Count Us In: The Experiences of Female War,Peacemaking,and Peacekeeping Veterans

Introduction

There is a growing female presence in the Australian Defence Force (ADF), both in terms of the number of women recruited into the ADF and the expanding roles they play. Australia has a comparatively small population of around 20 million people and a military institution (comprising a navy, an army, and an air force) of just over 51,000 full-time (active duty) personnel, of whom 6,794 (13.3 percent) are women. ¹ Despite their low representation, women are increasingly responding to active recruitment strategies targeted at women ² that provide unique opportunities for personal and professional growth that can be gained from a career in the ADF.

Australian service personnel who deploy on warlike, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and humanitarian operations perform challenging roles in complex environments. However, the contribution to Australia’s warlike, peacemaking, and peacekeeping operations made by servicewomen is neither well understood nor recognized within the broader community. ³ This is despite their increase in opportunities to be involved in such operations, consistent the recommendation from UN Security Council Resolution 1325 to increase female participation in all UN peacekeeping operations. ⁴ Australian women have been eligible to deploy in a range of warlike, peacekeeping, and peacemaking roles alongside their male colleagues only since 1991 and are still establishing their presence and status within operational settings. ⁵

Australian forces have been deployed worldwide to peacekeeping operations for nearly sixty years, undertaking roles that have included supervising ceasefires, ensuring withdrawal of forces, maintaining law and order, and providing training and humanitarian aid. Whatever the professional and personal benefits of deployment, the experience often results in side effects that are both undesirable and unexpected. Thus those who deploy need to manage the effect of such deployment on their health and well-being, and it is increasingly evident that this presents significant challenges to both the individuals and the institution. ⁶

Despite such challenges, only a small number of studies have considered the influence that veterans’ perceptions and understanding of their experiences have had on their general health and well-being. ⁷ In particular, serious physical and mental health problems have been detected across veteran populations in Australia and internationally, ⁸ many of which have long-term implications for the health and quality of life of returned service personnel. ⁹ For example, studies have shown that being exposed to combat and witnessing atrocities during peacekeeping operations is likely to place soldiers at risk in terms of mental health problems after deployment ¹⁰ and that there is benefit in providing postdeployment intervention strategies for soldiers who have experienced high levels of exposure to traumatic events during deployment. ¹¹ Programs that encourage veterans to discuss and disclose their operational experiences have been found to assist them to create positive meaning and identity around their time in service and also to partially relieve the psychological burdens many carry as a result of deployment. ¹²

The experiences of servicewomen present a distinct subset of these issues. UN Security Council Resolution 1325 reasoned that there are many benefits associated with having women deployed on peacekeeping operations, in terms of preventing and resolving conflicts within the peace process. ¹³ For example, women who are in conflict areas can reside with female peacekeepers and are better understood by them. ¹⁴ But such peacekeeping involvement places women at risk, not only of mental health problems but general health-related issues after deployment. Responding effectively to the psychosocial and health support needs of women who deploy requires a comprehensive understanding of the distinct and complex characteristics of the experiences of such women. ¹⁵

This article will show that, beyond the typical deployment challenges presented by unfamiliar political and geographical environments, female veterans often experience additional strain around specific domestic and professional concerns. Studies in America, for example, show that servicewomen who experience custody battles with ex-partners often find that courts are likely to give priority to the rights of the biological father, ¹⁶ rather than allowing the children to reside with their new partner or parents while they are on deployment. ¹⁷ Another example is that U.S. servicewomen are more likely to be the sole carers of children after separation from the service, even though they are less likely than their male counterparts to be married. ¹⁸

