Hegemonic Masculinity In The Military

Connell states that hegemonic masculinity is likely to be established only if there is some correspondence between cultural ideal and institutional power. Using this definition the military men can legitimately make a claim to hegemonic masculinity. As service members they are agents of the state domination, legally vested with the right to use lethal force in order to maintain domination. Similarly, in the case of the Indian army, it may be interesting to see how the army personnel not only represent the ideal masculinity but also use their institutional power in order to establish their masculinity as hegemonic.
However, before going further it is also important to understand the distinction between external and internal hegemonic

For instance, during the Kargil war, the Indian Army imported advanced weaponry such as Grenade Launchers, satellite surveillance, battlefield radars, mine proof vehicles, unmanned Aerial vehicles, frequency hoppers for the combat operations that do not require much physical competence. Discouraging women from performing combat roles on different pretexts clearly shows that the army and other state militarized forces want the space of combat remain masculine and deter any signs of femininity to encroach upon this space. This is true of most of the state armies across the world where it is a standard practice to keep the women out of the combat

In doing so, they can manage to make ‘femininity’ appear natural and not the product of human decisions. If they can achieve this then the entire patriarchal order is likely to take on the status of ‘natural’ and thus not open to being challenged in a fundamental way. Further, by introducing more women in spaces thus far exclusively reserved for men, it becomes difficult to sustain the naturalness of the dichotomy between masculinity and femininity, which becomes a major threat to the hegemonic masculinity. So, these institutions profess ‘natural’ justifications to keep out the