Who Are Military-Affiliated Women?

Military-affiliated women are individuals connected to the U.S. Armed Forces through service, family, or employment, including active-duty service members, veterans, National Guard/ Reservists, spouses, widows, and dependents. This broad community encompasses women who serve in uniform and those who support the military mission.

Women who serve in the Armed Forces are often considered a distinct group due to their unique, shared experiences of navigating a male-dominated, high-stakes, institutional culture that sets them even farther apart from the civilian population than their male counterparts.

They often experience a blend of intense camaraderie, specialized health needs, and distinctive challenges related to service, including high rates of military sexual trauma (MST), and difficulties transitioning to civilian life.

The number of women joining the military has been increasing over the last few years, so that women make up nearly 18% of active-duty personnel. The US Department of Defense reports the largest increases in the Air Force and Navy. The Marine Corps still has the lowest percentage of women among the branches.

In addition to those who serve in uniform, there is a whole other, even larger, group of women who support the military mission such as spouses, mothers, or those employed as civilians. They have their own unique set of challenges.

Spouses of Active-Duty military can struggle to maintain stable employment due to having to move so much due to their spouse’s orders. While moving to different places and experiencing different cultures can be exciting, it is also a lot of work, most of which falls to the spouse while the service-member attends to their official duties.

Women at home also have to deal with their spouse being gone often, sometimes called away suddenly, and for extended periods due to training or deployments, which leaves them handling all aspects of life, and, if they have children, all aspects of child care on their own.

If the serving spouse is of lower rank, there can be financial difficulties as well, especially if the at-home spouse is constantly looking for new employment or there is a large family to care for.

Today, women are roughly 1 in 3 civilian DoD employees with a modest growth between 2010 and 2024, a much slower growth rate than that of military members. Women remain underrepresented in senior executive and upper GS-grade civilian leadership positions.

And what about the moms?

The mothers of military members often struggle with anxiety and constant worry for the safety and security of their children. And if they are the only one, or one of only a few of their peers with children serving, they can find it difficult to find the kind of support that only comes from another mom who knows their specialized fears and concerns.

In many cases, they are providing additional support to their military child’s spouse. It’s not uncommon for spouses to move in with family during long deployments especially if there are children, and sometimes that means moving back from an overseas deployment, causing additional readjustment issues for everyone. Military service often runs in families, meaning the mother of a servicemember is likely to be a veteran herself, be married to a veteran, or have multiple children or grandchildren serving.

Women serving in civilian roles are often working directly with military members and facing challenges similar to those of female servicemembers with regards to the overall military culture. They are often called to train, travel, move and even deploy to combat zones.

Approximately 70% of the DoD’s roughly 800,000 civilian workforce are veterans. Of that number, 25% are women. So civilian women supporting the Armed Forces are highly likely to be veterans themselves.

Most civilians have only a glancing understanding of what happens in combat, however, they understand that when they’re not fighting or training, servicemembers do all the jobs civilians do – mechanic, accountant, pilot, human resources, supply-chain, interpreter, journalist, security (physical and cyber), etc.

But what about the civilians? They also might be any of the above, or attorneys, doctors, data analysts, aircraft techs, IT specialists, psychologists or social workers, etc., just as if they were working in the civilian world.

However, their choice to do those jobs within the military presents them with challenges their non-military-affiliated peers might not understand. That’s because at any given time, less than 1% of the US population is actively serving in the military, making its special challenges unfamiliar to most Americans.

Only around 7% of the current US population has ever served, and women make up under 25% of that number.

Adding affiliated women increases those numbers but the significant overlap in the groups means that military-affiliated women are less than 0.5% of the overall US population. For perspective, that’s significantly fewer than the approximately 80% of women who have reported being sexually harassed or the 30% of women who have been the victims of domestic violence.

Today I am a civilian employee of the Department of the Army. Like many of my colleagues, I am an Army retiree and combat Veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Also like many of my colleagues, I am from a military family. My stepfather, husband, father-in-law, and other relatives have served. My mother is a Blue Star Mother—someone whose children have served or are serving. Not only am I a veteran, but so are two of my brothers.

All of this places me in a position to have direct insight into the particular challenges of active duty and retired service personnel.

Nicole Callender-Sedon
Chair

Statistical information for this article comes from the Department of Defense, the Government Accountability Office, legalclarity.org, defense.gov, NSIT.com, and airandspaceforces.com.