Gender in the Venezuelan military organization

Abstract

In Venezuela, the Armed Forces have opened its doors to women since 1978, to train them as effective officers in the specialty that today they call "command." These since their entry have generated changes more in form than in substance, a lot of distrust and also a lot of expectations, which warrants another look at a possible new notion of gender, management and command. The purpose of this work, the product of a doctoral thesis, seeks to interpret the meanings of gender, management and command, as guiding elements of action of military practices in the context of the Venezuelan Navy. This research was supported by phenomenology for the construction, understanding and configuration of experiences and experiences of the actors who are constituted as female officers graduated from the Venezuelan Naval Academy between 1983 and 1989 and male officers graduated between 1982 and 1989, who received in-depth and semi-structured interviews, respectively. Among the findings, it stands out that the woman, although she has made progress in this organization in apparent social equity, becomes opaque as a human being subjected to the power of man, and becomes visible and invisible at the same time; It also reveals the primacy of the man in command positions represented by characteristics attributed as masculine, disdaining the woman trained in the institution, to positions considered of less relevance such as management because it represents relationship, the feminine. In this way, the command is the instrumentalization of the so-called military management.