Women In The Military

Women are without doubt an integral part of the military services. It took the determination of women throughout history to pave the way for the 400,000, women that serve today. From the early years of the military to the present conflict in Afghanistan, women have made continuous progress towards equality. It is through their contributions that the military has evolved, consistently opening more jobs to women in combat. Time has proven that war does not discriminate; a successful military uses the strengths of all members despite their gender.

Since then, American military women have been slowly creeping into more combat-like roles (“Two Opposing Views on Women Combat”). Women have been authorized to fly in combat missions and serve on combat ships. Furthermore, as of 2008, 16,000 women were serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Germany, Japan, and other related areas ("Timeline: Women in the U.S.

The military has always been a predominantly male environment. However, women have been active participants since the first major war, the American Revolution. Historically, women have served as nurses in many wars including Vietnam and both World Wars. As time progressed, females started to expand into different military occupation specialties. In the middle of the 1900s the first women pilots created the WASP. This stood for Women Air Force Service Pilots and their duty was to fly and deliver the planes from the factors to the military bases. During this same time fields like factory worker, national intelligence and security started to fill with female employment. Now women make up 15.7 percent of the

There are many examples that can be cited where women have served in combat roles. World War II in the Pacific. When the Philippines fell to the Japanese, lots of American Soldiers, Airmen, Marines and sailors were captured. Among those Prisoners of War, were also women. These women were Nurses, who were taking care of the wounded. There were treated just as bad as the men and many times even worse. Granted, there not serving on the front lines, but the front lines came to them, when places like Bataan had to surrender. Another example, is an interviews that was conducted by NPR reporter Alex Chadwick, with Army National Guard Specialist Abbie Pickett. The interview was about Specialist Pickett experience while she was in Iraq. She was part of an engineer unit. She was outside the camp on various occasions, just like her male counterparts. She was as much as a target as the male soldiers. She was driving a fuel truck between different camps. All it would take is for one rocket to hit her fuel truck and she would be wounded or killed. She was not in a defined combat military occupational specialty, but she was in combat. This female soldier was one of many thousands of female soldiers that served in various capacities in Iraq, from driving trucks of supplies, to being part of convoys, to pulling guard duty at the various camps through Iraq. There are many examples of women serving in

Women currently fill non-combat oriented roles in the military. These roles are those that are often aid oriented or “rear”, jobs that keep the servicemen and women behind the front lines, oriented MOSs. Each member of the military has a specific MOS, military occupational specialty, which defines their respective title. For example, the Marine Corps infantry positions all fall under 03xx MOSs. Everything non-infantry starts with something else such as 3531 for

Combat roles are grueling and nerve breaking, with a lot of commitment and endurance required. Masculinity is the most suited trait for anyone to fit adequately and perform effectively. Mostly, men fit well in these roles due to their masculinity. However, women too, can perform as equally as effective as men. The effectiveness and suitability of inclusion of women in major combat roles in the American Armed forces has faced heated debates, between people who believe that the combat roles are most suited for men, and those that term these people as sexists and argue that women aren’t as qualified and capable of fighting in war. In essence, women can be as effective as their male colleagues in these combat roles.

Women have long been in the military forces since World War 1, from aiding wounded soldiers as nurses to now given the chance to be in combat roles. With the growth in rights and equality in the civilian world so goes it for the military. There are several factors that contribute to this change , the growth in the number of women in the force and the growth in roles/organization that are available to women since World War 1. As time progressed women were giving few limited roles in the military. Starting with the World War 1 era women started growing in population due to new open fields starting of the Nurse Corps and later on as the time period changed new organizations starting to form, giving women new fields to volunteer in the military.

The relevant stratification would be defined as gender. Gender would allow for the researcher to split up males and females in order to determine which has a higher resiliency to combat operational stress. Another relevant stratification could potentially be defined as the combat operational stress exposure and levels of PTSD amongst the females. The subcategory would be the military occupational specialty served while deployed in comparison to the periodic health assessment (PHA) obtained before and after resiliency treatments were introduced. The

One study (Binkin & Bach) found that many NATO and several WARSAW PACT countries employed women in combat roles during World War II. Russia was reported as using military women on the front lines. In Israel, where they are actually conscripted, women have also experienced armed combat. (Binkin & Bach) found that in the first phase of Israel’s war of Liberation, one out of every five soldiers was female and they shared equality in both offensive and defensive battle situations. Holm found that some 7,500 military women served in S.E. Asia during the Vietnam War. She maintains that these women proved the modern American military woman is fully capable of functioning effectively in a military role in a combat environment, even under direct hostile fire.

The percentage of women working for the military today is very low. This percentage, 15% has been about the same since 2000 (Iskra). The total number of women

“Something struck my head and I was knocked unconscious. When I came to, there were two men holding me. At first, I thought that an object had fallen and hit me. I soon realized they were holding me down” (Mattocks, 2012). When we think about the Armed forces of the United States several terms come to mind, such as: guns, explotions, freedom, and men. Although men take up a higher percentage of the soldier population, women also highly partake on the role. However, there is a war within which is fought on a daily basis by women 18 or older in the armed forces. With the increased number of females in the military personnel more situations of sexual violence have risen. Firsthand, few cases were reported, but currently, reports sexual violence

Did you know that women were banned from serving in combat in 1994? It wasn’t until 2013 when the Secretary of Defense removed the military’s ban on women serving in combat. Leon Panetta said “anyone qualified should get a chance to fight on the front lines of war regardless of their sex.” But why were they banned in the first place? Gender should not be an issue in the military. The military should be happy to have the diversity because it gives them options since women do make up 14% of the military.

From the sixteen veteran women that reported to be sexually assaulted, while on active duty four reported to have reported the sexual assault to a superior officer. Two of the active military women out of the twelve that reported to have experienced some sort of sexual assault while on active duty, reported to have told a superior. Nineteen out of twenty-five veteran women reported to have known of a sexual assault against another military women occurring, while on active duty. Nine of the eighteen active member military women also reported to have known of sexual assaults that were occurring, while they were serving in the United States military. All of the military women that reported to have told a superior of them being sexually assaulted

Being a woman in the military is very challenging. They dont get assigned to hard missions and when they joined the military they are suspected to be a nurse or cook. They get looked down on by us men. They're not treated fairly when they are in the army or navy. We dont think they can face some of those challenges on the Battlefield. In the past few years, Women have developed.(Parsons,Anna)

Throughout our nation’s history, women have played an important role in the military. It has not been until recently however, that women have been able to fully