There is a growing body of evidence ¹⁹ that veterans’ deployment experiences significantly determine their potential demand for future health and support services. It follows that understanding the distinctively female deployment experience is integral toward assisting health and community service providers with a greater awareness of the needs of female veterans. ²⁰ In Australia, the sparse state of knowledge around health support needs for female veterans is particularly evident. For example, although some studies of veterans in the Australian Army have not detected gender differences in psychiatric symptoms, female soldiers were more likely than their male counterparts to report weak peer support and to report psychiatric symptoms. ²¹ However, perhaps because there are relatively few female personnel in the ADF, significant gender-specific differences have not been identified in relation to posttraumatic symptoms (PTSD). ²² This is in the light of a refocus on women in the Australian military, encouraged by the changing face of the Australian services. ²³

Despite researchers ²⁴ recommending that tailored programs are required for female veterans, particularly to women’s health needs, there is a dearth of international information about questions such as how female veterans adjust to life once they leave the armed forces, what coping strategies they incorporate, and what support they find useful as they reintegrate into civilian life. ²⁵ The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has dramatically increased research funding to investigate the health needs and service gaps for female veterans, including breast cancer, reproductive health, mental health, substance abuse, and the delivery and organization of health services, including access issues. ²⁶ Research into the reintegration of service personnel in Australia ²⁷ and elsewhere ²⁸ has focused on serving military personnel as part of the deployment cycle and their readiness for the next deployment, rather than as veterans returning to civilian life. This research imbalance has caused a senior Australian military health professional to express concern about the lack of research into the needs of discharged ADF members, particularly those who voluntarily take their discharge soon after return from a mission. ²⁹

The purpose of this article is to identify and discuss the experiences of Australian female veterans and the implications of such experiences for their future health and well-being. The central aim of the study was to investigate the experiences, perceived effects, and impact of warlike situations, peacemaking, and peacekeeping service on Australian female veterans in the post-Vietnam era, with particular emphasis on understanding the future health and community service needs of such women. ³⁰

The Study

The Sample

Participants were recruited into the study with assistance from relevant peak bodies such as the Veterans’ and Veteran Families’ Counseling Service (VVCS), service organizations, and ex-service organizations such as the Returned Services League (RSL) and the Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans’ Association (APPVA). Local and national media campaigns were also conducted and participants were encouraged to use word of mouth to introduce potential participants to the study as part of a “snowballing” recruitment strategy.

This campaign resulted in 125 enquiries, from which 106 Australian female veterans of warlike, peacemaking, and peacekeeping operations (post-Vietnam) were deemed eligible for the study. Fifty-six of them, drawn from all three services, volunteered to participate in the study, predominantly in focus group discussions. This sample was complemented by semi-structured interviews with five currently-serving personnel and thirty-one health and support service providers. All these subjects represented a “purposive sample,” that is, a nonrepresentative subset of some larger population, constructed to serve a very specific research need, in a context where it may not be possible to specify a population or draw a representative sample from such a population, because, for example, access is difficult, members of the population do not self-identify as such or, as was the case here, there is a need to recruit subjects for whom there was a close relationship between a situation or event and the related phenomena being studied in terms of the postdeployment experience. ³¹ The purposive sample procedure required critical thought about the parameters of the population of interest and thus the sample needed to be carefully chosen. ³² This purposive sample, although not designed to be statistically representative of females who had deployed, did in fact generate considerable numbers of women from each of the three services. They were either currently serving members, had returned to nonoperational reservist roles, or had discharged to civilian life.

Table 1 provides a full participant profile. It shows that those selected for this study came from a range of military backgrounds and had been deployed on a wide range of operations. The majority were currently-serving full-time members of the ADF with significant deployment experience, with half having been deployed more than once and many having been deployed for periods of greater than six months. Approximately half had children and over half were married or in de facto relationships. Most were officers, and most had served for more than fifteen years.

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Table 1.

