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Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Military leadership

Today's news is filled with a study done for Congress that concludes that the US military has too many whites and men in the officer corps. Just imagine, only 16% of all officers are women! Oh, the horror!

According to the official statistics of the US Army, women make up about 15.5% of all army personnel (including reserves and National Guard). That means that women are over-represented among the officers.

According to the Population Reference Bureau, the numbers of blacks in the military has been declining for about 20 years. In 2005, those joining the military were 14% black. I did not find any reliable figures for the years after that. Meanwhile, the percentage of black officers is about 11%. While this is clearly less than the total proportion of blacks, it is not that far off.

The truth is that off all the major institutions in the USA, the military is probably the most clearly integrated by race, sex and national origin. Any study that makes claims to the contrary is clearly erroneous.

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