Abstract
The Danish Defense has an ambition of attracting and retaining more women. However, while the number of female conscripts has highly increased over the last decade the number of female employees in the Danish Armed Forces has remained more or less stagnant. This indicates that the Danish Defense has a challenge with motivating women to seek out a military career beyond the conscript period.
Therefore, the aim of this study has been to explore what factors help to motivate and demotivate female conscripts from pursuing further military education after their conscript period ends. Furthermore, we seek to examine how we as future platoon commanders in a conscript unit can contribute to motivate and recruit more women to pursue a military career.
To explore this question, we conducted a qualitative study consisting of semi-structured interviews with 13 former female army conscripts some of whom had chosen to continue in the military while others had chosen to return to civilian life. Furthermore, we conducted field observations at a conscript unit at two different regiments.
The study found that the motivation of these women was affected by the difficulties of combining their private life with a military career, lack of information about further educational opportunities, feelings of physical inadequacies, difficulties operating in the field due to female biological conditions and the humor and tone used in the military.
As a platoon commander it is important to be aware of these experiences if one wishes to increase the motivation for military service among female conscripts. As a result, the study presents a number of strategies that we as future platoon commanders can use in order to mitigate the negative impact of these factors.