The Incidence of Sexual Harassment Among Female Vietnam War Era Veterans with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms
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California State University, San Bernardino CSUSB ScholarWorks Theses Digitization Project John M. Pfau Library 1998 The incidence of sexual harassment among female Vietnam War era veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms Carolyn Bong Ai Ogden Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project Part of the Gender and Sexuality Commons Recommended Citation Ogden, Carolyn Bong Ai, "The incidence of sexual harassment among female Vietnam War era veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms" (1998). Theses Digitization Project. 1456. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/1456 This Project is brought to you for free and open access by the John M. Pfau Library at CSUSB ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses Digitization Project by an authorized administrator of CSUSB ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE INCIDENCE OF SEXUiUlj HARASSMENT AMONG FEMALE VIETNAM WAR ERA VETERANS WITH POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER SYMPTOMS A Project Presented to the Faculty of California State University, San Bernardino In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Social Work by Carolyn Bong Ai Ogden June 1998 THE INCIDENCE OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT AMONG FEMALE VIETNAM WAR ERA VETERANS WITH POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER SYMPTOMS A Project Presented to the Faculty of California State University, San Bernardino by Carolyn Bong Ai Ogden June 1998 Approved by: Dr. Ma:^]orie H\int ate Project Advisor, Social Work Dr. Rosemary Mccaslin, Co-Chair, Date Research Sequence, Social Work (c) 1998 Carolyn B. Ogden. All rights reserved I don't regret going [to Vietnam]. It was awful and awesome at the same time. It has given me my greatest strengths and my greatest vulnerabilities. —a participant in this study, 1998 ABSTRACT A questionnaire of 86,questions was completed by 64 female U.S. Vietnam War era veterans. Study participants who e2{perienced sexual harassment during their military service had significantly (a = .05) different patterns of work, marriage, and divorce; rank and length of military service; correspondence with relatives during military service; degree of disappointment with their homecoming receptions; feelings about involvement in the war; and affiliation with postwar (veterans) organizations. Sexual harassment was found to be a significant predictor of a certain type of PTSD symptoms; the results suggest that, when present, sexual harassment may be responsible in this population for a degree of this type of PTSD symptomatology that is comparable in magnitude to that produced by all other wartime stressors. Written responses to open-ended questions suggest reasons for these results and provide insight into the experiences of the study population. Ill ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My thanks goes first to iny husband and three sons for their limitless encouragement and emotional support of all my scholarly endeavors, and especially for providing the essential diversions of family life that helped me maintain a balance in my life throughout the writing of this project. My deep thanks also goes to Dr. Marjorie Hunt, my project advisor, for her brilliance, dedication, and unwavering support for and belief in my project; to Kathryn for her support, encouragement, and historical guidance; and to Doug for his invaluable criticism and editing of my manuscript. Many other exceedingly helpful persons, too numerous to name, read and criticized portions of my manuscript, suggested key resources, provided wisdom and insight, and served as sounding boards for my ideas as I struggled to clarify and organize my research in a scholarly manner. I am especially indebted to several mental health clinicians committed to serving the vetera.ns of wars, who gave freely of their time, advice, esspertise, and insights, and to several members of veterans organizations coinmitted to IV increasing the visibility of women veterans, who provided me with their spontaneous assistance. Finally, my heartfelt thanks goes to all the female Vietnam War era veterans who participated in this study. Although support for American men who were on active duty during the historical Vietnam War era has been vital, recognizing the distinguished military women who served is equally important. This project could not exist without the help of these extraordinary women, who are in eveiry sense notable heroines in their own right. By sharing their poignant and intimate stories about their personal experiences as women in the military, they have turned this study into a profound literary journey that reveals how one's greatest vulnerabilities can be turned into one's greatest strengths. V To my husband and sons CONTENTS Abstract .... iii Acknowledgments iy bist of Tables ix List of Figures x Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Problem Statement . i Problem Definition .. .. .. 