Overall Health and Wellbeing of Female Veterans Compared to Their Male Counterparts

Abstract

Women serving in the military are a growing demographic amongst those who seek medical assistance from the Veterans Association (VA). In recent years, the VA has reconstructed its facilities to accommodate women and their needs associated with women’s health. My aim is to understand the gender gap in service members. I want to find out if women veterans are receiving adequate health care and how they feel about their overall health and wellbeing, in order to improve health care, benefits, and understanding of healthy living within the VA. Adequate, for the purpose of this essay, will be explored through various facets and meanings of health. Health will be explained through the traditional medical definition as it pertains to physical health, as well as expanding on that definition to include the overall well-being of the individual through social, mental, and emotional needs. I hypothesize that female soldiers are not receiving adequate health care. “Adequate” means that these facilities are at par, or better, than services provided to the general public in addressing the specific needs of female veterans at equal value to male veterans. To test this theory I will be looking at data provided by The General Social Survey from 2013. My data concerns female respondents who have served in the armed forces and their responses to questions about their overall health, relationships, and views on life. To figure out intervening variables, I will compare this data to those respondents who answered similarly but who have not served in the armed forces in order to see if female veterans’ views are significantly different than any other group.