Arms And The Enlisted Woman

6. Research

6 Research In the fall of 1983, most of the community doing research on military women, as well as representatives of military policymakers from both Congress and the Pentagon, gathered in Chicago at a special meeting of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society.l This may have been the largest and most professional gathering of its kind; nevertheless , the climax of the meeting was the impassioned plea by a woman Marine officer: "No more research!" The warm reception given this apparently perverse appeal was due partly to the irrelevance felt by many in the audience, who had learned only hours before that some 265 marines had been killed when their barracks were blown up in Beirut. (Although no one in the room knew it then, at the moment the officer spoke other marines were already on their way to invade the island of Grenada.) The audience's approval probably also reflected the feeling that research had too often been directed toward limiting the participation of and opportunities for women and emphasizing the ways in which women were different from and inferior to men. By 1983 many military women wanted to get on with their work and let that work speak for itself. During the Carter administration (1976-1980), executive branch policymakers were committed to women's increased participation. Thus, "getting on with it" may have been a good strategy. In a less benign environment , however, research and knowledge about research techniques can be most useful to women and their supporters. In-house studies can be evaluated (and if necessary countered) by insisting that queries be placed in context. For example, at one time a great deal of attention was given to collecting information about time lost from work because of pregnancy. Military women familiar with research methodologies asked the question basic to all research: "Of what is this an instance?" When it was seen that the general issue was "lost time," it was recognized that all reasons for lost time-including being absent without leave-should be considered. When this was done, the Navy's data actually showed men losing more time than women-even with women's higher losses for medical reasons generally and pregnancy in particular. Later studies also came to the conclusion that women and men lost similar amounts of time, 134 Copyrighted Material Research - 135 even though pregnancy-related lost time is substantial and exclusively female.2 Research on women can also help analysts construct more adequate studies of such continuing problems as attrition and failure to reenlist. Over the years the military has developed certain beliefs about attrition . One is that high school graduates are more likely to complete their enlistments than nongraduates. This has justified the use of educational requirements as well as minimum test scores and has led to the assumption that the "quitters" are the less able. One study of Black men showed, however, that nongraduates have lower rates of discharge than high school graduates for personality disorders and expediency and fewer in-lieu-of-court-martial discharges.3 Another study found that marriage and children affected men's and women's reenlistment in opposite ways.4 Such findings suggest that more suitable predictors should be sought or that different predictors are better for different groups. Research can also raise issues that would not otherwise be raised because of lack of sensitivity, or because of an excess of sensitivity-for example, women's morale under different commanders.5 Two things must be remembered in assessing research findings on military women. The first is women's heterogeneity. The second is that the questions about women have characteristically been should and can they serve. For men service is assumed, and research on them is directed toward "how best?" Let us tum now to an examination of military research on women, its content, and its link to military policies. STUDIES BY THE AIR FORCE AND THE NAVY The Air Force Human Resources Laboratory (AFHRL) at Brooks Air Force Base (Texas) publishes an annual annotated bibliography of technical reports it has produced or sponsored. Other studies are conducted by students at the Air Universities (Maxwell and the Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson). In addition the Air Force Academy has sponsored a set of conferences on "Psychology in Department of Defense" and published the proceedings. The Air Force also conducts numerous studies at its Manpower and Personnel Center (AFMPC) at Randolph Air Force Base. Typically these studies (such as "Integrating Women into Non...