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July 16, 2007
Not all jobs in the army are equally dangerous
Women make up about 15% of the US army, and can serve in 90% of military occupations, yet of the 3,500 U.S. service members who have died in the war in Iraq, fewer than 80 women. If the gender percentages of US forces in Iraq mirror those of the armed forces as a whole, then we'd expect 225 dead female service members. That would suggest that female service members have jobs in Iraq that are 3 times safer than male service members. But now consider that 90% number. If again, those jobs have a similar makeup in Iraq as around the world, and we can assume that the job occupations are about uniform in the number of people who have them (unrealistic I know) then we would predict that 350 men have died out of categories that they share with women (see note below). That leaves 3080 who have died out of the 10% male only occupations. That makes those jobs 66 times as dangerous as the ones they are permitted to serve in!
Source: Soldiering Ahead from the Wilson Quarterly
Total Fatalities 3500 Estimated Fatalities by type Predicted fatalities if all jobs were equally dangerous Relative likelihood of death
Percent Women 0.15 70 525 0.13
Percent Men Dangerous Jobs 0.1 3080 350 8.8
Percent Men in Jobs with women 0.75 350 2625 0.13
Ratio 66
Posted by OneEyedMan at July 16, 2007 3:54 PM
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