Conscription and sexism

Conscription, sometimes called "the draft", is the compulsory enlistment of people in a national service, most often a military service. Men have been subjected to military drafts in most cases. Currently only two countries conscript women and men on the same formal conditions: Norway and Sweden.^[1]

Opponents of discrimination against men,^{[2][3]: 102 [who?]} including some feminists,^{[4][5][6][7][8]} have criticized military conscription, or compulsory military service, as sexist. They regard it as discriminatory to compel men, but not women, into military service. They say conscription of men normalizes male violence, conscripts are indoctrinated into sexism and violence against men, and military training socializes conscripts into patriarchal gender roles.^[9][10]

While not all feminists are anti-militarists, opposition to war and militarism has been a strong current within the women's movement. Prominent suffragists like Quaker Alice Paul, and Barbara Deming, a feminist activist and thinker of the 1960s and 1970s, were ardent pacifists. Moreover, feminist critique has often regarded the military as a "hierarchical, male-dominated institution promoting destructive forms of power."^[11] Feminists have been organizers and participants in resistance to female conscription.^{[12][13][14][15]}