speakers on with good reason. laura's project is when janie comes marching home. she has a new book out with the photos from that project. it was a photography and aural history project and i got to work with laura on editing some of the audio for the aural history interviews which she did which appeared in the virginia quarterly review which is here in charlottesville. laura browder teaches at virginia commonwealth university. she's the author of her best shot: women and guns in america and she's the author of ethnic characters. she's also working on a film based on one of the real life characters from that book. and it's going to be absolutely fascinating. our other speaker is karen dixon. she's the author of officer, nurse, woman, the army nurse corps in the vietnam war. she's a professor of history at bridge water college here in virginia and she's continuing to

explore this topic through time now working on a project about women who entertain soldiers throughout the last century. and we're going to ask cara to present first. we'll have time for both of our authors to present. they'll either read or talk for a little bit and then we'll have some time for your questions. and there will be some discussion and then, of course, after that there will be an opportunity to buy a book or two. and to get your books signed and to talk to them as well. and, laura, would you start? ..

>> so i'm interested in women's experiences but also policy. so when i thought about this book, long ago, and interested in the vietnam war and interest in women's history and realized the to go well together, you look at nurses. what i was interested in was all of the changes in the '50s and '60s, particularly for women's lives. at the birth of the women's liberation unit, the pill, more women working, more wives working, more mothers working. did all this shape the way the military used women in the vietnam war, if you have any influence on the way the military recruited women, used women and war?

because historically, one of the few options open to women which is quite different than today, was nursing in the military. by the '60s a lot of change in terms of women's relationship to the military. a lot had changed in terms of nursing, but there were still many people in the army in the 1960s who still believed nurses were to be the modern florence nightingale. she's supposed to be chased. she supposed to be self-sacrificing. she's supposed to be patriotic volunteering woman. but in the 1960s in the midst of all these changes, was that still true? was that what women and was that what men want a war now joined the nurse corps for the first time. so those were my questions. what i found was a lot of confliction. a whole lot of complexion about how to use women, how to use men, how to commemorate this work, all of that. and so the title of the book "officer, nurse, woman" comes from your group and add that brings all of that together.

it was a 1969 and, the picture of the book comes from that ad. it brings all of these issues together. how the army was changing, nursing was changing, and then also how gender was changing in the '60s. so in the book is a story about 5000 army nurses who served in the, but it's also the sort of these broader social changes that it's the story of the women's movement in the military. through unexpected changes in some cases, and it's a story about how conservative institutions deal with change. and to illustrate that i want to tell you to stories of the book. sort of bring together these issues. the first is about anna mae hays was the chief of the army corps during the vietnam war. at the height of the war. and on june 111970 the army promoted her to the rank of brigadier general. she became the first female general in the history of the united states military.

in terms of women's involvement in the military that had been something women want for quite some times. particularly since the end of 442 when women's groups made this an issue to push the army to open all ranks to women instead of limiting them to particular ranks. so in 1967 president johnson open all ranks to women, and three years later promoted general hayes to general. it was a profound event in terms of women's history in the military and one that shapes of women's involvement even today. it was also a profound event in terms of women's lives. because if you think about if the military can promote women to general y. get other professions open their doors? a profound event and many, many ways. but it's one the army had not yet processed or wasn't quite comfortable with. just yet. and so after promotion ceremony, at the pentagon, she came up for

promotion, general moreland and her stars on her shoulders and then i announced to the media that i hereby established a new protocol for congratulating lady generals. and instead of saluting her, he kissed her. and the media went wild. [laughter] >> understandably. newspapers went crazy with the story. one called it the heretofore unthinkable account of one general kissing another. [laughter] >> several talk to how the men in the crowd just loved it and thought it was completely fine. and even the press leading up to the set talk about what kinds of clothes she wore, where she stopped her heart, what size clothes she wore. which would not get printed today i don't believe. could you clean house, cookie cook? it was all traditional things to sort of balance this profound event. the second event is sort of a story of how the vietnam women's

memorial on the mall in d.c. came to be built. in the years after the war in the 1980s, a group of nurse veterans got together and start to raise money to build the memorial. the movement was spearheaded by an army nurse. for a decade these women raised money. they raised lots and lots of money. they lobbied congress, federal agencies and had to gain the approval of two separate presidents to have this memorial built. when the vietnam war women's war was built and dedicated in 1993, it was the first the more on the nation to women. that is also a profound event. it's not just entering women into sort of our discussions about the vietnam war, but it is a memorial to women, the first one on the mall. it is a profound event. but as diane learned in terms of her experiences in gaining support for the memorial, that came as the cost of casting

