Peer effects on female soldiers' aspirations in the Norwegian Army

Abstract

This study is motivated by the effort of the Norwegian Government and the Norwegian Armed Forces to reduce the female flight from Army ranks and looks into peer effects among conscripts in gender mixed rooms in the Norwegian Army s Brigade North. The main research question is whether peers exogenous attitudes affect female conscripts preferences for working in the Armed Forces post military service. The study benefits from of the natural experiment of random assignment of soldiers to gender mixed rooms where male and female soldiers cohabitate. It avoids the potential reflection problem in the study of peer effects by focusing exclusively on exogenous peer characteristics as the identification strategy; if peers exogenous characteristics measured at enrolment have an effect on roommates outcome after eight weeks of cohabiting in gender-mixed rooms. This is investigated by using extensive survey data from the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) collected at enrolment and after eight weeks of basic training. The regression results indicate that female soldiers preferences are stable and that peer attitudes on gender equality in the Armed Forces do not have a large and significant impact on female soldiers preferences for future service. Female soldiers that complete basic training are highly motivated and possibly unreceptive to peer influence in the short run. The female soldiers serving in Brigade North thus appear to have consistent preferences for service, which indicates that there are other factors than fellow soldiers attitudes which influence their plans for a taking a job in the Armed Forces post military service.