2. Background There is a distinction made between what is acceptable for men and what is acceptable for women. Almost everywhere, weapons belong mainly to men and the care of children mainly to women. Warfare and child care have traditionally been reserved roles. Men cannot give birth to or physically nurse children. In contrast women can fight, can wage war, and in fact their help in doing this is occasionally required. This has meant that in this area men have a continuing need to defend, to separate, or to distinguish what they do from what women do. They have to prohibit, “to bar” women since “nature” does not. (Smith)
3. Hypothesis Enlisted women in the military believe they are not given the same opportunities as enlisted men based on gender bias and regulations. If given the chance enlisted women will report that they would like the same options and treatment as their male counterparts.
4. Methods A survey was given in order to estimate the amount of women who believe or do not believe they are being treated unfairly within the military. The survey questions were given to 15 women who are currently enlisted and working for the military. The females ranged in age from 19 to 25. The survey questions given were: Do you believe women are mistreated in the military? Why or why not? Should women be treated the same as men while in the military? If given the chance would women want to be treated the same? Why or why not?
5. Results Of the women who were selected the majority of them from the ages of 19 to 22 do not think that women are mistreated in the military. The majority from the ages of 22 to 25 think that women are mistreated. There was 9 ‘yes’ answers total and only 4 ‘no’ answers total. So it can be speculated that more women feel mistreated then not.
6.
7. Results Continued Of the women who were selected the majority of them believe that women would want to be treated better while enlisted. More than half of the women who were questioned answered yes. Only 5 answered no.
8. Conclusion I believe that the results of this mini experiment supported my hypothesis to an extent. I found it interesting that most of the younger enlisted females were not as eager to answer the questions that I gave them. Only after I reassured them that this was strictly a school project and that no one official would see the results did they answer. Another aspect that I found interesting about the results was the amount of ‘circumstantial’ answers. For example, they only wanted certain aspects of their jobs to be the same as men’s. But almost all of them wanted the opportunity to choose what aspects would be ‘crutched.’ If I was able to redo this project I would try to get more females to participate in the survey. If I had a larger amount of participants then my results would probably be more in depth and accurate.
9. Referernces Kimmel, Michael.2008. The Gendered Society. Third Edition. New York, New York. Oxford. Holm, Jeanne. 1992. “Women in the Military: An Unfinished Revolution” Smith, T., Jacobson, I., Smith, B., Hooper, T., Ryan, M., & Team, F. 2007. “The occupational role of women in military service: Validation of occupation and prevalence of exposures in the Millennium Cohort Study.” International Journal of Environmental Health Research.
