Her Cold War is a historical analysis of structural changes in U.S. military gender laws after World War II. These changes began the process of integrating women into the services. The author, Tanya Roth, does a remarkable job contrasting U.S. gender norms during the war with those of subsequent years. She asserts that female military personnel during the war were satisfied with just being allowed to serve, albeit only temporarily. Equality during that period was based on the assumption that women and men are biologically different. This assumption had the consequence of shaping restrictions on women's participation in the military. Women were recruited to serve as non-combatants in support positions, whereas men served as combatants and went to war. Therefore, gender inequality in the armed services went largely unchallenged during World War II.
For Roth, change began after the war with the Women's Armed Services Integration Act of 1948, which...