women's role in the war in a particular light. so in 1984, the women's foundation was lobbying congress to pass a law that would direct that the memorial be built. and that's generally have these memorials get built his congressional -- anyway. she went to the vfw in 1984 because it was crucial for the women to have the support of the major veterans organizations. so she went to the vfw, and she said she went to the convention and she said, you know, women served in all these way. we were in the army, we were in the army, we are in the navy. there were these many women doing these different things. we would really like your support for the memorial. and that if dubya took a vote and voted it down. they said if we give them a more to women everybody will want one. [laughter] >> so she backed away onto the program the next day and she said she would try a different approach. and that time she said one thing. she would prefer the crowd and

she said when i was in the not some man's son died in my arms. and i want his father and mother to know that i was there for him. and she left and they voted, and they voted to approve the memorial. what mattered was not what women have done, what barriers they have broken or how they had served. what mattered was that they held the nation's dying suns. and so all these stories of confliction -- there are stories in actual women's lives that illustrate these contradictions and these confliction is about what really means, and i hope you share some of those with you, but just in general this is a time of great confliction. it's a time of a lot of advances that also a lot of indications that were not quite comfortable with yet. so it's the army can go in some ways. we're going forward, we're going backward, we're still trying to figure all this out. but it really shaped the army, the nursing profession and also the women and men who were the

nurses. thank you. [applause] >> well, my project, i have to say, got tons and tons of support from the virginia foundation for the humanities, and without that support the book and the traveling exhibit associated with it would never have existed. so i just wanted to start by thanking the vfh for all of that wonderful support. this book, "when janey comes marching home," is a project that grew out of my previous book, "her best shot," which is a cultural history of women and guns in america. when i was working on the book i noticed there was a real thread running throughout american history from the revolutionary war onward of women and combat being controversial. in the 17 '70s, you have had politicians like jamesburg

saying the only thing that distinguishes a citizen from his late is the ability to bear arms in support of one's nation in time of war. and to legislators when the equal rights amendment was finally defeated it was largely because americans could not swallow the idea of women in combat. yet, even as politicians were using this issue as a way of denying women full rights of citizenship, there were plenty of pop-culture representations of female soldiers, whether in the early 19th century when you had sort of trashy novels, pulp fiction if you would, about women who ran away to war to join their lovers and were discovered when they became pregnant. all the way through cartoons about woody the wac in world war ii that depicted blacks as being sort of sex starved maniacs who join the military as a way to get close to soldier.

and, of course, by the '70s, '80s and '90s, you had images like g. gordon liddy's stacked calendar featuring buxom women in camel bikinis holding assault rifles. but these were clearly not real female soldiers. and as you all know there's been a ban on women in combat that exists to this day. however, we are now involved in two wars in which over 220,000 women have served in combat zones. and by way of a station of how dramatic that is, during the vietnam war there only what, 7500 women who served in the nursing corps. so this is a radical shift. in the first goal for the report 1000 women. so we've entered a whole new era and we've entered an era in which women are fighting and dying for their countries. there are now more than 100 women who have died in iraq and afghanistan and surrounding regions. so we are at a watershed moment.

this was brought up in the "new york times" who in 2006 when she wrote a big editorial piece about why the american public doesn't care that women are dying in war. because everyone had expected that there will be a big backlash against this. and there wasn't. so i got interested in this topic, and i set out to write an op-ed piece and i was working on it when i went to pick my daughter up from a friends house where she gone for a play date. they had been best friends since kindergarten. and saw she and i had always sort of tossed her the idea of collaborating on something. and i suggested why don't we do a magazine article about women serving in iraq and afghanistan. and he thought that was an interesting idea and i mentioned it to a curator friend, ashley actually, who's been carried at the visual arts center in richmond. and she said instead of an article, one that work on an

exhibit? i was really intrigued by the idea of an exhibit that would bring together oral history narratives and gold colored photographs of women who had served in wartime. and i love the idea of bringing peace activists and active duty military personnel in the same space to view these images and read these narratives that interestingly enough, when i first proposed this to the virginia foundation, people their loved the idea but they wanted me, before they gave me a grant, to sign a statement that this was not exclusively and antiwar project. interestingly enough, people in the military never thought of this as an antiwar project. and, in fact, one public affairs officer suggested that it could be a great recruiting tool. so i thought it would be really interesting to work on a project that had this kind of resonance from both sides.

