Purpose: While military mental health has been a topic of interest in recent years, the relationship between branch of military service and female veteran mental health outcomes has been under-explored. Female veterans are six times more likely to commit suicide than civilian counterparts, and present posttraumatic stress (PTS) rates that sit at…

This paper represents one of the most recent and pertinent studies conducted in Afghanistan, aiming to address the societal imperative of comprehending the factors behind the fall of the Republic government and the subsequent rise of the Taliban to power. Furthermore, the paper seeks to analyse public attitudes towards the current situation.…

This article focuses on the series of 11 books about a young female pilot, "Worrals of the WAAF," by W.E. Johns, creator of Biggles. The Worrals books were published from 1941 when recruitment for the Women's Auxiliary Air Force was falling. Johns chose to ignore that the WAAF supported pilots through their work on the ground and did not…

This narrative describes two United States Air Force bandswomen whose combined careers span the past sixty years. Cornetist Martha (Martye) Jean Awkerman joined the U.S. Women in the Air Force (WAF) Band in 1955. She served the WAF band as cornet soloist and principal trumpet until the band was disbanded in 1961. In 1983, tubist Jan Duga joined…

This article explores the activities and experiences of a women's peace museum in Japan which especially tries to pass on the history of Japan's military sexual slavery, or the "comfort women" issue. The system of Japan's military sexual slavery had not been written as a part of history until courageous survivors testified and…

The purpose of this study was to determine how women music teachers became the United States' first female military band directors. Interviews with seventy-nine World War II military bandswomen revealed that seven of the ten chosen female directors were music teachers prior to their enlistment in the Army, Coast Guard, or Marines--band and…

In the past decades, most of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have been affected by armed conflicts. By means of a time-series cross-sectional (TSCS) database, we attempt to measure the impact of war on a sample of 43 countries in Africa from 1950 to 2010. These conflicts, and especially civil wars, are shown to have a strong negative effect on…

Iranian women have endured more than 30 years of an Islamist dictatorship that uses religion as a validation for unjust control. Human rights violations against women in Iran are a tragic phenomenon for an otherwise highly developed civilization. Invisible and powerless in a male-dominated society, Iranian women are discouraged from becoming…

Objective: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a serious health concern, but little is known about prevalence of IPV in the armed forces, as military members cope with the pressures of long-standing operations. Furthermore, previous prevalence studies have been plagued by definitional issues; most studies have focused on acts of aggression without…

Objective: Hazardous drinking is a serious societal concern in military populations. Efforts to reduce hazardous drinking among military personnel have been limited in effectiveness. There is a need for a deeper understanding of how community-based prevention models apply to hazardous drinking in the military. Community-wide prevention efforts may…

The inclusion of women in the U.S. military is generally understood as radically transforming traditional gender relations. Drawing from 38 interviews with women and men in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, I ask: how do women negotiate gender identities within the "masculine" military institution, and what types of transformations in their…

Temperatures exceeded 115 degrees on July 11 during the five-hour mission in the city of Amerli. More than 50 soldiers were on site and tensions were high; Amerli was the scene of a massive suicide truck bombing just four days earlier. Soldiers kept alert but visibly struggled under the weight of dozens of pounds of battle gear. Throughout the…

Though people now take the idea of women in the military for granted, in the 1940s it was a vigorously debated suggestion. Men protected their country; women stayed at home. Because of the conflict over whether women should serve in the army, Congress compromised by creating the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). This article describes the…

Over 300,000 children are estimated to be conscripted participants in conflicts throughout the world. Depending on the particular armed group that employs child soldiers, girls represent 6 to 50% of child soldiers. Despite this prevalence of involvement, the experience of girls as soldiers in war and political conflict has rarely been…

There is scientific and popular dispute about whether there are sex differences in cognitive abilities and whether they are relevant to the proportions of men and women who attain high-level achievements, such as Nobel Prizes. A recent meta-analysis (Lynn, R., and Irwing, P. (2004). Sex differences on the progressive matrices: a meta-analysis.…