Lieutenant Colleen Farrell in formation with her fellow Marines in Afghanistan's Helmand province
Do women in uniform view the wisdom of this nation’s recent wars differently than their male counterparts? You bet – at least according to a Pew Research Center study released Thursday that slices-and-dices women in uniform every which way.
There’s a lot more of them, too:
From 1973 to 2010 the number of active-duty enlisted women in the military has grown from about 42,000 to 167,000. Over that same period, the enlisted force as a whole has seen a decrease of about 738,000 service members.
“Without the introduction of women in the 1970s,” Richard Kohn, the Air Force’s former top historian, told Battleland recently, “the all-volunteer force never would have made it.” While there’s lot of fascinating insights into women in the military in the report, here are some of the most interesting nuggets:
— 63% of post-9/11 female vets believe the Iraq war was not worth fighting. Only 47% of men felt the same.
— 54% of post-9/11 female vets feel the Afghan war was not worth fighting. Only 39% of men feel that way.
— 30% of women in uniform fill administrative jobs, compared to 12% of men.
— 3% of women in uniform are in “infantry, gun crews and seamanship” billets; 19% of men are.
— 17% of the women in uniform are officers; only 15% of men are.