Women are making up an increasing proportion of the U.S. armed forces, but female troops are 28% more likely than men to leave the military early, the Government Accountability Office found in a study released Tuesday.
The percentage of women serving in the military services rose slightly from 15.1% of the active-duty force in 2004 to 16.5% in 2018, the GAO found. The Congress-mandated study looked at personnel data from the Army, the Air Force, the Navy and the Marine Corps for the 15-year period that ended in 2018, the most recent year for which they had complete data.
The report’s authors found a variety of reasons that women are significantly more likely to leave the military earlier than their male counterparts, largely based on family-related and cultural issues, which the authors encouraged the Pentagon to address.