so sasha and i set out to interview and photograph 52 women from all branches of the military service, to talk about their lives and their military careers. and boy, was i in for some surprise. i thought that i entered the project with a very few preconceptions, but as i found out, very early on i had lots and lots of preconceptions. the first one being that since these wars are so unpopular and since these combat zones are so dangerous, with all of the mortar attacks that go on, i thought that women would be reluctant to go to iraq and afghanistan. and the first interview that i had that disabuse me of this idea was a colonel in the marines, one of 50 female colonels in the marines who told me that serving as a public affairs officer or the second battle of falluja was the high point of her life, apart from birthing her two children and i

thought she's a public affairs officer. of course, she's going to say that. but then i heard this for more and more women, including lots of women who have volunteered to go. and who volunteered to go to repeated tours of duty. one chaplain in fact is home for only two weeks before she left again for iraq. and went on from there to do a third tour. so that surprise me that i realized that while i have been thinking of female soldiers and marines as the marginal, they in no way saw themselves as being marginal. they saw themselves as being soldiers first and women second. and is often extended into the way that the military became a place where they formed a bond that are closer than the ones they formed with their family members that they were women who are reluctant to return to home when the kids had surgery or there was another family crisis, because they felt they were

abandoning their unit. one woman i spoke to was a marine sergeant, who had been very reluctant to go to iraq and had been ducking out of deployment. she said because she had a one year old at home, and she said as soon as she got on the bus to go to cherry point and fly over there, the monumentality left me, the marine mentality it me, and i thought great, let's go. this is war. and she ended up extending her tour of duty because she really wanted to stay with her unit. and this unit cohesiveness overrode not only, but often the way that women felt about the mission that they were on. because i was interviewing active duty personnel, i couldn't ask them how they felt about the war. but many of them made it clear that they were antiwar. one of the most striking interviews i had was with a sailor who had left the military

and was in law school, and she was very antiwar and talked about going to lots of protests when she was out of uniform. and made her feelings perfectly clear. but at the time the exhibit opened in the fall of 2008, calling could not attend the opening because she was on a steamer headed to cyprus that she had gone to officer candidate school because she felt that she needed to support her fellow sailors, no matter how she felt about the war effort. so there were many surprises along the way. i think that these wars and women's involvement in them have really changed the way that we need to look at motherhood, the way we need to look at women in combat, and i think that we're going to come out of these wars with women having a broader role in the military. everyone in the military knows that women are in combat. many civilians don't, but they

are, in fact, using explosive sniffing dogs to find hidden ied's. they are doing house to house searches. the military has a program called the lioness program, which brings women into roles that men cannot take such as searching muslim women, because, of course, male soldiers cannot do that. so there are many, many ways in which women are serving and are in the line of danger. and i interviewed women who had had their hearing destroyed by mortar attacks. one woman i interviewed had had her leg blown up by an ied, and she had 18 surgeries to repair it. and she was considered deployment ready, even though she could no longer run or carry weight. she said, well, i'm sure they can find me a place to deploy where i won't have to do any of that. i'm not so sure about that, but

she was ready to deploy again, and she was dedicated to staying in the army and making that her career. the other surprise that i had, i will in with this, is like many people outside the military, i hope i'm not the only one who is so ignorant coming in, i thought of them as being somewhat monolithic. and, of course, it is one of the most diverse workplaces that you can find in the united states. and recent study by boston university sociologist actually found it within the army the people with the greatest job satisfaction are black women. and the people with the least job satisfaction are white men. and this sociologist hypothesized that this was perhaps because the military is one of the few that is a meritocracy where white skin and

being male will not necessarily give you an edge. and i think when you take that study and set it alongside the recent department of defense study that shows that rates of sexual abuse and sexual harassment are still very high in the military, a third of all women report being harassed or abused, i think you'd start to get the idea of how complicated the questions of women in the military are. so i will end with that, and would love to take your questions. [applause] >> we will have volunteers available with microphones there can because we are recording this for television broadcast, we want the questioners to speak into the microphone. we want you to raise your hand and i will acknowledge and a volunteer will bring you a microphone. i'm going to take a dish of my microphone here to get the first

