In her book Her Cold War: Women in the U.S. Military 1945-1980 (University of North Carolina Press), history teacher Dr. Roth shines light on a part of U.S. history that is often overlooked by the public: women’s military involvement during the Cold War. “This book began with one question two decades ago in an undergraduate seminar, grew into an honors thesis with new questions, and those questions led me to my PhD ten years later,” Dr. Roth says in the acknowledgements of her book (Roth xiii). While the role of women in World War Two and in the military today are talked about, this is not true for the Cold War, and this became her dissertation topic. “So few women know the backstory of women’s military service. It’s a story that needs to be told, and understanding this history of women’s military service tells us a lot about the military as it’s evolved to today, and women’s roles in the military today,” Dr. Roth says.

By the time Dr. Roth started writing the book, it had been long in the works, as she had already gathered a significant amount of research for her dissertation, when she visited the National Archives in Maryland and photographed as many documents as she could. “I have a hard drive with thousands of files, and decades of material,” Dr. Roth says, and adds that she revisited the hard drive for her book. When it came to new research for her book, “it was mostly about finding new oral histories,” she adds, a process which involved interviewing over twenty women who served in the military, and finding new historical materials. This included resources on YouTube, such as military training videos from the 1970s.

After a five-year break following her dissertation, Dr. Roth decided it was time to begin writing her book in January 2016. When asked how she managed to write an entire book as a full-time teacher, she said that three times a week, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights after putting her son to bed, she spent an hour on the computer, and by the end of the school year she had three chapters devised. She worked on her book through winter break of the 2018-2019 school year, after which she entered her book manuscript into a manuscript contest run by the Society for Military History. 

“I won the competition, which opened the door for my project to be considered by the University of North Carolina Press” Dr. Roth explained. “I sent them the materials they requested, which included a book proposal and sample chapters. Then, they asked me to send the full manuscript, and that went out for peer review. This means that 2 different historians read my manuscript to see if it was high-enough quality to be published as a history book: did I have enough sources to support my argument? Did I draw on other historians’ works and situate my own work in relation to theirs?” After responding to the peer reviewers’ reports and a long conversation with her editor,  Dr. Roth’s work advanced to the next stage of the book writing process: her editor took the project to the publisher’s board, and “They agreed to offer me a contract.”

“I signed the contract in February 2020 and planned to have all my revisions done by the end of spring break,” Dr. Roth says. Unfortunately, when COVID hit her plans were shifted, and during the two months of quarantine she spent every evening and weekend reading and revising her manuscript in key places, until she finished in early June 2020. After a final review by the peer reviewers and her editor, in September 2020, the board of the University of North Carolina Press agreed to send the book to press, and the publication process began. That fall, she answered marketing questionnaires, provided other information, and waited. The following winter and spring, after receiving the copyedits, she had to review it carefully for any last typos and changes. “I also enlisted the help of several wonderful people to read parts of the book to help look for typos: Ms. Check, Dr. Hansen, Ms. Voss, and our former Mx. O’Brien all read individual chapters to help me catch any remaining typos,” she added.

Dr. Roth says that people hadn’t expected her to write a book–it would have been expected if she were a professor at a university, but not as a high school teacher. Moreover, she states that her experience teaching at MICDS contributed significantly to her ability to explain things in different ways, and in her making the book accessible to the public. She adds that grading student work allowed her to become more self-aware as a writer. 

Rather than compiling new research, there was a lot of trial and error in taking the present information and deciding how to restructure the story, and figure out how to reorganize it for the public, according to Dr. Roth. While it was initially going to have a chronological structure, it is now in three parts: top-down history of the construction of womanpower, the experiences of servicewomen and how they pushed back against limitations, and what it all meant for women’s rights and gender equality.

According to Dr. Roth, the military paved the way for gender equality long before second-wave feminism did. “The first chapter of my book focuses on the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act of 1948, which is what brought women into the military on a permanent basis after World War II. This legislation set up women’s military service on the basis of equal pay and benefits,” Dr. Roth says, pointing out that, although it provided women with many opportunities, the act was “totally divorced from feminism.” However, the Act led many women, who had initially joined the military as an opportunity to make money, to start fighting for change.  They discovered that military servicewomen were barred from certain roles and responsibilities due to restrictions based on innate gender differences and perceptions about what was socially acceptable for women. The 1960s saw a new definition of equality emerge “that left no room for assumptions about women’s capabilities,” and by the 1970s, “many servicewomen, civilian second-wave feminists, and members of Congress called on military leaders to remove gender-based service restrictions,” according to the book (Roth 2-3). The Cold War’s impact on women’s role in the military is a lasting one that has changed many women’s lives in the 20th century, and allows servicewomen today to participate in roles that had previously only been open to men. 

Aside from providing women with financial and educational opportunities, and later prompting social change, a significant thing women gained from participating in the military was global citizenship, according to Dr. Roth. Oftentimes, women joined the military not out of patriotic duty, but “to receive income and training and later go to college,” which was especially true during times that there was no war, Dr. Roth says; however, “consciously or not, members of the military are taking on an identity as a citizen.” Being in the military embodies what it means to be a citizen; it forces one to confront their identity as a citizen, she adds.

Dr. Roth shares a parallel between the history of Mary Institute and the history of women in the military, that “in both cases, the organizations sought to provide opportunities for young women so that they could have better lives; both created spaces in which women became empowered in different ways to better their lives.” When asked about something she wants MICDS students to take away from her book, she says, “So many of these women ended up fighting for change despite never thinking of themselves as activists…Even if you don’t think of yourself as part of something bigger, your presence matters and will contribute somewhere, so you should always speak up for yourself.”