More gay women than gay men dismissed from military

[thesquanderer]

According to CNN, "More women than men dismissed from military for being gay"

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/10/09/military.gays.dismissals/index.html

In addition, the Army removed more women under the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy at a greater rate than men when compared with the ratio of women to men in each service.

Of those discharged under the policy, 36 percent were women, although women make up only 14 percent of troops in the Army, the data showed.

I may get flamed for this, but...

I think there is an implication in the article that gay women are being treated more unfairly, are somehow being targeted for dismissal at a higher rate.

However, the comparison of the proportion of dismissed gay men and women to the overall proportion of men and women in the service is flawed. You'd have to know what percentage of servicemen are gay and what percentage of servicewomen are gay if you wanted to see whether one gender's gay population was indeed being dismissed at a greater rate than the other. And since, by definition under the current policy, most service people "don't tell," this figure is impossible to know.

Extrapolating from the estimated gay percentage of each gender in the general population isn't sensible, because the military is not necessarily representative of the population as a whole. (For example, the military has a greater percentage of African-Americans than does the general population.)

It is possible that military service may appeal to a higher percentage of gay women than straight women, and that it may appeal to a lower percentage of gay men than straight men. If that's the case, it's not impossible that there are more gay women than gay men in the military, and then one would expect a higher rate of dismissal as well. So this "news" may not be what it seems.

(Of course, the bigger issue is whether any of these people should be dismissed in the first place, but that's a whole different thread!)

[Captain Hilts]

1. It's always been that way. You get a woman AND a gay out with one stroke! nt

[yella_dawg]

2. Better question...

Are the actual dismissal numbers sufficiently large to make statistical analysis legitimate?