What You Don' t Know About Women in the Military

Every month, Ilona Meagher, author of Moving A Nation to Care: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and America's Returning Troops, posts a collection of “combat clips”—essentially a stack of statistics reported in the mainstream media but buried by the daily barrage of news and chatter. The stats, collected at her blog, PTSD Combat: Winning the War Within, cover a lot of ground, from suicides to face transplants, but I wanted to pull out some numbers relating to women in the military:

W orldwide, women make up about 14 percent of U.S. active-duty forces - the largest percentage in the country's history. (Philadelphia Enquirer)

There are an estimated 6,500 homeless female veterans on any given night — about 5 percent of the total homeless veterans population. (Associated Press)

The nonprofit group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America says one-third of women were sexually harassed while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Philadelphia Enquirer)

(Thanks, War and Peace)

Source: PTSD Combat: Winning the War Within

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Comments

faultroy 12/30/2009 1:58:22 AM

"...The nonprofit group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America says one-third of women were sexually harassed while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Philadelphia Enquirer..."
Let's just keep in mind that just as in civilian life,
"sexual harassment" means "unwanted comment or unwanted sexual attention." In today's histrionic hypercharged politically correct atmosphere anyone at any time even hinting any interest in you as a member of the opposite sex is considered engaging in sexual harassment. As an exmarine--Vietnam Era--our female enlistees(called BAMS)would be pretty upset if you DIDN'T notice their sexuality. My how times have changed. Furthermore if one out of three were sexually harrassed, what does that say about the other two? Where they too ugly to be sexually harrassed? Or were they too professional in their demeanor to preclude sexual harassment? Now this would be a most interesting factoid.
Christine 12/29/2009 2:06:37 PM

That '14%' has been bandied about since I was in basic 20 years ago, and any female who's been in the military since knows its woefully out of date. A more accurate number would be around 20%.
Christine 12/29/2009 1:46:16 PM

That '14%' has been bandied about since I was in basic 20 years ago, and any female who's been in the military since knows its woefully out of date. A more accurate number would be around 20%.

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