women in the military

Sexual Harassment in the Military: It’s Getting Worse for Women

by

The American military has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the last ten years in sexual harassment prevention and education, but the problem is getting worse for women. Dave Philipps of the New York Times reports several alarming statistics:

  • Sexual assaults in the military have increased by 50 percent in the last two years against women in uniform.
  • The Department of Defense’s Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military estimates 20,500 instances of “unwanted sexual contact” in 2018, based on a survey of women and men across all branches of the military.
  • Assaults on men remained flat while assaults on women recorded the biggest increase in years.
  • Women make up 20 percent of the military but are the targets of 63 percent of the assaults.
  • Active military personnel are experiencing more assaults, but despite significant increases in the availability of sexual assault specialists and victim advocates, they are less likely than before to report the assaults.
  • Philipps notes that a separate report in January 2019 showed that the number of sexual assaults at the service academies has also risen by 50 percent for women since 2016, showing that the problem is just as rampant among the military’s future leaders as for the current ones.

Representative Jackie Speier and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand are each leading two different concerted efforts to pass legislation that would create an independent prosecutor for sexual harassment cases in the military, but the military has lobbied against this legislation. Under the current system, only military commanders have the authority to determine whether an assault has occurred and to impose punishment. The commanders do not want to relinquish any of their authority. Even Senator Martha McSally, who came forward last year to reveal that she had been raped by a superior officer and suffered numerous other sexual assaults, opposes shifting authority over assault cases away from commanding officers. McSally even admits that she never reported her assaults for fear of retaliation.

The current system is not working. While the survey found that more assaults are occurring, fewer are being reported: fewer than 30 percent were reported in 2018, down from 32 percent in 2016. Philipps notes, “A large majority of victims do not trust the system” to handle the cases well or protect them from retaliation. Structural change is needed.

Please encourage your congressional representatives to support legislation that protects women in the military.

 

Photo by Jeffrey F Lin on Unsplash

Women in the Military: Signs of Change

by

I remember when, in 1995, Shannon Faulkner was escorted by federal marshals onto the campus of the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, as the first woman to be admitted to this southern military college. Richard Fausset of the New York Times reminds us that Faulkner fought a two-and-a-half year legal battle to gain admission. Now, twenty-three years later, Sarah Zorn, a twenty-one-year-old college junior, has been selected by a panel of staff members and students to become “the Citadel’s first female regimental commander—the top cadet.” Fausset writes that change came slowly at the Citadel, and administrators now admit that for the first ten years or so after the courts forced the institution to admit women, resistance to change remained deeply ingrained and only slowly diminished. Institutional policies and practices were eventually revamped for the better:

  • Women are welcome and, in many cases, thriving on campus.
  • Ten percent of the graduating class this year were women.
  • Female cadets, on average, maintain a higher grade point average and are more likely to graduate than men; 75 percent of women graduate.
  • Sexist comments directed at women are unusual from male cadets and the women generally feel respected by their male colleagues.
  • The continued evolution of the Citadel culture found uniformed cadets marching for the first time in the Charleston Pride parade.
Let’s stop a moment and breathe in this good news. Change is possible, but it takes clarity and commitment on an institutional level to make it real and lasting.   Photo courtesy by James Willamor (CC BY-SA 2.0)]]>

The First Women Graduates of Army Infantry Training

by

The Army is not making a fuss about it, but this is one of those moments in history that is a big deal: the first eighteen women, out of forty-four accepted for Army infantry training, recently completed the grueling boot camp and graduated. These are the first women to complete infantry training in two hundred years. Dave Philipps of the New York Times writes that the Army is not making a fuss because it has taken great pains to develop “gender-neutral performance standards to ensure that recruits entering the infantry were all treated the same.” Philipps explains that in 2013, the Obama administration ordered the military to open all combat positions to women. Prior to 2015, the Army did not allow women in combat positions. Nonetheless, during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, women who were not technically in combat roles were forced into firefights while serving in support roles. The Army was able to witness how well women performed in combat with nearly 14,000 women awarded the Combat Action Badge for engaging with the enemy. Because these women were not formally in combat roles, though, they did not receive combat pay, and, Philipps explains, they were “barred from the core combat positions that are the clearest career routes to senior leadership.” Obama opened these opportunities to women, and in 2016 the first class of women entered the Army infantry training program, despite warnings that

  • Women would never be able to handle the demands of the infantry.
  • The presence of women would destroy its all-male esprit de corps.
These naysayers were wrong. In boot camp, women and men trained together in mixed-gender squads from before dawn to after dark. Some of the original forty-four women who entered the training dropped out, as did some of the men. The standards were the same, and no special treatment was given to anyone. These women worked hard to forge this new pathway for women, and they deserve to be acknowledged for their accomplishment.   Photo by The US Army, CC BY 2.0  ]]>

Women in the Military: Cracking the “Brass Ceiling”—Winning a Battle, but Not the War

by

The announcement by the Obama administration at the end of 2015 that all combat roles in the military will be open to women is indeed a victory for women. This opens 220,000 jobs previously closed to women. While I wish we lived in a world without war where we did not need a military, that is not the world we are in, and I am happy that the women who want combat roles and military careers are now able to have access to them. Women in the military have long felt that the official restrictions on them having combat roles were unfair. While they have been allowed to serve in combat zones, until now they were not allowed to officially hold the combat positions required for career advancement. This change is part of a long march to inclusion by the military, starting in 1948 with racial integration and continuing in 2011 with lifting the ban on gays in the military. Why do I say that this change wins a battle but not the war? Mariette Kalinowski, a former Marine, writes in the New York Times that while the “brass ceiling” is cracked, it is not gone because the military culture of hypermasculinity has not yet changed. She notes that the system is still stacked against women because of attitudes and beliefs by the older male leaders in charge. Dave Philipps of the New York Times cites Lt. Col. Kate Germano who agrees that the Marines, who are still 93 percent male, in particular “have a climate of non-inclusivity and justify it by talking about combat effectiveness, but a lot of it is based on emotion and not fact.” Elliot Ackerman further supports this position by noting that “the focus by the Marine Corps on physical fitness avoids the real barrier to integration—the hypermasculine culture at its heart.”

What Are the Benefits of Integrating Women in the Military?

  • Dave Philipps points out that not only did a recent Marine Corps study find that there is no detriment to the morale in mixed-gender combat groups, but gender-integrated groups excelled at complex decision making.
  • Philipps also reports the same study found that while women scored lower on many physical tasks, they scored higher on mental resilience and had fewer mental health problems.
  • Kalinowski suggests that a benefit of gender integration in the military, which must include a change in the culture, could be a reduced risk of sexual harassment and assault. She posits that because discrimination and rape are tools of dominance and control, removing the source of the control by changing from a hypermasculine to a gender-inclusive culture will cause the source of the motivation to keep the status quo in place to disappear. In addition, she suggests this change could result in a lower incidence of sexual violence in the larger society.
Kalinsky notes, “We’re up against a quiet, strong prejudice that has everything to do with our biological ability to create life, and nothing to do with our willingness and ability as soldiers.” The decision by the Pentagon to open all combat roles to women is an important next step, but this war is not yet won. Let’s keep looking for ways to support women in the military.   “FET: Female Marines Build Relationships in Helmand” by DVIDSHUB is licensed under CC BY 2.0]]>