Motivation and work engagement among female officers in the Army

It is imporant for the Army to retain challenging work tasks for both male and female military personnell while giving them opportunity to have a stable family situation.

Background: For almost twenty years there has been an aim of having at least twenty per cent female employees in the Norwegian Armed Forces [Meld.St. 36 (2006-2007)]. This aim has still not been achieved, and only eleven per cent of the officers in the Army are women. Most research on female soldiers have focused on whether women can meet the physical and mental demands needed in war. Few studies have focused on the working environment of female officers. To our knowledge, no Scandinavian studies have focused on the work engagement of this group of workers.
Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate the work factors female officers regarded as important for their work engagement and their motivation to stay in the Army until retirement.
Methods: Out of twenty-five female officers who volunteered to take part in the study, twelve were interviewed in depth with a semi-structured interview guide. The twelve interviewees were selected to give the participating population a variety in age, military education and geographical place of residence. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and thematically analyzed in accordance with Kvale and Brinkman (2015).
Results: The analysis shows that the women’s motivation for joining the Army was to have an active and challenging job with high physical demands. They held that the job had indeed given them challenging work tasks, and one reason for this was that they had got new work tasks through rather frequent changes in job positions. They appreciated that the physical demands were the same for the women as for the men. Early in their career, the (physically) active job and a feeling of mastery and development was motivating them. Later in the career, the peace keeping mission of the Army was one important factor for being highly engaged at work. It was challenging to find a suitable job-family balance because of much travelling and frequent changes in job positions. Therefore, the understanding and support from their partners were crucial for their motivation to stay in the Army. The more experienced officers had searched and got support from the “Military Female Network” whereas the younger officers did not feel such a network was necessary or appropriate.
Conclusion: The female officers did not demand particular adaptations in work based on gender, but they claimed that the work must be organized in such a way that both men and women can have challenging work tasks and opportunity to make a career in the Army while establishing a family with children.