My name is Anne. I am a French PhD student in Sweden. I recently conducted a study on women in navies at the global level.
Women serving in navies, and more generally in military workplaces, are more likely to experience additional stressors and mental health disorders in comparison to men. Violence against women range from discrete episodes of bullying, psychological harassment, gender discrimination, to sexual harassment, sexual touching and rape perpetrated by their male colleagues at all grade levels. This situation may cause navy women to feel, in the least serious cases, a sense of inequal professional opportunity; and, in acute cases, insecurity in the workplace, especially when their hierarchy does not give credence to their complaints. There are numerous reported cases proving that the regulations aimed at supposedly fighting discrimination against women are either simply not enforced or circumvented.
I would like to connect with researchers investigating mental health in navy (military) women.
Thanks Anne, you have picked up such an important topic for research as this is a global issue when women are on board on places that are considered men’s world. I have met personally to a few women who just left army because of sexual exploitations and abuse on the job, especially when they were not offered opportunities within their domain. I hope your research findings and recommendations will be well taken and shared widely. If you want to discuss anything about research , I am happy to connect. I work as Senior technical Advisor-GBV for Corus International and have been working across the globe on the issues to gender based violence for more than two decades. Good luck for your research ! looking forward
Hi Anne - thanks for sharing the important work you are undertaking! I’m not current in this space (so apologies if this resource is outdated or already familiar to you), but when living in Minnesota, I recall a local organization called The Advocates for Human Rights that did some work in this space under their https://www.stopvaw.org/ project. They have a handful of published resources on sexual assault in the military, and their team used to (maybe still does?) travel internationally to provide GBV-related training for police and military systems. I hope this is some help to you and look forward to following the work you do!
This is such an important and interesting topic! It would be interesting to see if improved regulations alone would have an impact on improving mental health for these woman and increasing a sense of safety, or if more needs to be done to change the culture in the workplace.