Herregud, skal troppen ha bare jenter? – en evaluering av Jegertroppen ved Forsvarets spesialkommando

In 2014, the Norwegian Special Operations Command (NORSOC) established a pilot project, a platoon dedicated for specifically selected female conscripts. The platoon was named Jegertroppen1 and brought international attention, including admiration and wonder. Why would NORSOC «segregate» women, and what results could come from such an approach? The purpose of this report is to answer these questions and assess whether the Jegertroppen is a good measure to recruit, select, educate and retain operational women in the Armed Forces.

Jegertroppen was implemented because of an operational need for women with military core competence to operations where the soldier’s gender matters. Additionally, there was a political motivation: The NORSOC was critical that no new methods had been tried out as the traditional integration of women had not resulted in more women joining the operational structure. By creating an arena where women would not have to compete with men, the Jegertroppen would give women access to the skills needed to support NORSOC operations.

Our analyzes show that:

• Jegertroppen has been a very good measure for recruiting women who would not otherwise have chosen the Armed Forces, partly because they did not think they would thrive in a maledominated environment. Thus, the NORSOC has also recruited women who express a far more positive attitude towards other women than we have seen previously. In previous studies, the women have taken the role as «one of the guys» and distanced themselves from other women, known as a queen bee response.
• The separate selection based on women's physical premises for education in Jegertroppen, and another selection based on men's physical premises for education in the Parachute Ranger Platoon, has created a sense of being «two A-teams».
• This type of gender separation can be a good educational method to introduce one gender to tasks where the opposite gender rules and has the defining power. This has given the women in Jegertroppen access to skills acquisition in military core tasks without being overrun by men. Correspondingly, the men in the Parachute Ranger Platoon have developed competence in traditional female tasks without being controlled by women.
• After the education, the women from Jegertroppen are far more motivated for further a career in the Armed Forces than we find in other units. However, it is uncertain whether the Armed Forces will succeed in retaining these skilled, development-oriented and partly elite-oriented women in general routine service.

In sum, we can conclude that Jegertroppen has been a very good measure to recruit, select and educate competent and operative women to the Armed Forces, but we do not know whether the Armed Forces will succeed in retaining them. Nevertheless, we recommend continuing Jegertroppen on a permanent basis as a «positive special treatment» for the purpose of equalizing gender roles.