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.