Lt. Col. Christine Mau made history as the first female F-35 pilot in the program. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Marleah Robertson)

Men and women experience war differently, new research shows. For women in the military social support appears even more vital for maintaining good psychological health, compared to their male peers. Yet social support may be more difficult to find with 85 percent of the active-duty force composed of male service members. According to some female service members, sometimes women in the military find themselves ostracized by their units and social support withheld by the male service members who surround them.

“Ostracism can produce long-term psychological and physical consequences,” said Dr. Kate McGraw, a 16-year Air Force veteran and former missile operations officer who is currently the associate director for psychological health clinical care at Deployment Health Clinical Center (DHCC).

McGraw spoke to a group of military women of all ranks as part of a recent panel about the experiences of women in the military at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial in Arlington, Virginia.

Ostracism socially excludes or rejects an individual or group. It does not discriminate in gender but can be more prevalent when there is a minority subset, such as female service members.

For women who enter previously male-only occupations in the military, the potential for ostracism is high, she explained. The behavior can be blatant or subtle. For instance, a new female Army Ranger trainee may not be invited to hang out with her male peers during break time, may be excluded from a group’s off-duty workout, or may enter a room occupied by her male peers and discover the conversation stops when she steps through the doorway.

Women have served in the American military in support roles as cooks, nurses and laundresses since 1775, a year before the country’s independence. Some even disguised themselves as men in order to serve illegally in the infantry. During World War II, Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) flew at 126 bases across the United States, towed targets for gunnery training and served as instrument instructors for the Eastern Flying Training Command. Other all-female units served in the Army and Navy. However, women weren’t officially recognized as part of the military until 1948. Since then, their roles have gradually expanded. The Defense Department broke through another barrier two years ago when it announced that it will rescind the exclusion on women in direct combat. Women will integrate in combat roles beginning Jan. 1, 2016.

Despite their improved legal status, it may still take some time before the old rules change and women are accepted and fully integrated into military culture, agreed members of the panel, which covered physical and psychological health topics from the book “Women at War,” edited by Elspeth Cameron Ritchie and Anne L. Naclerio. McGraw contributed a chapter to the book.

McGraw said that ostracism is a particular problem for mission readiness, since psychological health is key to unit and command mission readiness. The behavior affects not only those who are ostracized, but also those who witness or participate in social exclusion. Rigorous research is lacking on the topic she said. More work is required, McGraw added, to identify the psychological health concerns related to ostracism for both men and women in the military.