Profile of Study Participants

Category	Subcategories	Percent of total sample
Service type	Army	64
	Navy	22
	RAAF	14
Service status	Civilians, including active and inactive Reservist	37
	Currently serving permanent ADF members	63
No. of deployments	Once	50
	2–4 times	36
	5 times or more	14
Rank	Officer a	62
	Senior NCO b	18
	Other ranks c	20
Length of service	Less than 5 years	7
	5–14 years	32
	15 years and over	61
Age	Under 25 years	5
	25–44 years	66
	45 years and over	25
	Not stated	4
Marital status	Single	25
	Married/de facto	61
	Divorced/separated	12
	Not stated	2
Children	Yes	48
	No	52
Education level	Master’s	30
	Other tertiary	38
	Year 10–12	32
Currently employed	Yes	96
	No	4
DVA recipient	Yes	18
	No	82

^a Commissioned Officers.

^b Sergeant up to Warrant Officer Class 1 (or equivalent).

^c Ranks below Sergeant (or equivalent).

Data Analysis

The data analysis process is detailed in Table 2. A systematic thematic analysis was used to identify the major themes and subthemes in the data. Thematic analysis is a “method for identifying, analyzing and reporting patterns (themes) within data,” ³⁴ with particular attention paid in this study to the connections between the themes and the unifying constructs. ³⁵ Not surprisingly, the review of the women’s discussions confirmed that these did not readily lend themselves to clear-cut categorization and highlighted the extent to which the various issues were interrelated, as part of “real-life” experience. For example, categorizing “data” into clear steps and themes, which were in fact quite obviously multifaceted, raised questions for the researchers about whether or not data could be categorized under specific headings. ³⁶

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Table 2.

Data Analysis Process

Stage	Process
Deep listening	Researchers listened to audio-taped discussions of group sessions with veterans and service providers to become familiar with voices of participants noting inflections and emphases of individual speakers
	Transcribed all audio tapes of group discussions to note where relevant conversational features such as intonations, pauses, and emphases, for example, features that indicated how participants spoke about challenging or sensitive issues
Responsive reading	Reading written transcripts combined with field notes of group discussions to hear how the participants had responded to the key research questions and to ascertain whether or not these questions had provided a “jumping off point” for broader discussions
	Reviewed the written transcripts to identify a process for sorting the responses into discrete thematic sections
	Reviewed the written transcripts again to identify sections of talk in which individual accounts meshed with group stories and to elicit how the women talked, interacted, understood, organized, and represented their individual experiences
Making meaning	Close and systematic reading of the transcripts generated summary words or phrases beside the “information rich” chunks of talk. Underlying ideas and similarities linking ideas within and across groups were given “labels” particularly within the framework of the veteran experience
	Identified and classified the “data” into main categories and subcategories making connections between the links and unifying constructs within and between them
	Validation of data, discussions, and confirmation of findings with expert steering committee (funding body, government representatives, ADF, veteran representatives, and service providers)

Nevertheless, through the process of thematic analysis, the data were classified into main categories and subcategories that represented connections between and within the main categories. Ultimately, these were reduced to four central themes and other related subthemes. The four central themes were (1) pre-deployment, (2) the deployment experience, (3) postdeployment, and (4) the transition and reintegration to civilian life. In total, these formed a holistic picture of the experiences of peacekeeping and peacemaking and the transition to civilian life.

This article focuses on the second of the central themes, namely, women’s deployment experiences in relation to their ongoing health and well-being within a personal and professional context.

Findings

In respect to the women’s deployment experiences in relation to their ongoing health and well-being within a personal and professional context, participants in both the interviews and the focus groups spoke at length about their expectations, their ambitions, and the realities of deployment. It was clear that there was a continuum of interrelated experiences for female veterans, with each experience having the potential to affect the others. Perhaps not surprisingly, the women themselves often made connections between the various aspects of their service experiences and how they anticipated or actually had managed their return to civilian life. The analysis resulted in a complex picture of the experience of peacemaking and peacekeeping for female veterans in relation to their overall health and well-being. The findings highlight the way that a significant disparity between a woman’s expectations of the professional benefits of deployment and her actual experiences could diminish her capacity to maintain a positive outlook and a sense of purpose and well-being beyond her military career. The participants also emphasized the lack of public awareness about the contribution of female members to ADF operations. They perceived that this had adversely affected female veterans’ postdeployment emotional well-being, both soon after returning home and in the longer term as they reintegrated into community and civilian life.