couple of questions that i have one for each of you. and i'm going to go back to the vietnam era first, kara. because i think to some degree what laura is describing in terms of women being much more involved in combat than ever before has to do with the kind of the wars we're fighting now. by also think it probably has to do with cultural changes. and so the vietnam war happened in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s that this was a time when women's lives here were changing a great deal. can you talk a little bit about how the military had to adapt to accommodate those changes here? >> sure. when you think about -- when i think about nursing in the military, sort of the iconic world war ii, and in my mind i always remember this ad that was to recruit women and it has this white clad nurse leaning over a bed and a wounded soldier, and it says safety is life. it's a very romanticized, you

might kill the boy and then go home and marry him kind of approach. and in the early 1960s when the army surgery serve vietnam, that kind of image wasn't going to cut it in tyler. they tried a little bit of that, but they also needed to say if you become a nurse we will help you specialize. we will pay for your education. you can become an anesthetist, you can go for all the specialized training. and then in the next ad it would be a woman dancing with a physician and it would take have a grand time in the army. [laughter] >> so there are these two contrasts, and people have often asked data progress from this romanticized recruitment ad to the more specialized? but it doesn't that they are all mixed up. at the same time. and i think part of that is the army knows a lot of the women, and it was primarily women they were trying to recruit. 99 percent of the nurses in the country at the time were women, but 25 to 30 percent of the nurse were male.

they tried to recruit women. and they knew that women want different things that they're going to college in greater numbers than their mothers had. a lot of the nurses i interviewed said i had three options, i could be a teacher, a secretary or a nurse and i picked nursing. a lot of women said i wanted to go to med school, i couldn't afford it so i went to nursing. so they came at this traditionally feminine occupation, but a lot of women said i don't want to get married and start having babies like my friends are. or i don't want to live in my hometown anymore. i want to go see the world. so they joined the army for this kind of different reasons. these progressive reasons even as they're still doing what was considered a traditional women's job. but then once they get into the core a lot of women want to have marriages and they wanted to have children, and they didn't see that as an into their career, which it had been before. so in the '60s you see the

army adapting and relaxing its policies, that before had automatically kick you out if you got married that if you are a woman and you get married you were gone. once the even relax the marriage, if you got pregnant you were gone. you couldn't have children, you couldn't be a mother and a nurse. you couldn't have a career and a child. and they start to relax that. it takes some time. it goes pretty small baby steps at times, but it starts to change in that era because they know they can't continue with -- they are not recruiting the same women they had recruited in generations before. so you see really a lot of substantial changes that even after 73 with the all volunteer army, allow for the army to exist. you know, after 73 we would have an army if we didn't have the women. the pentagon said that. and those changes i think probably shaped in terms of motherhood policy and all those issues with women in iraq today. >> the director of the army's

women's museum once said to me the army has never changed its policies toward women because it wanted to, but only because it was forced to pick and i think we're seeing that today, just as in the non. >> laura, i wanted to ask you, since he did his research in doing the interviews we've seen a shift in focus from iraq and afghanistan. and i don't know what to what extent, as suspect you're still talking to your interviewees, we have heard these reports of women deploying and being used for intelligence, talking to afghan women and two villages who sort of note everything there is to know about the taliban and the insurgents. i'm just wondering have you talked to them about how that shift in focus and about how afghanistan might be changing things, to? >> i haven't talked to anyone to afghanistan recently, but struck by a recent front-page photo in

the "new york times" which showed a whole group of female marines and helmand province afghanistan, one of the most dangerous places to be, all sitting and eating lunch together. and as jesse says, women are absolutely crucial to the effort now in afghanistan because women in the villages know everything there is to know. and they will not talk to male marines. they will only talk to women. and so i think that we are going to see women even more in harm's way, even more involved in these new kinds of efforts as the war in afghanistan goes on. >> i think -- there's a question way in the back here, as the microphone will make its way over there. >> thank you for this really informative talk. a couple of the families, i'm

concerned about the other side of it, you know, that it's great that these women are able and willing to do this and have their families. i'm wondering if they spoke about or if you know about the research about what has been the impact of that on the other end of it on their families, and how that may differ from how it is for the men. i know there's been quite a bit of research about the really negative effects on relationships, and i'm wondering what you can tell us about that. >> you're absolutely right. the divorce rate in the military is much higher for women than it is for men. and i can immediately think of two stories, two women i interviewed who came back from the war and there has been said you've got to make a choice between me and the military. and they picked the military. they got divorced because of that. i think the kind of frequent deployments we've been saying have been incredibly tough on families. i interviewed one woman whose

