/ en /news/serving-women-whove-served-their-country <span>Serving women who’ve served their country</span> <span><span>stuxbury</span></span> <span><time datetime="2025-03-26T14:08:46-04:00" title="Wednesday, March 26, 2025 - 2:08 pm">Wed, 03/26/2025 - 14:08</time> </span> <div> <div> <div class="copy-media paragraph l-constrain l-constrain--large paragraph--type-text-media paragraph--display-mode-default"> <div class="text"> <p dir="ltr"><span>Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a bipartisan bill to create a Michigan license plate for women veterans last November. The request for the license plate came from women veterans themselves&nbsp; — and grew from a ������-Dearborn-facilitated effort.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Students Katie Dreher and Hannah Stovall participated in the “Same Mission, Many Stories: Dialogues with Women Veterans” project at ������-Dearborn. They helped facilitate conversations with women veterans, giving them opportunities to share their experiences and listen to the stories of others. The students shared their findings at the Michigan Veterans Affairs Agency’s Women Veterans Conference in fall 2023.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>“We presented a list of what women veterans wanted during a statewide veterans conference, including the license plate,” Dreher says. “These women have already given so much. I was proud to give them a voice in front of all those people.”</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>“Same Mission, Many Stories” — an initiative of Michigan Humanities’&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.michiganhumanities.org/community-conversations/"><span>Community Conversations</span></a><span> program — took place at ������-Dearborn and Saginaw Valley State University in 2023 and included women veterans from all branches of the military.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>At ������-Dearborn, 25 metro Detroit-area veterans participated in facilitated discussions — led by Professor of Sociology Francine Banner, Professor of Health and Human Services Lisa Martin and students — about challenges they faced while serving in the military. ������-Dearborn’s Veterans Affairs Coordinator Tom Pitock reached out through his many military service-related networks across the state to let women veterans know about this opportunity.</span></p> </div> </div> </div> <div> <div class="copy-media paragraph l-constrain l-constrain--large paragraph--type-text-media paragraph--display-mode-default"> <figure class="captioned-image inline--left"> <img src="/sites/default/files/2025-03/Francine%20Banner.jpeg" alt="Professor Francine Banner"> <figcaption class="inline-caption"> Professor of Sociology Francine Banner </figcaption> </figure> <div class="text"> <p dir="ltr"><span>Martin — who is also ������-Dearborn’s Women and Gender Studies program director — says the “Same Mission, Many Stories” project not only reached policymakers, it also documented the history of challenges facing women veterans. “We need to record these narratives to better understand people’s life experiences so that they can be properly addressed. With the erasure that is happening in today’s society, work like this is so important. We don’t want to lose history, even when it’s a difficult topic to look at. We need to learn from it,” says Martin, noting that all participating veterans were assured anonymity since many of them talked about traumatic experiences.&nbsp;</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>“These veterans have experienced difficult emotional fallouts from their workplace that includes silence, shame and isolation. Sharing stories in a group setting builds connection and trust and reduces isolation,” Martin continues.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Stovall, a senior who transferred to ������-Ann Arbor last year and is majoring in public health, says the six weeks of facilitation training and practice she received prepared her to guide discussions. Stovall learned methods to move conversations forward in engaging and productive ways, such as using open-ended prompts, demonstrating nonverbal cues like nodding, and redirecting discussions when they stray too far from the topic at hand.</span><strong>&nbsp;</strong><span>For example, Stovall and Dreher used a picture of a service person coming home from deployment and being greeted by family to encourage the veterans to open up about their experiences. Martin notes that this technique is one way to spark a deep, complex conversation without making any one person’s feel too vulnerable.</span></p> </div> </div> </div> <div> <div class="copy-media paragraph l-constrain l-constrain--large paragraph--type-text-media paragraph--display-mode-default"> <figure class="captioned-image inline--right"> <img src="/sites/default/files/2025-03/lisa_martin_headshot.jpg" alt="Professor of Health and Human Services Lisa Martin"> <figcaption class="inline-caption"> Professor of Health and Human Services Lisa Martin </figcaption> </figure> <div class="text"> <p><span>Banner&nbsp;—&nbsp;who, along with Martin, supported the students during the sessions&nbsp;—&nbsp;says the photo elicited feelings of reconnection and concerns about reacclimation. It also brought up challenges women veterans face after coming home. “The need for child care and women's health care services was frequently brought up,” she says. “Many of the conversations had a similar theme — there need to be more resources that focus on the needs of women veterans.”</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>There are more than 230,000</span><strong>&nbsp;</strong><span>women actively serving in the military today. “Women are serving in combat zones in very dangerous situations. When looking at the contemporary military and the women who are actively serving, that’s more than 17 percent, but they are still marginalized and their service is not recognized at the same level,” Banner says. “But they have challenges that men do not because they have to navigate a very masculine environment while in the service and afterward when working with the VA. As more women continue to join the military and serve their country, it’s important to look at ways to help these service members and veterans be supported and seen.”</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Other recurring themes in the conversations included sexual harassment and assault, the improper fit of male-designed equipment, the job pressures of post-pregnancy weight loss, a lack of women-focused health care services and interacting with people who assume a male partner is the veteran.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Ashley Ross, the former director of programs and a current facilitator with Michigan Humanities, says the work that took place at ������-Dearborn impacted programming across the state. “During the 2023 conference, the Michigan Veterans Affairs Agency took note. They realized that these conversations were getting people to listen and to share their needs. The MVAA became interested in expanding this work,” she says.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span