Career Choices and Gender: Female Cadets at the Hellenic Military Academy
Career Choices and Gender: Female Cadets at the Hellenic Military Academy

Summary/Abstract: The following essay discusses the findings of a small, unofficial survey concerning career choices and gender. Conducted at the Hellenic Military Academy in 2010, it explores the main reasons that account for the increasing popularity of the Academies of the Armed Forces among high-school graduates in Greece, and focuses on the particular decisions that female cadets make within the Academy, as well as on the treatment the latter receive from colleagues and instructors alike. Since military institutions are commonly ignored in debates about tertiary education, student recruitment, and gender theorization, the aim of this study was to expand existing research, and illuminate the links between “mainstream” education and a discipline that is often approached with suspicion or awkwardness. Examining parameters like academic performance, adaptability to the requirements of tertiary education, personal motivation, economic circumstances, and the dynamics of gender, the essay ultimately suggests that the Hellenic Armed Forces recruit particularly gifted and motivated women, and that the success of the latter within military institutions is tied up with the resistance to gender stereotypes and biased educational practices that have developed in the military.

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