Marital Status
Pay Grade
Commission
Age
Race/Ethnicity
Gender
Marital Status
Education
Occupations

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.

Table 4.11.  FY 1998 Married Active Component Officer Corps and Enlisted Personnel, by Gender (Percent)

Gender

Officers

Enlisted

Males

74.0

54.9

Females

53.8

44.2

Total

71.1

53.4

Also see Appendix Table B-33 (Marital Status by Service).

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.

Table 4.12.  FY 1998 Active Component Officers Who Were Married, and in Dual-Service Marriages, By Gender and Service (Number and Percent)  

 

 

Married

Married Who Were In
Dual-Service Marriages

Gender

End-Strength

Number

Percent

Number*

Percent

ARMY

Male

57,371

41,796

72.9

2,451

5.9

Female

9,609

5,206

54.2

2,481

47.7

Total

66,980

47,002

70.2

4,932

10.5

NAVY

Male

45,512

32,788

72.0

639

2.0

Female

7,694

3,923

51.0

849

21.6

Total

53,206

36,711

69.0

1,488

4.1

MARINE CORPS

Male

15,337

10,716

69.9

326

3.0

Female

738

316

42.8

210

66.5

Total

16,075

11,032

68.6

536

4.9

AIR FORCE

Male

59,922

46,450

77.5

2,388

5.1

Female

11,971

6,698

56.0

2,478

37.0

Total

71,893

53,148

73.9

4,866

9.2

DoD

Male

178,142

131,750

74.0

5,804

4.4

Female

30,012

16,143

53.8

6,018

37.3

Total

208,154

147,893

71.1

11,822

8.0

* There are some differences between the number of males and females reporting dual-service marriages.

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