An experienced and highly veracious pollster friend once told me there was one topic and one topic only on which men and women reliably split by a 10 percentage point spread.
The issue so infallibly pitting gender against gender was not money, sex, politics, religion or even sports. The issue on which he said women were unerringly con and men unerringly pro was military action. Women, he said, were always 10 points more opposed to putting "our boys" in harm's way than were men.Well, those days are over. Or at least they are waning. A Gallup poll taken on the eve of NATO's first airstrike in Kosovo last week shows women only five percentage points more resistant to U.S. involvement in this military action than are men. That once cavernous and reliable gap has been cut in half.
There are several possible reasons for the apparent decrease in women's gender bias against war. First, perhaps because we are now relying on an all-volunteer army, women feel less afraid of the consequences in store for those who in a sense choose to go into combat. Women tend to sympathize with the helpless. Perhaps our sympathetic proclivities were called into play when the thousands of Americans being sent off to war had little or no choice in the matter.
Along the same lines, perhaps because the U.S. has long since abolished the draft, fewer women of today's Generation NeXt have brothers, sisters, fathers, uncles or friends who are in the military. War is now a farther-off proposition for most young Americans who are not as intimately touched by it as earlier generations were. The women of my Vietnam generation had relatives, neighbors, boyfriends and friends of friends who were either dodging the draft or being forced to fight a war whose reasons they did not support. Female NeXt'ers' attachment to the "boys" (and "girls") being sent off to war is much more tenuous. They know personally or are related to far fewer people serving in the military.
A third factor lessening women's passion for peace may be that this time Americans are part of an international force. It is not us alone against Vietnam or Korea. It is the U.S. as a small part of a NATO force against one lone despot, Slobodan Milosevic.
Or, perhaps, it is what one might call the "hygienic" nature of today's limited air strikes (as opposed to long, drawn out ground wars) that makes women less opposed to military action. The less blood shed (at least by U.S. soldiers), the less opposition women would muster.
A final and most persuasive factor might be that women are now part of our fighting forces. Perhaps women's initiation into boot camp has made us less sentimental and more than just a bit tougher. The Pentagon reports women now comprise 14 percent of our enlisted personnel and 10 percent of the American NATO contingent. Nothing would make women less likely to shy away from combat than having to spend years training for it.
Personally, I believe all these factors and more account for women's apparent lessening opposition to war. Combat is a loathsome part of the real world. It is even sometimes preferable to a peace in which dictators slaughter innocents. The more women work outside the home, the more they leave behind the sheltered existence of the home environment. "Real world" issues now more heavily influence their world views.
Gone are the naive days of "Lysistrata," when "women said yes to men who said no" to the draft. Now women are not only supporting military action in almost the same proportions as men, they are signing up to take part in it.
Bonnie Erbe may be reached by e-mail at bonnieerbe@CompuServe.com