Marital Status.  As indicated in Table 4.11, officers were more likely to be married than the enlisted personnel they lead.  It is interesting to note that for officers as well as enlisted personnel, women on active duty were less likely than men to be married.  In fact, while nearly three-quarters of male officers were married, only 54 percent of women officers had a spouse.  Furthermore, whereas male officers were more likely than their civilian counterparts (college graduates in the workforce 21 to 49 years of age) to be married, female officers were less likely to be married. This suggests that women in the officer corps are more divergent from their civilian peers regarding family patterns.

Though female officers are less likely to be married than male officers, among those who are married women are considerably more likely to be a partner in a dual-military marriage.  As can be seen from Table 4.12, married female officers are more than eight times more likely than married male officers to have a spouse in uniform.  This trend is more than a curiosity, as dual-service marriages pose unique challenges to assignment and deployment, in addition to affecting Servicemembers' satisfaction with military life.

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