The central theme under investigation—the experience of deployment in relation to their ongoing health and well-being within a personal and professional context—essentially comprised three significant subthemes: (1) the rewards of deployment; (2) the challenges of deployment (particularly in terms of four subthemes: namely, separation from family; postdeployment adjustment to family relations; cultural isolation; and lack of recognition and support); and (3) health and community service support. Each of these is discussed in more detail below.

The Challenges of Deployment

Deployment presented female veterans with particular physical and psychological challenges that affected both their private and professional lives in the short and longer terms. These challenges are reflected in the four main subthemes discussed below. It is evident that, for many female veterans, the transition to civilian life meant risking loss of identity, belonging, and culture.

Separation from Family

For women with young families or other caring responsibilities, the separation from family over an extended period was reported as causing significant anxiety, both in the shorter and the longer terms. This was particularly likely to be the case if they had deployed at unavoidably short notice and had remained concerned about alternative care arrangements. The family-related short-term concerns of female veterans ranged from establishing appropriate care for babies, young children, or elderly/sick parents to providing adequate support for their partners remaining at home. Many participants believed that, while separation from family was difficult for most service personnel, women experienced particularly high levels of anxiety about family welfare during their absence. They spoke of the double burden faced when they volunteered for deployment, with one participant remarking that:

There is still the perception that, if a bloke deploys overseas, there’s no issue and he doesn’t have to run around and organize housekeepers, cleaning, shopping, kids and all of that because he’s got a wife at home to look after it. [However] If the wife goes away, there is no wife at home, so you’ve got to do all of that as well as to support the bloke.

I live out of town and I have nothing in common with girls there but they are all lovely, but they are all famers so I can’t talk to them about nursing because they don’t understand. And they certainly don’t understand that I’d be walking around Iraq with a rifle, they don’t comprehend it so I don’t talk.

Cultural Isolation

While deployment typically offered women the unique life experience of operating as professionals in novel and complex environments, a major challenge for many participants was the need to negotiate cultural settings that were specifically confronting to or dangerous for women. Understanding and managing different cultural expectations of women presented distinct challenges to female veterans in both civilian and military domains. For example, safe interaction with local populations required servicewomen to significantly alter their appearance and demeanor; and servicewomen living and working among multinational forces in UN compounds reported difficulties in dealing with different values and customs in relation to serving females. As one participant explained:

If you were going off base to deal with contractors you needed to adjust your dress and behavior and take a man with you to do the talking.

As soon as she heard my voice she started crying and said she’d been so looking forward to me getting here. I was the first Australian woman that she had seen in months.

Lack of Recognition and Support

The data highlighted the extent to which female service personnel consider themselves to be a unique group. Female veterans believed the physical and emotional challenges of a military career separated them from other professional women. As one participant passionately expressed:

I think the defence community in general is quite unique. We women are very, very different to the rest of the general community and I think for someone outside of the defence community, who really hasn’t had any involvement, it’s hard for them to understand what we are about. It’s hard to explain, we really are unique.

Look, we are different you know. We’re physically different and I think, you know, a woman’s psychology is different to a man.

In the main, women understood that concern for their safety was often the motivation for a lack of family support for their decision to deploy. Yet accusations of abandonment of children and the creation of additional responsibilities for remaining family members could leave women feeling guilty and confused about their professional aspirations and responsibilities. The following narrative represents the conflict that faced a number of women in this study:

“Why are you going over there Mummy?” I said, “I’m going to look after sick people,” and at the same time [I] felt terribly guilty. Civilian community is always saying, “Why are you going? You are a mother, you should be home. It should be the man who goes off to war.” They don’t question the men who leave their children behind. It is difficult on Mothers’ Day, Easter and Christmas—as women, we suffer.

