Female Military Experience Shared
by Yelena Mandenberg

On Tuesday, March 11, Kingsborough students were invited to hear about what joining the military is like for females.

Prior to joining the army the guest speaker Mariel Sosa was a stereotypical girl: she went to a high school that specialized in fashion, was obsessed with makeup and clothes. After high school, she went to college and got her bachelor's degree in social work. Two weeks before her graduation she decided social work was not for her, so randomly she decided to join the army.

She was interested in the benefits joining the Army had: she wanted to travel, she wanted the discipline the army offers and she wanted to do something completely new and unexpected. She also had a lot of debt and student loans that she did not know how to pay off which the army wound up paying for her.

She talked about what her Army experience was like starting out at Ft. Campbell in Kentucky. She was deployed to Iraq twice, each time for a year where she was stationed at LSA Anaconda, in Balad.

A big problem for women in the army is inequality. Out of the 200 people in her unit, 90 were female. The sexual disparity started as soon as Sosa shipped off for basic training.

Women are generally expected to do a lot less exercise than men. The standard for jogging, for example, is that women have to jog two miles in about 20 minutes, and men in 13 minutes. However, the more you were able to do, the more respect you earned.

Good-looking women frequently took advantage of the sergeants, and most of the male sergeants were flirtatious. It was common to have the males make jokes at the expense of the females, and ogling was also considered normal.

Women drill sergeants are, according to Sosa, the worst. They are a lot harder because they have more to prove.

To report sexual harassment a complaint must be lodged and a record must be kept of each time it happens.

Sosa says she was lucky that her sergeant was a nice guy.

Sosa's job in Iraq was cargo specialist, which is basically transportation support, shipping important cargo all over Iraq. Sosa says she was terrible at her job, having always been a clumsy person, and she used to drop and break all the equipment she was supposed to be transporting.

A lot of things change once you enter the army: you basically have all your control taken away from you. Everyone has to walk around with a “battle buddy” just in case something happens, and some areas are so desolate that no one wants to go alone.

They force you to do all this exercise and become an active person, even if you have never done anything athletic in your life. If you gain too much weight they force you to do extra exercise.

A lot about your appearance has to change for both women and men. Nails have to be a quarter-inch, hair has to be less than four inches, no dreads or braids, and makeup is allowed but has to match the uniform.

It was really hard for Sosa to adapt to being in a place where people were in her face every day telling her what to do and what to look like and how to act.

Living with 90 other females was annoying, says Sosa. There was always a lot of drama and complaining with women living in one small place. When they first got phone privileges in basic training, all the girls cried and became hysterical which caused the loss of their phone privileges.

LSA Anaconda was mainly a shipping base. Although the area it is in is relatively calm, the base would be mortared often. There was a case where the postal exchange at their base was mortared and four people died.

No place in the middle of a war is easy. Sosa had many late nights guarding the barracks, which she says can be very traumatizing, just sitting and waiting to be attacked.

In Iraq, their compound was located next to a trash incinerator area. Sosa has now developed asthma from breathing in that air in all the time. She also sustained a knee injury, and has hearing problems.

After she was discharged Sosa went back to college to get her master's degree in social work. She currently works for the government in an agency that deals with war veterans who are struggling. Eventually she would like to get out of that world and do something completely different, like be a guidance counselor at a high school.

Dealing with other war veterans makes her relive her own experiences and dealing with that every day is tough.

After she came back from Iraq she stayed home a lot, feeling uneasy in crowded subway cars and loud sounds made her feel like she was being mortared again in Iraq.  

Joining the army Sosa realized many things about herself she never knew before. She does not appear hardened like some war veterans, and her demeanor remained very fun and upbeat.

Even after all the experiences she had in Iraq, she does not regret joining the military at all. It was a turning point in her life, and it worked out well.