Despite the greater inclusion of women, the change is minimal. Most notably, the representation
of women amongst generals has shown the greatest increase, yet the number of female generals
is disproportional to women in the military in general; that is, while 13-15% of personnel on
active duty and all officers are women, female generals make up less than 5% of all generals.
What I hope to illustrate with these figures is that although there is a greater percentage of
women in the military and in higher ranks, it is unlikely that the change is significant enough to
change military culture or collectively exert enough influence on policy regarding military
prostitution. For both a bureaucratic politics and organizational culture explanation to be
sufficient we would expect these changes to be more significant. This is not to discount the role
of women in the military to changing attitudes, however, the preliminary indication we might
take from Table 1 is that there is more to the story pressures from within the military.
On the other hand, sociological-institutionalism when looking at women’s agency seems
to provide the most explanatory power to women, who can act as outsiders to the organization
yet still engage in the connection between gender and international security/politics. As such the
causal mechanisms of this perspective can be defined as the strength/influence of women’s
organizations.
Preliminary research would suggest that women’s organization have addressed the
military’s role in violence against women. Some of these organizations include the East Asia-
U.S. Women’s Network Against U.S. Militarism, National Campaign to Eradicate Crime by U.S.
Troops in Korea, Du Rae Bang, Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence, the Coalition
Against Trafficking in Women, and more. It is, however, not enough to only note that these
organizations exist; for this reason, empirical evaluation such organizations’ activities vis-à-vis
the military are necessary to draw conclusions.
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Convention