I had just come back from Timor and felt really proud. We were putting our medals on at the train station when this old lady came up to me and said, “Excuse me girls, I don’t want to be a stickler for the rules but if they’re not your medals, then put them on the right-hand side.” [At this point in the story, others in the focus group agreed that this experience was a familiar one.] I didn’t know whether to cry or to be angry.

Health and Community Service Support

Participants highlighted a need to process their deployment experiences through talking and disclosure, with many recognizing that the opportunity to speak with peers, partners, family members, and professional counselors about their experiences was a key coping strategy. Similarly, the opportunity to debrief informally among peers was particularly valuable for them in the postdeployment period and provided an emotional safety valve. This is reflected in the following comment:

After an operation, the people that you relate most closely to are the people you have been on operation with, have similar experiences, or understand the environment, because no two operations are exactly the same.

The study found that most female veterans exhibited a poor understanding about the civilian health and service system in general. In fact, many of the participating veterans displayed a low level of mental and physical health literacy and failed to see how the network of community services available to them could help them take care of their future health needs. And where these connections were made, they were often tenuous—an observation supported by a recent study that found that female veterans often lack education or understanding about the potential short- and long-term health consequences associated with their deployment. ³⁸

The service providers who were interviewed generally perceived that General Practitioners and other community health services relevant to female veterans may not know that their patient had served in the ADF. This view was confirmed by many of the women interviewed, who did not perceive value in informing “unappreciative” medical and health practitioners about their military service histories. These interviewees also noted that community health providers did not routinely ask relevant questions about occupational background.

Discussion

Two main issues emerge from these findings. The first is that female veterans are likely to benefit psychologically by being able to place their deployment experiences within a personal and professional context. They want and need the opportunity to vent, reflect, and be listened to, in the expectation that this would assist them to continue to function at a high level within their professional roles, and to make a successful transition back to civilian life. Psychologists who contributed to this study argued that returning members needed to embark on a “path toward healing” by engaging in discussions about their deployment that would enable them to find a positive sense of meaning in their experiences.

The second main issue that emerged relates to participants’ capacity to derive meaning from their operational service. Generally, the data show that such capacity is undermined by challenges to their legitimacy to serve in the military and poor recognition of their contributions to Australia’s war, peacemaking, and peacekeeping operations. Some women, particularly those in senior positions or those that felt under pressure to prove their professional worth and legitimacy in male-dominated environments, were apprehensive about discussing their experiences with colleagues and other defense personnel, with many perceiving that this might signal professional incompetence or weakness. These women typically reported that they not only avoided the opportunity to disclose their experiences but commonly failed to seek appropriate or timely support for a range of problems that resulted from deployment.

Among the female veterans who were contemplating or beginning the transition back to civilian life, some were apprehensive that certain readjustment factors could seriously interfere with their ability to establish positive links with and motivations around their roles in postdeployment settings. These readjustment factors included perceptions of community indifference or hostility, fears of professional irrelevance in the civilian workforce, and ignorance and confusion about public support services available to them. Female veterans who discharged suddenly or without appropriate supports in place, often experienced feelings of disconnectedness and worthlessness. Many struggled to establish effective networks in civilian environments that would facilitate a positive return to community and family life.

Female veterans in this study expressed great personal and professional pride and commitment around their service and deployment experiences. For a significant number, altruism, idealism, and professional ambition had motivated them to embark on deployment and, as the research indicates, their personal values and beliefs often sustained them through extremely difficult and dangerous operations. And, given such motives, the postdeployment readjustment experience was likely to be all the more disappointing.

Some female veterans did recognize that their health may be compromised because of past duties and that seeking timely assistance and support was fundamental to maintaining long-term optimal health and well-being. Community service and health providers would clearly play a key role in ensuring that these female veterans received appropriate support and care once they made the transition back to civilian life.

