A recent post from Military.com (https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/03/10/va-struggles-curb-harassment-female-veterans-medical-centers.html) suggests that female veterans are not being treated the same as their male counterparts. We do not address this issue directly with our data but did ask our sample how important, “Equality of people, regardless of gender, race, religion, etc” is to them. Selecting on veteran status, you can see that the vast majority of men and women believe it is important (94% of men and 95% of women).

n=824, 620 male veterans and 204 female veterans

The chart combines the “very important” and “somewhat important” categories. Eight-seven percent of female veterans say equality is “very important” compared to only 72% of men, suggesting that it is particularly important for female veterans. Albeit a small difference, only .5% of female veterans say that they “Don’t Know” compared to .8% of men.

While women are now officially accepted into combat roles in the armed services, they still represent a statistical minority among both service members and veterans. We will have to keep watch over gender integration beyond the extent to which they can take on different positions to include interactions among people of different genders. Our data suggest that both men and women see equality as important, so it won’t be a “hard sell” to encourage service members to treat each other with dignity and respect.