GROUND ZERO

Francke (Growing Up Divorced, 1983, etc.) offers a timely, detailed study of ``the cultural and biological forces within the military culture that divide the sexes, dictate women's harassment, and demean their achievements.'' It focuses on events in the early 1990s, in the period following Desert Storm, and more particularly on the often bitter struggle to open combat positions to women. In angry, persuasive detail Francke traces the extraordinary problems women face in the military (from special forms of harassment to violence), dissects the often spurious arguments used by those fighting against allowing women in combat, and captures the often extraordinary struggles of particular women determined to make a career out of the military, despite both overt and covert opposition. Filled with specifics on policy debates in Congress and in the military, and with exhaustive records of such matters as the variety of experiences of women serving in the Gulf War forces, Francke's work is a clear, forceful introduction to an important and little understood form of gender conflict. Clear, fascinating, and useful.