2 Chapter 2. Literature Review . 4 Summary 8 Chapter 3. Methods . 10 Design of the Study . ... .. 10 Research Question 10 Sampling n Data Collection and Instrument . 12 Strengths and Limitations of the Study . .... 15 VI Chapter 4. Results . .. .. ...... .. .... ...... 19 Demographics ... .... ..... 20 Feelings About the War and Militairy Service .. 21 Gender Issues. .. .. ... 22 Sexual Harassment , 24 The Wartime Environment 34 Homecoming 35 Current Syir^toms .. 38 Willingness to Serve Again 40 Chapter 5. Statistical Analysis 41 Results of t Tests . .. 41 Principal Components Analysis 43 Comparison of Factor Analysis and t Tests 45 Multivariate Analysis of Variance 47 Chapter 6. Conclusions 55 Relevance to Social Work Practice . .... 55 Future Research 60 Appendix A. Letters, Forms and Statements 61 Appendix B. Questionnaire . 66 Appendix C. Data Reduction . 81 Appendix D. t Tests 87 VIX Appendix E. Principal Components. 88 Appendix F. What They Learned . 95 References . 101 Vlll LIST OF TABLES 5.1 Biographic-Demographic Factor Stommary . ,.. 44 5.2 Symptom Factor Siammary . ....... .... .... .. 45 5.3 Significant Effects in Univariate F Tests . ... 50 5.4 Significant EffesCts in Tests . ....... : . 5l IX ^ , LIST OF FIGURES 5.1 Scatter diagram of the 64 participants in this study showing Symptom Factor 1 (Unesspressive PTSD) and the group variables sexual harassment and sexual harassment reporting^ ..... 52 5.2 Scatter diagram of the 64 participants in this study showing work during military service and the symptom factors Unexpressive PTSD and E3^ressive PTSD. .'. '. ■. 53 5.3 Scatter diagram of the 64 participants in this study showing sexual harassment reporting and the symptom factors Unexpressive PTSD and Expressive PTSD. 54 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Problem Statement The social revolution of the 1960s exposed sexuality in all its manifestations to a general population of women in the United States who were trained traditionally to be demure at any mention of sex. In the same decade, young women with varying degrees of sexual knowledge and sexual experience volunteered to participate in the war effort in Vietnam. Although an estimated 86% of the 11,000 U.S. military women who served in the Vietnam War era were nurses trained to deal with death, they were ill-prepared for the relentless horror of the war. They were also at an age when most were beginning to discover what it means to be a woman. They dressed in male issue and were thrust into the tight, restricted, and unnatural environment of men at war in a foreign land. They struggled with gender identity. Their male counterparts were mostly young draftees who in civilian life had just begun role exploration (Longres, 1995). The abrupt transfer to Vietnam imposed upon them the need to prove their manhood in battle and their personal sexual prowess among the immediate female population. Upon the military women from 1965 to 1973 fell not only the trauma of witnessing the war's cost in hxaman lives, but a more pervasive traxima of sexual harassment by men with whom they worked for a common cause. Problem Definition Women veterans of the Vietnam War era who were es^osed to war stress experienced profound readjustment problems related to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms upon return to civilian life (Grossman et al., 1997). A critical review of the literature conducted by Furey (1991) strongly suggests the need for gender-specific research on these women. Sexual harassment experienced by women veterans resulted in profoxand psychological aftereffects that have been determined by diagnosticians for the Veterans Administration (VA) to be gender-specific factors in the incidence of PTSD symptoms among women veterans of the Vietnam era. According to Furey (1991), exposure to war traxima collectively impacted female veterans both psychologically and emotionally and in all likelihood resulted in the prevalence of PTSD symptoms among this distinctive population. In this Study, the term sexual harassmf?nt is a collective denotation of four types and degrees of harassment: visual (e.g., ogling, leering), verbal (e.g., whistling, catcalling, insinuating, propositioning), tactile (e.g., touching, physical abuses assault), and intr-usive (e.g., rape). The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. fourth edition (American Psychiatric Associatioih, 1994) establishes sexual harassment as a traxjma that may induce symptoms of PTSD. An essential feature of PTSD symptoms is "the development of characteristic symptoms following e^qjosure to an extreme , traumatic stressor involving direct personal experience of an event that involves...threat to one's