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Women In The Military Research Paper

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WGS 350-S Dr. Dutt Final Research Paper Amelia Abe Women have always been involved in war efforts to support the military in some capacity, serving as nurses or working in factories to build machinery and more recently, as soldiers. Women have been serving specifically in the US military since 1775 and after the army became an all-volunteer force in 1972, began taking more active duty roles and serving as soldiers. The first female soldiers were deployed overseas in 1991, during Operation Desert Storm and Operation Desert Shield. Reading Solider Girls opened my eyes to the struggles that many women, especially those that are mothers, face while serving in the military. Reading the story of Desma, who experienced two deployments as a single mother to three children, one of whom ended up in jail, made me question the impacts of deployment on families and more specifically, children. Since the War on Terror is relatively recent, beginning in 2001 after the September 11th attacks on New York City, there has not been a significant amount of research done on the children who have grown up with parents being deployed. Using the research that has been done however, this paper seeks to explore the impacts of deployment on families, especially children. There are currently about 214,000 women serving as active duty military, with another about 118,000 women in the reserves and about 470,000 women in the National Guard. In 2015, women represented about 15% of the total US

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