baby was six months old, and still breast-feeding when she and her husband were deployed to the same platoon in iraq, which is not supposed to happen. and they came back less than a year later to find that their daughter did not recognize them. and cried when she was left alone with them, and it took them months of weekend visits before they could get her to come home. and it was absolutely devastating. so i don't want to paint a rosy picture and think it's an extreme a tough situation. but i think that every time we see one of those front-page photographs of a male marine coming home and having a happy reunion with his children, we have to remember that there are many women in the same position. and that once those initial hubs are over, times can get very, very tough. it's very interesting, i spoke wants to journalist joshua who

writes for the nation and does a lot of work on veterans issues. and he asked me, you know, did you talk to women about ptsd. and i said of course. and there were many, many women who would talk about their diagnoses of posttraumatic stress syndrome. but no mothers would. only childless women. i don't think that's because the mothers did not have ptsd. i think it's because they're such a societal taboo against being a bad mother, mother cannot take care of her children. >> we have a question right here. and i also put in a plug for a program with good reason. also did an interview and i don't remember the name. it was a former and maybe current reservist nurse who was in the air force, is in the air force and also a researcher and professor of nursing at george

mason university, who had done a pretty comprehensive study of this very question, looking specifically at mothers deployed and how that affected their family. and so if you go and search around for the i think it's a great interview. >> i'm sorry i got here late. i had good intentions of the year on time and i wanted to hear everything. also, i watched the show army wives, and i'm so anxious and waiting for season four to come out in november. -- april, so i can find out if one of the characters i really like, if she made it through who is a lieutenant colonel, if she made it through the ambush or not and she's okay. also, i read an article in good housekeeping conduct unbecoming, about women not getting the help they need during rape cases are women not getting good care in

va hospitals. did you have anything to interview on those things, situations? >> many, many women i spoke with talked about the high incidence of soldier on soldier right on their thoughts, forward operating bases. they also said that military is taking rape much more seriously than it used to. you know, there were really a variety of responses. one woman talked about a young female friend of hers who was being sexually harassed by a superior officer, and even though this officer was writing letters and touching her inappropriately and harassing other women, that complaint was dismissed. and this young woman was forced to apologize to her harasser. at the same time, there were many women who reported having very positive experiences. at this point it's still unit by

unit. and a woman's expense depends very much on the commanding officer. >> i found similar sort of different expenses in the vietnam era. you got a list of things to take with you to vietnam, and i met liz were to party dresses. and people were a bit confused about this. it turned out that what that meant what you were going to be required or suggested that you go to the highest officers parties. and put on a dress and go. a lot of women talked about feeling that they were being used for their sexuality in those cases. a lot of women complained about it. of the women said, you know what? when i got to vietnam i was one of few women in the whole country, few american women in the whole country and i really like that. and so there was this big difference in terms of how people perceived it in terms of sexual assault. i read, i only found one great case in the entire vietnam era

in the criminal investigation. and the way the army got was that was to bring the woman who had alleged she had been raped, essentially to our commanding officers office a long with a man she accused. of regular. and they were told to work it out. and when we say the army is doing with that much better today, they certainly are. the rates of sexual assault are really appalling. and i think if we can deal with what's causing that and the gender issues behind it that we would really get somewhere. but certainly even more reports are an improvement because we are even talking about it as opposed to just shoving it under the rug. >> that's right. i think as more and more women get into vices where they are generals, with our commanding officers, the culture is going to change. i think about when i started teaching at a university 15 years ago and it was extremely

common for male professors to use the classroom as a dating pool. and i don't think it's that common anymore. when you look at the military, which was a very heavily male culture, you know, i think the same kind of positive changes are going to take place as women move up the ranks. >> we have a question up front here. i should say we actually, we are well on schedule, so we will have time and i think for a fair amount of questions which is great. go ahead. >> i want to follow-up on the question before about families, but specifically children. because it occurred to me that as time goes on, will there be any studies of how the children are affected? if it's already been eight years, it's probably for the future, but i fear that the children of these mothers especially will be affected.

