COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: Women
National Guard Recruiters Think Pink
Patrice Walsh, WHAM Local
December 11, 2007
(Rochester, N.Y.) -- The U.S. Army National Guard is reaching out toattract more female recruits with glossy brochures that look like
teen magazines and pink accoutrement.
Girls will be girls and the Army National Guard wants them to know
they don't have to give up their softer side to be a soldier.
The National Guard campaign features glossy brochures that resemble
teen magazines. And, forget Army green, think pink as in baseball
caps and tee shirts, tank tops, even softballs.
Army National Guard Supply Sergeant Kellie Buchanan said, "I think
it's the smartest thing the National Guard has ever done…This isn't
just a men's army anymore."
Buchanan didn't need a pink baseball cap to convince her to enlist at
the age of 17, but she says it has definite appeal. She is a career
soldier who deals with military supplies.
She leaves the recruiting to her husband, Sergeant First Class Rob
Buchanan. He said it's tougher to recruit women.
"We obviously deal with families and parents and it's harder for them
to let their young daughter go into the military with so many
employments around the world," he said
Buchanan said most young men and women enlist because they want to
serve their country and the campaign emphasizes that women can do it all.
The softer sell is working. Of the 42 soldiers recruited in Rochester
this year, 17 percent are women.
The Buchanans have never been deployed. Kellie volunteered to serve
in Kuwait in 2003, but wasn't needed.
Now that she is pregnant with the couple's first child, she cannot be
deployed until her baby is six-months-old.
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