Brenda L. Moore

African American Women in the U.S. Military

This article is a comparison of black women with women of different racial and ethnic backgrounds and black men in the U.S. military. Developmental analysis is used to examine historical trends and to hypothesize about the future of black women on active duty. Although there is considerable scholarly literature on minorities (particularly African-American men) and women in the armed forces, no systematic study of the participation of African-American women exists. This omission is significant in view of the fact that the representation of black women has increased more than sixfold over the last 15 years (which marks a greater percentage increase than any other segment of the military population). Results of statistical analysis confirm previous findings that African-American women are accessing the military at a faster pace than other racial and ethnic female groups in the United States; they are more concentrated in the Army than other branches of the military; they are mostly assigned to administrative and support occupations; and they are more likely to be single parents than are military women and men in the comparison groups. The article ponders the consequences of these findings for the future stability of the participation of black women in the U.S. military.

Introduction to Armed Forces & Society: Special Issue on Women in the Military

This Armed Forces & Society issue is on women in the contemporary armed forces in the United States and other nations to include the South African National Defense Force and the Australian Defense Force. This issue contains a collection of nine papers, each reviewing a current aspect of women serving in the military since the post–Vietnam War Era. There are also two review essays of Megan Mackenzie’s book, Beyond the Band of Brothers: The US Military and the Myth That Women Can’t Fight. An overview of changing laws and the expanding role of women in the military is provided in this introduction, as well as summaries of the nine articles, and comments on the two book reviews mentioned above.

Life-Course Perspectives on Military Service

from this analysis is that the changes in city-level crime over time do not necessarily occur evenly across all streetblocks of the city, but instead are concentrated in just a few streetblocks. The fourth chapter spatially situates these streetblocks, using maps to display the location of these eight trajectory patterns. It then explores the spatial clustering of these eight trajectories. The fifth and sixth chapters describe the various measures they were able to collect that capture the social and physical characteristics of these streetblocks and then describe the spatial distribution of these measures. A major challenge for WGY is that whereas social data on blocks is relatively straightforward to obtain, streetblocks are a different story; and such data is very difficult to obtain. Briefly, a streetblock is both sides of a single street between two intersections, whereas a block is (typically) a set of houses surrounded by streets. Therefore, a block will only have the houses on one side of four separate street segments, whereas a streetblock will have the houses on both sides of a single street segment. Although this may seem a somewhat arcane distinction, it is of utmost importance to the analyst and on a larger level suggests a need for different data collection strategies by agencies such as the U.S. Census if researchers are to truly employ streetblocks as a unit of analysis. Instead, WGY had to undertake what they refer to as a ‘‘treasure hunt’’ for data aggregated to streetblocks. This is arguably both a strength and weakness of the study: on the one hand, one cannot help but be impressed with the lengths they had to go to in trying to collect data capturing the social world in streetblocks. On the other hand, some of the measures that they are forced to use as proxies strain credulity—as one example, using a database of registered voters as a proxy for population, which, while correlated .7 with the actual population in the much larger unit of block groups, would have a much lower correlation with the population in these smaller units, implying relatively lower validity. This chapter discusses the measures they were able to collect, and displays their clustering across the streetblocks of the city over time. For those who want more detail on this ‘‘treasure hunt,’’ an appendix describes the various sources they utilized. The seventh chapter then explores the relationship between these measures of the social and physical environment and the level of crime in streetblocks. Although their results indicate that the ‘‘opportunity theory’’ measures explain more of the variance in crime trajectories of streetblocks, the ‘‘control theory’’ measures nonetheless explain a relatively high proportion of variance as well. For those who are interested in the spatial location of crime, WGY have provided a nicely researched statement to add to the literature. The data collection part of the project was Herculean, and the analysis reveals new insights that will help push the field forward. They have amassed a large swath of empirical evidence on these processes, and the style of presentation with maps and figures makes the book relatively understandable (with details of the more advanced statistical techniques provided in an appendix for those with such an interest). This empirical evidence is an important statement that will continue to shape the field in the future. And one can hope that the theoretical contribution, along with the empirical evidence, will help to break down the unnecessary divide between scholars in the neighborhoods and crime versus criminology of place subareas.