The Army on its slight increase in recruiting women and minorities: Please clap

PO3 Patricia Miner Excellent Advice CTR3! Some of the Smartest, Toughest I Met In Our Field.

I know why so few women enlist in the military - not because it's difficult. It's because of the rampant sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexism that goes on. You can sit there and say it doesn't. But I've seen it. I've been in mostly male units the majority of my career. Anytime I'm around males I have to prove myself solely because I have a vagina - whereas a male comes in and they don't judge until he proves he's a shit head.

I've also been sexually assaulted and sexually harassed but we have it beaten into our head from basic on that we have to be "one of the boys" and not to be feminine or female or any of it. Fuck that. That's the wrong answer. The military doesn't hold people accountable who do wrong - they victim blame.

Also - as a woman in the military who is also a parent it is hard. It doesn't matter if you're a single mom, dual military mom or married to a civilian as a servicemember. It's much harder on women to have a career and a family than it is for males. That's in civilian life too but it impacts women much more. Look at how pregnant servicemembers are treated. I think I read an article recently about how the military is handling pregnant servicemembers the way they should - or maybe it was just the Air Force that's changing some things. Here's one example: breastfeeding. I didn't breastfeed because I didn't want to but had I wanted to, there was nowhere for me to pump at work except the nasty bathroom. The Army had no breastfeeding policy when I had my daughter. There weren't any pumping rooms. That's just one example.

I could go on and on about why females don't join the military outside this.

Why don't minorities? Probably because when you look back at history and see how minorities in the military have been treated. Look how they were treated coming back from WWII. Segregated units. Fought for their lives - come home and people spit on them. Assault them. IN uniform. Or in Vietnam, or Korea. Etc. Racism STILL exists in the military no matter how much people want to pretend it doesn't.

I can't speak for recruiting for other services but when I see Army recruiting videos, I laugh. Even the new ones.

Thank goodness my daughter can never join the military since she only has one kidney. I honestly wouldn't encourage her to join even if she could. I have had good and bad in my time and will finish out 20 in a few years. I don't regret joining. But if anyone ever asks me about joining, I'm going to tell them the truth. Especially females.