Lessons and Future Research

Despite their relatively small numbers, female veterans represent a complex and heterogeneous population within the veteran community, and it is likely that Australian women and their international counterparts will continue to be integral to future peacekeeping and peacemaking efforts. They had performed a wide range of significant operational roles and, as a result of their deployment experiences, had diverse experiences and associated health-related issues. The findings of this study and others indicate that there is much that can be learned from the experiences of women who discharge back to the community following deployment. Future studies, be they qualitative or quantitative, can make a substantial contribution to extending our knowledge about the health, well-being, and support needs of such women. Given this, there are important research implications in the findings of this study.

The first implication relates to sampling. Although this study tried to recruit women who had returned to civilian life after serving with the ADF, this proved to be very difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, such women who did participate believed that they could be valuable contributors to the study. Many suggested that the recruitment difficulties had arisen because many women who had discharged may not be ready to talk about their experiences, were disillusioned at the time of discharge, or just wanted to make a clean break from it all. The research team was also cognizant of the fact that perhaps women who had spent years in their professional lives in the ADF proving that women were no different to men may be reluctant to participate in research that could be perceived as making distinctions between women and men.

Second, qualitatively based studies such as this one should be complemented by quantitative studies. Quantitative studies would assist in confirming and further contributing to the new body of knowledge found from this research. Participants could then complete a questionnaire in their own environment and in their own time.

The third implication relates to comparisons between male and female readjustment issues. Although, as noted, there are a number of deployment-related issues that apply to both service men and servicewomen, this study has drawn attention to those that are particularly applicable to the latter. And, although the present research did not consider issues associated with male veterans’ postdeployment and postdischarge experiences, studies that allow comparisons between the issues faced between males and females might further highlight the need for tailored strategies for female veterans and/or complementary strategies required for veterans of both sexes.

Conclusion

This study has highlighted the importance of the consideration and understanding of female veterans of warlike, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and humanitarian operations, in respect to their professional support and wider health and well-being needs. While the participants were quite clear that they did not want to be seen as different to their male colleagues or to receive special attention in any way, this qualitative investigation has served to formalize existing knowledge and has provided fresh insights into the experiences and needs of Australian service women who deploy.

A major finding of this qualitative study is that, regardless of rank or years served, many women indicated that the nature of a female veteran’s military service can significantly influence her health and well-being over the long term. Given that the women in the sample were able to identify the differences in the way that serving men and women tackle their psychological, physical, and emotional health needs in terms of postdeployment and postdischarge adjustments, ³⁹ the findings also suggest that gender is an important factor in this respect. ⁴⁰

The findings suggest that female veterans who believe they are adequately supported and recognized for their service by both the military and the civilian communities are likely to be better equipped to deal with the emotional and psychological experience of deployment and readjustment than those who feel isolated and unrecognized in their roles. Indeed, the findings of this study support a growing body of evidence that a female veteran’s deployment experiences significantly determines her potential demand for future health and support services and that understanding the deployment experience is integral toward assisting health and community service providers with a greater awareness of the needs of female veterans. ⁴¹

The ADF has demonstrated both a recognition of and commitment to supporting the needs of a growing female veteran population. The results of this study reveal a strong awareness within the ADF of the need to further refine the response to the specific family-, health-, and culture-related concerns of women across the deployment continuum. There is also recognition from the Project Steering Committee of the role that ADF leadership can play in further underscoring and supporting the professional integrity of female members through role modeling, clear codes of conduct, and explicit recognition of service in both current member and veteran domains. Findings also point to the need for civilian health and support services to develop a better understanding of the distinct needs of this female population and to develop stronger linkages with the military community to facilitate ongoing support for female veterans across and beyond the deployment continuum.

Finally, the findings from this study confirm a clear need to take advantage of female veterans’ knowledge and perspectives, in order to continue to respond effectively to the psychosocial and health needs of women who deploy. In the words of one participant:

I want to be able to help the future generations of women because I don’t think that our deployments are going to stop in a hurry. If anything we can do helps the future, particularly for women, I’d like to be a part of that.