>> there's no question about it. i spoke with one mother of four who had three, year-long deployments to the gulf, and she talked about have one of her children was so stressed out that he ended up having to stay back a year in school. many, many mothers talked about how difficult it was for their children, and how difficult it was for them to reenter their children's lives. how awkward they felt that parent teacher conferences when they really didn't know what the teacher was talking about because they had been gone for a year or more. [inaudible] >> i think it absolutely will. and i think that the military is now implementing more programs in schools near bases to help deal with the trauma of separation, which is very real. >> we are hearing on our program about military programs, when people in families are about to deploy of doing family counseling, bringing the entire

family and and sync hear some of the things you're going to have difficulties with. so it seems like just even in the last three or four years they have been a lot more active or private about taking that up. why don't we have this question? >> thank you. don't ask, don't tell also applies to women. and i'm wondering if you, what you found out about woman to woman relationships, woman to man relationships? >> because of don't ask, don't tell i couldn't ask any direct question. [laughter] >> but women would sometimes bring their girlfriends to the interview were afterwards i would go out for a meal with a woman and her girlfriend. one woman i talked to, she and her girlfriend socialize with her commanding officer and his wife. so again, very much union by unit. the way this was dealt with. but i think, you know, don't ask, don't tell is on the verge

of falling apart because it has to. because the military can't afford to keep so many qualified gay soldiers and marines out of the service. it's untenable. >> we have a question right here. we will continue to work our way around the rule of general. >> is the motivation for women going into the military, did you find the reason that men go into the military other than nurses? >> i think there are a whole range of reasons. some women told me it sounds very much like kara's nurses, that they want to escape their small towns. they did want to live like the friends who are marrying young and having lots of babies. other women wanted adventure. they wanted to go to war. they really wanted to fight that i talked to one woman who was german who had actually emigrated to the united states because she was too old for the

german military, and she really wanted to fight a war. [inaudible] >> what would be their motivation? >> some of it was also economic. there were many women i talk to who came from real poverty. i mean, very serious poverty, and for them the military was a way out. i spoke with many, many women who had been team others. you know, and had children very, very young and they saw this as a career path. and it was a good career path. and, you know, in light of the current debates over health care, right, there were several women who had children with diseases or health conditions and they need good insurance. and that's why they joined the military. >> that just makes me think, what was the social economic background of the women who are joining as nurses in vietnam? >> it was pretty widespread as

well. economic factor was a big motivator for most young nurses. there was a split largely in the vietnam war of career nurses who had been in for quite sometime, and in the young nurses that were recruited straight out of nursing school, most of those have signed up through the army stent program which is essentially the rotc for nurses. most nurses has signed up for those educational benefits. so again it's a whole range of motivation. men who were nurses signed it because they knew if they were drafted the army might decide they make good infantrymen as opposed to good nurses. so the draft is essentially explained means motivation. men were obviously quite different. >> we have a question in the back. the far back and and we will work our way forward to your question. >> i have a question. if we were to bring back the draft, do you think the united states has changed its stance as such it would be like israel where they would draft both men

and women equally? and then i have a second. i live in a big navy area, and they just are now announcing that possibly women are going to serve on submarines, which is a big departure from anything the navy has done. abend on aircraft carriers, other vessels, but not on subs. comment about both of those. >> well, the draft question is a great one, and i'll have to answer with another great answer which is i don't know. it's very hard to say, but i do think that as women are able to enter more and more positions in the military, bit by bit the barriers are really coming down. and as far as submarines go, your question reminds me of a young soldier a national guard woman that i talked to who was a convoy gunner, and said that

when she and members of her little unit went out on convoys and they went to other fob. s people always want to separate them by sex where they slept. and they refuse. they said you know, we are a unit. we sleep together, we eat together, we worked together. and she reported that there really wasn't very much sexual tension, that they were more like brothers and sisters. and i heard that from many women as well. so i think on subs it should work out just fine. >> i don't have a good answer for the draft either, but what i have heard and i wish i hadn't or sufficient information is if the draft question were to open up again that there are all sorts of constitutional issues that would arise. the very constitutionality of requiring service of one sex and on another would probably not work. i know that i measure which congressman has proposed bringing back the draft a century to end of the war, as let's in the war through drafting women, move but

that hasn't worked either. i have a feeling if the draft were to come back, everybody would serve at. >> it would be sticky. >> we had a question right here. >> i was an infantry officer in vietnam, and i remember that era when women were not integrated in the army in the way they are now. they were there, but you had the women's army which for all administrative, clerical type jobs. and army nurses. and they were largely, in my experience, all female. i never saw a male nurse. and you had the women's army corps. everybody else was just guys. and it's interesting that you said the relationships now in the mixed units are sort of sisterly brotherly

