled by needs for inclusion, respect and recognition and we risked our security to engage in this dissent. If our dissent was, in fact, motivated by needs for inclusion, respect and recognition what does this case tell us about current conflict theories and organizational change models?
This case study will test explanations that have been advanced for why individuals and groups, in this case servicewomen, dissented and challenged existing norms and policies. Two theories will be analyzed; identity theory and recognition theory. It is quite possible other explanations will emerge from the data. If the hypothesis of this study proves true, then the case has implications for other theoretical approaches such as organizational change theory and its corresponding techniques and methods.