Broadening Understandings of “Identity” Among Military Partners: A Multidisciplinary Reflection from the United Kingdom; A Research Note

Gribble, Rachael, Crowe-Urbaniak, Donna L., Cree, Alice, Senior, Emma and Huddlestone, Emma (2025) Broadening Understandings of “Identity” Among Military Partners: A Multidisciplinary Reflection from the United Kingdom; A Research Note. Armed Forces & Society. ISSN 0095-327X

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Abstract

As gendered organizations, militaries generate and perpetuate specific institutional and cultural expectations that construct and inform gendered identities. Neither fully military nor fully civilian, the (largely female) spouses and partners of military personnel occupy a liminal position that requires development of multifaceted, complex, and at times, contradictory identities. Despite well-established identity theory literature supporting myriad positionalities, research exploring military partner identities frequently remains confined to specific contexts, situations, and approaches. Based on reflections from our work with U.K. military partners, this conceptual article presents a summary of multidisciplinary discussions of our collective research relating to partner identity. Through this discussion, we highlight ways in which research, including our own, could (1) move beyond understanding partner identity within situational and contextual “silos,” (2) challenge the conceptualization of partner identities as static and fixed, and (3) acknowledge the visibility (and invisibility) of certain military partners across different military and social contexts. Specifically, to better acknowledge and recognize fluid, flexible, and intersecting identities, we call for research to embrace more interdisciplinary approaches and innovative methods and pursue greater commitment to reflecting the voices of a wider demographic of military partners who continue to be overlooked in present research.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Uncontrolled Keywords:	military partners,military spouses,intimate partners,identities,gender
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Sociology
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Gender and Its Intersections
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	16 Dec 2025 17:30
Last Modified:	18 Dec 2025 09:33
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/101440
DOI:	10.1177/0095327X251393469

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