because at least from the infantrymen's perspective you love an army nurse because you knew that they were there in your darkest hour. and it was a very -- your mail that was there with you was like your buddy, but this woman, if you never had an experience, if you are not likely to have the need of an army nurse, but especially if you needed one was much more felt as your sister. i mean, you would have bought bonded with both of them. you were protected, either one of them equally. and actually it was somewhat painful in later years to realize how much many army nurses of that era felt they

were not sufficiently respected, you know, had difficulty with memorial and that sort of thing. and anytime i have ever been to at the vietnam memorial and the nurses memorial off to one side, at any time where there is a large gathering of veterans, guys are all over those women, you know, patting them on the back and in helping them in their sense of oneness. i wouldn't want anybody to think that because women were in the army nurse corps during the vietnam era or of world war ii, that by the people at least who they were there to help, that they were decremented anyway, that they are

incredibly valuable people. and the question that i had about the current era, women in the service, is while you can have this idea is sort of sisterly or familial feeling, to what degree do they feel truly integrated in their unit at the time with regard to have their brother or sister look at them and depend on them, is that an equivalency, you know, do the women feel like that the guys are looking after them more than their sisters would? i mean, you know, is it an evenly shared responsibility? >> i think the women make

sure that it's evenly shared. won the rain a mastery every sergeant, i heard that sentiment at go by many women, when she left for the invasion of honduras she was the only female among 2200 marines. and she made a point of saying if you be in the bushes, i'm going to be in the bush. if you're going to go without a shower for a month, i'm going to go without a shower. and women today feel very strongly that they should not accept any kind of special protection from men if they want to be taken seriously as soldiers. and a very much want to be taken seriously. so i think that that kind of brother-sister relationship rose through the women's insistence that they not be given special consideration. the convoy gunner that i was talking about earlier, a young woman named page was involved in an ambush.

her unit was ambushed, and one of her best friend was killed. and her unit to many casualties, and she was the woman who kind of held it all together. you know, cleaned up the human remains, called in for reinforcements. and she said before that, you know, she was in the national guard and so there were people from all walks of life in her unit. and she said there was one older cop who have consistently made sexual remarks to her. she said after that moment it changed and everyone respected her, and they said we will follow you anywhere. so i think that women are proving themselves in combat, and that's also helping to change that dynamic. >> kara, in light of the comment about the appreciation of nurses in the non, it brings up a lot of complexity i think because anybody who has ever needed and benefited from a nurses care, man or woman, appreciates that care. that's part of what nurses

do. to help you feel better when you're not feeling well. i wonder if you want to comment about that because there's also the obvious gender issues that come up in that appreciation. >> there were several stores where women, female nurses not male nurses would talk about patients who would wake up and have been injured on the field, brought to the hospital wake up and say, did i die or are you my mother? [laughter] >> you smell nice, where am i, what happened? but they don't talk that way about their physician who was a male. and so the appreciation it's early there, a lot of these nurses talk about feeling very professionally valued for their nursing skills. that was a big contrast between military nursing and civilian nursing for them. in the military they felt that the physicians respected their opinion that the patient appreciated them. and in civilian nursing they felt very different about that. you come back on the war and be told you have to practice

getting an iv to an orange. they've done it 10,000 times in the last month. so that professional value was certainly a highlight of most nurses experience is in the war. and it's always in should with this, you know, you're a woman, you represent a big you are clearly different than other things around, particularly in a time where there were few wacs in the army at the time. and isolated in saigon or in particular places. and keynote nurses represent home to american soldiers. >> this is a great discussion. i think we have time for probably two, one '02 more questions. we have one right here and at that point we may wind down and to we have one over here to spend i wanted to ask kara. we know that many vietnam soldiers return to kind of a hostile attitude because of the nature of the war. how about the nurses?

do they have the same hostility they face or did they come home to a different kind of public? >> i don't think that they received the same sort of obvious association of the war with -- the war was associated with the soldiers that i don't think nurses got that same association that soldiers did. what i found was interesting in terms of how their memories were shaped was in the 1980s when a lot of them really started to talk about this, particularly with the building of the vietnam women's memorial, but their expenses were now couched in a more conservative era, posted feminism but in a more conservative climate. and so their expenses got shaved back with the memorial that this memorial needs to be women holding nine boys. it can't be a memorial to women, certainly not with weapons. survey not doing more progressive things. but we are back to the images a bit more

