Last week I had the privilege of participating in a web radio discussion, Work/Life and the Military: What It’s Really Like to Work and Serve.  I was joined by host Katie Stanton from Fem 2.0, military blogger Liberal Army Wife and Diana Zuckerman, President of the National Research Center for Women an Families. 

The show was part of Fem 2.0's "Wake Up! This is the Reality" campaign to bring attention to the issues facing working families.

From the Fem 2.0 website:

Feminism 2.0 brings together the leadership of major women’s advocacy organizations and online women’s communities to further the connection between today’s issues and women’s voices. Feminism2.0 is intended for all women interested in better policy for women, families and society.

I was thrilled that Fem 2.0 was willing to tackle a frequently neglected demographic: the military family.

Our web radio conversation was long overdue and, I thought, quite informative.  As I wrote last week:

Work. Career,  Two incomes.

It's something that many people take for granted when the economy is booming.  Many of us rely on a second salary in the family to pay the bills or to have even a hope of saving for the future.  But what happens when the economy is in trouble, jobs are scarce, and you have to move every two years?  What happens when you move to a new city across the country or overseas, your spouse is deployed and you can't find quality day care so you can get back to work?

Welcome to the world of the military spouse.

According to Rand studies in 2002 and 2004, military spouses are employed at much lower rates than their civilian counterparts and they make less money for the same work.  These differences hold true even when accounting for education (milspouses have slightly more education than their civilian counterparts), age (milspouses are younger), and location (milspouses are more likely to live near major metropolitan areas).  Moreover, because military spouses are younger, they are much more likely to have young children at home.  

All of this leads to a working environment for military spouses that is sometimes difficult to overcome when the milspouse career path leads through 10 cities in 20 years.  In fact, service members with a spouse in the civilian work force are more likely to get out of the military than to make it a career.  Rather than saying, unrealistically, "Well, then maybe military spouses sholdn't work," we need to look at solutions to make working easier for those spouses. 

This isn't just about military spouses.  It's about retention in the military, national security and, yes, fiscal responsibility.  It costs money when a good soldier leaves the military because balancing life and the military has become too difficult for the military family.  Right now, military families are being strained to the breaking point by two wars.  We can't change that.  But we should push employers and our government to change what we can and make it a bit easier for military spouses to have a career.

During the radio show, we covered topics ranging from the challenges military spouses face in the workplace, to ways the Department of Defense or Congress can help, to changes already afoot to make working a bit easier for military spouses.

You can hear the full discussion below.  This week, you can also join in on the "Wake Up! This is the Reality" blog carnival.  So if you've got something to share about your own experiences as a working spouse in a military family, please join in!