War is Hell for Female Soldiers

Laura Kasinof:

While it’s clear that war is hell for everyone, men and women alike, it’s unclear how the unique female experience in the barracks, on the battlefield, and back at home may affect them differently. Female veterans are already more likely than male veterans to be homeless, divorced, or raising children as single parents. Female vets under fifty are more than twice as likely as their male counterparts to kill themselves. And a growing body of research suggests that female vets may also be more susceptible than men to psychological disorders, including PTSD.

I find this unsurprising, for reasons that have nothing to do with innate gender differences. As I have noted many times, warrior societies work very hard to prepare young men for war, reshaping their young lives around meeting the challenge of the battlefield. We still do some of this in America, although not as much as we used to. And we do more for boys than for girls. Stuff like playing army, playing football, playing violent video games and encouraging a certain amount of fighting and other mayhem as "boys will be boys" really does help prepare young men for war. Young women get less of it, so they are less well prepared. There may also be social factors: since there are more men who have served in combat, there are more chances for male veterans to bond over their experiences; female veterans may find few women who can understand what they experienced, and so end up very much alone. Obviously this is a gross generalization, and I am sure there are many young women who have gone through war relatively unscathed. But many have been wounded for life, whether or not their bodies were ever injured.