traditional. >> there was a question over here. >> should we make this the last question? this will be our last question smack i'm interested in pursuing something that you hinted about the women today. and that is that you are talking about somebody who she and her husband had both been deployed at the same time and they had a child that had to be taken care of in some fashion. so my question is what we're looking at is an organization like others years back that was really structured for the one way, the underlying assumption or processed that there be one wage earner, usually mayor a treadmill and the other one staying home and taking care of kids. what direction is the military taking, if any, to kind of restructure the way things operate? you hinted in one way that they're not supposed to deploy to paris at the same

time or something that are there other ways in which the military, the way from what you saw is changing the way it operates a bit, given the new reality that there could be to parents, both in the military, or the fact that there isn't somebody back home waiting. have you seen any indications of what they are thinking about or doing? >> well, i think in response to recent public scandals, having to do with women who have been deployed and found that their child does he was taken away from them, that they were considered unfit mothers, the military is now having to deal with that situation. yes, that's happened to a number of women. and again, it really points to how in some ways with, long way, but in others we really have not. and we're at a moment of real change in the military,

and i think five years, 10 years from now depending on how long the war goes on, things are going to look very different. and also have to remember that many of the women who are deployed joined the national guard or the reserves for college benefits. they did not necessarily think that they would ever be going to war, and then suddenly there they were deployed once or more than. and so the entire structure of the military is changing in response to these wars, which have gone on and on. >> have you seen anything in general suggesting that they will limit the number of these repetitive deployments, whether it is for men or women which i know i've been very difficult on all of those people and their families? >> well, as you know, the military is stretched very, very thin, almost to the breaking point now. and unfortunately, the military to continue to

function and keep these wars going has to keep the point people. and many soldiers have had their deploys extend once they're over there. the army deployed soldiers are up to 18 months. which is a really long time, and with stop loss, new, the rule that says even though you've thought you left the military you really didn't. many people who thought that they were retired are being called back into action. and so that changes things as well. >> well, i think we will move to the less formal part of the program in which we have our authors here, their books for sale. there are also these yellow or orange evaluation forms, and it would be really great if you filled of those out so we know how many were here and what you thought about this program. i just want to say on behalf of the virginia foundation for the humanities, thank

you so much for coming and participating. and let's thank our guests. [applause] >> great conversations. >> you're watching booktv's coverage of the virginia festival of the book in charlottesville, virginia. coming up next a panel on book reviews. "washington post" ron charles will be there. david montgomery of the chicago sun-times, he also writes for the daily beast and into freelance authors will also be participating in this panel. rebecca and catherine. that's next. >> we have here today this book reviewing challenges and changes. i believe is the name of the panel. and all of us here are members of the national book critics circle, which is a powerful secret of book reviews. and once a year every march we just did is a week and a half ago. we get together and decide

which books are going to be successful in america. [laughter] >> and we give them prizes. and most of us followed each other on twitter, and where we make nefarious plots like book reviewer bingo. so today we're going to have a luminous, incisive, i'm put down the bowl discussion. led by bethann kelly patrick who is the star of david jiyai's book room and she twitters. >> thank you so much. what a lovely introduction. the wpt eight books do can be found at the book studio.com. the reason i want to mention that is because what i do there is in a few write book reviews. that's what we are here to talk about today and i have got for fantastic book reviewing superstars. they will tell you that they have less or more, you know,

experienced book reviewing. but i know why we chose them. we have to my left ron charles who is the deputy editor at weekly fiction critic for the "washington post" book world. thank you so much for being here. to my right we have the lovely rebecca was the author. some of you heard her present this morning. she is also a critic, a science journalist who has published in many places include the "new york times" and oh the oprah magazine. and then we have katharine weber, who is an acclaimed novelist. she is a book reviewer with many, many clips in many, many places, including a stint of several years of publishers weekly wage as all of us here who have written reviews know is a very thankless task. and then finally we have david montgomery the author of thrillers too. is the thrill of mr. crapo at the daily beast or device for the chicago sun-times. he is an occasional ride a

affection who lives in virginia with his wife into daughter. i want to welcome you all and thank you. [applause] >> this panel is called the business of book reviewing and i would like to just open by saying what business? today someone on twitter said to me, actually it was yesterday, excuse me, how can i make my reviewing books? [laughter] >> to the laugh track that i wrote back and i'm sorry to tell you that you can make money but not a living. and so one of the changes that we have all seen is that we really cannot, as book reviewers per se, make a living. so what i want to do is ask each of you to give me a little pre-seed of your book reviewing experience, lack thereof, you know, busy writing a book, 11 years yada, yada, yada. so let's start with rebecca, please. >> i heard