Army sets sight on women
Struggling recruiters see more interest as gender barriers to job specialties fall
After 15 years of endless war, the Army is struggling to recruit soldiers and says a growing disconnect between the American people and the military is a major reason, despite a $189.1 million marketing and advertising budget and its biggest event of the year, Saturday’s nationally televised All-American Bowl.
A slim ray of hope, however, comes from an unexpected source — women who’ve long been underrepresented in the ranks but are increasingly interested in becoming soldiers as barriers fall to job specialties once open only to men.
The Army said 17 percent of all recruits last year were women, the highest percentage since 2006. The number of women on active duty entering nine career fields that had been open only to men just four years ago has slowly risen. That’s an eye-opening development the Army’s top recruiter finds tantalizing but won’t yet call a trend.
“We know there’s a large pool of talented, strong women in our country, we’re simply not tapping into as we should,” said Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Snow, who leads the Army Recruiting Command. “So
given the fact that they make up 50 percent of the population, yet we only recruited 17 percent, you know one would like to think the opening up of the additional positions and our efforts to educate them on the opportunities resident in the military will have the desired impact.
“So, am I optimistic? Yes, I am. It’s just too early to say whether or not it will cause more to join.”
That more women could become soldiers is a big deal for a simple reason: Fewer than 3 in every 10 recruit candidates qualify for the Army. Things will worsen by 2020, when 2 in 10 people 18 to 24 years old will qualify. Obesity is the biggest problem, Snow said, but other barriers to joining include drug and criminal histories.
Fewer applicants are making the average score on the Pentagon’s aptitude test. While 98 percent of all active-duty soldiers were high school graduates in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the average score on the aptitude test was down slightly. And as the Army shrinks, junior enlistees with poor prospects for promotion will leave, forcing recruiters to work even harder to find replacements.
Growing disconnect
The All-American Bowl, a fixture in San Antonio since 2002, is a major recruiting and marketing event, televised by NBC. This year it showcased 101 high school football players and a 125-member band and honor guard. Rallies were held at their campuses across the nation, giving recruiters a chance to talk with educators and students.
Snow said recruiters encounter barriers at some schools; he wouldn’t elaborate except to say some educators hold ill-informed views about the Army.
But recruiters more generally have to bridge a growing disconnect between civilians and the military. In 1990, 4 in every 10 Americans ages 18 to 24 had a parent who had been in the armed forces. As this year began, it was 16 percent.
“Even though we’ve been in a protracted land campaign for going on 15 years, the truth of the matter is — and everybody stops us and thanks us for our service — the vast majority of the American people do not understand what service means in the Army,” Snow said. “Part of it goes back to the youth of today just don’t have much experience with those who have served.”
Today, 69,000 women serve as officers and enlistees. Since 2013, when women were allowed to enter nine combat-related Military Occupational Specialties, or MOS, which includes enlisted combat engineer, there has been a slight but steady rise in those numbers, from 204 women that year to 270 last year. Combat engineers drew the most interest.
‘Quality of recruits’
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s decision last month to open 12 other specialties to women means they now can do everything from driving M1 tanks and leading infantrymen into combat to serving in the Green Berets and Navy Seals.
While the total of 801 women who entered the nine previously shuttered combat specialties is a small blip on the radar screen, the Army has taken note of it. A recruiting command spokeswoman, Kelli Bland, said that while there has been a rise among women who express general interest in the Army, it hasn’t translated into any dramatic increase in the number of female recruits.
University of Maryland military sociologist David Segal said the Pentagon’s gradual opening of longclosed career fields has sparked high interest in combat branches among women at West Point. But he noted that few in the Pentagon saw breaking down the last barriers as a prescription for its recruiting woes, and he is not sure the chance to serve in a combat MOS will attract many more women to join.
“I anticipate that we will see an increase in recruiting of women in both the short and long term. However, the numbers are not likely to be huge,” said Segal, co-author of a paper in this month’s Education of Military Medicine on the role of leadership and peer behavior in the performance and well-being of women in combat. “It will affect quantity of recruits at the margins. I think it is likely to have a greater impact on the mean quality of recruits.”
Gen. David Perkins, a veteran of the Iraq invasion who heads the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, also doesn’t expect a profound shift in the numbers, saying that women have shown only mild interest in serving in such combat specialties as armor. More importantly, though, the Army will better reflect the nation, he said.
“I don’t see the big benefit being tens of thousands of people coming in or anything like that,” said Perkins, who led the famed “Thunder Run” in Baghdad as the 2003 invasion ended. “I think it’s more an illustration of our values, that the United States Army operates like the United States of America.”