Can the Canadian Armed Forces Recruit More Women?

The most challenging marketing campaign ever undertaken in Canada was launched five years ago, on Feb. 19, 2016. On that day, then Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jonathan Vance announced that the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) would commit to increasing the number of women in uniform by one per cent per year, with the goal of reaching 25 per cent of all military personnel by 2026.

When Vance made that announcement, women comprised roughly 15 per cent of the military’s personnel, or 15,617. Now halfway to 2026, the figure is a little over 16 per cent, with the majority of women working as human resources, financial services and logistics officers, nurses and medical and supply techs. 

There were no illusions that this was anything but a stretch goal. The CAF’s own survey of Canadian women found that the military was second only to mining and banking as the least appealing career choice.

It may be a tough sell, yet the CAF persists. Over the past five years, it has thrown everything but the kitchen sink into recruiting women.

The CAF instituted a “try before you buy” initiative, called Women in Forces Program, that allowed potential recruits to be exposed to fitness training, tactical skills and hands-on exposure to a range of occupations. It hosted open houses with influencers to demonstrate what the military could offer female recruits. And it commissioned technology projects that would apply algorithms and machine learning to better target women who would be receptive to recruitment messages.

Some of the more creative ideas came from a “Tiger Team”, largely made up of female CAF members. They mocked up social media ads with sell lines such as “My bling are my medals” and “My war paint is camouflage”, with one featuring an image of a female soldier throwing a grenade accompanied by the caption, “Of course I throw like a girl, but I never miss.” (Perhaps wisely, the ads never saw the light of day.)

Basic training

For all this effort, recruiting gains have been hard to come by. Particularly frustrating has been the lacklustre performance of advertisements designed to channel prospects into the recruiting funnel. 

“The military is attempting to recruit more women with a set of assumptions that have proved to be rather false,” says Stéfanie von Hlatky, an associate professor in the department of political studies at Queen’s University. 

As von Hlatky points out, the CAF has been trying to understand what motivates or demotivates women to join the military. From focus groups and surveys, it learned that women tend to be motivated by the good salary and benefits of serving in the CAF and by the opportunity to help others. But they’re spooked by basic training and generally unaware of the varied employment opportunities that don’t involve combat. 

Based on the insights gleaned, the CAF tested whether social media ads designed to address these motivations and barriers would be persuasive: “9 out of 10 women succeed at basic training. Be one of them!” “Earn a salary while your education is paid for!” Ironically, women responded more positively to an image of the CAF badge than to the messages that directly captured their stated motivations and concerns.

Clearly, persuading women to consider the CAF is a confounding exercise. But why? And what messaging might hit the mark? Von Hlatky is working with marketing researchers at Smith School of Business, Laurence Ashworth and Tandy Thomas, on a number of studies involving consumer psychology and media analysis to understand what it would take to compel women to visit a recruitment centre or website. 

Segmenting the market

While their studies are ongoing, the researchers believe there are a couple of reasons why existing CAF ads are ineffective. One has to do with basing campaigns on self-reporting surveys—in which respondents share their motivations and explain their behaviours. This is a risky proposition; people may be happy to share what they think their motivation is but they’re often wrong. 

The other possibility is that focus group and survey participants are generally not CAF prospects. “The average woman is not going to join the military,” says Ashworth, Distinguished Faculty Fellow of Marketing. “There is literally nothing you can do to make them join the military. So if you ask women, on average, about their motivations, you may end up creating an ad that vaguely appeals to them, but if they’re never in the market for this product, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

Ashworth and von Hlatky want to avoid these pitfalls by conducting experiments using test ads that can be manipulated and allow for responses to be measured. They are also using a market segmentation approach of identifying subgroups of women who would be open to joining the CAF. After all, a barrier to an undifferentiated group of women may be a motivation for a select group.  

The researchers have two experiments underway using undergraduate students and an online panel of women and men under age 34. In one, they constructed a series of ads that tested various images. For example, one portrayed women in the minority and another in the majority. They found that ads showing women in the majority had a positive effect.

Significantly, both women and men reacted positively to recruitment ads featuring women front and centre. This undercuts the prevailing view in much of the CAF that recruitment ads appealing to women will turn off the main recruitment target: men. (There’s the well-travelled saying: “The more attractive you make the military look to women, the less attractive you make it look to men.”)

A second study, still ongoing, is testing the strength of role models in recruitment advertising. As von Hlatky points out, the CAF’s top brass regularly touts the success of female military leaders, yet this narrative isn’t reflected in recruitment ads.

“Women are portrayed often in very passive roles and by themselves,” she says. “In that younger category, we’re curious to see if you present a high-ranked woman as aspirational and attainable in the ads, would that role model actually resonate?” 

In future experiments, the researchers plan to test whether perceptions of the military have changed as a result of CAF community activities during the pandemic. They also want to flip the script on how basic training is positioned. Because previous research indicated women in general were intimidated by basic training, ads have played up the fact that most women pass. But it’s also possible that the sub-group of women who are open to a career in the CAF might be more attracted to basic training that is presented as a challenging yet attainable achievement. 

The picture in the media

Advertising, of course, is just one way that attitudes towards military life are shaped. Most of what Canadians know about the CAF comes from mass media—which issues are covered and how servicemen and women are portrayed. For this study, Thomas, Distinguished Faculty Fellow of Marketing, is using computer-assisted content analysis to study coverage in Canadian newspaper stories over the past 20 years. 

“What we were finding is that the media just keeps pushing this image of men being better than women in the military,” says Thomas. “Whenever women are mentioned, it’s often in a problem focus.” 

Over the past 20 years, there has been more media attention on discrimination, mental health and sexual harassment in various branches of the military. But there’s very little reporting on the value and contributions of women to the military or the impact of female leadership.

This does reflect reality: discrimination, mental health and harassment, significant concerns for both servicemen and women, are newsworthy issues. The result, however, is that these become the dominant headlines. 

“Think of it from a recruiting perspective,” says Thomas. “You have a young woman who's thinking, Should I go into the military? And what she's hearing are all these problems the military is struggling to fix. There is no counterbalanced narrative of the good things that are happening.”

Slow but steady?

The CAF will clearly not reach its female recruiting target by 2026. To do that, it would have to take in 3,500 women each year, and the military has never recruited more than 2,000 women in a year.

Is this a story of failure? It doesn’t feel that way.

To get more women to sign up, the CAF is fighting on two fronts. One is marketing. The CAF’s leaders have been eager to try new tactics and to drop those that don’t work. Harvesting guidance from the Queen’s study, relying less on mass marketing and more on market segmentation, and developing sharper messaging and positioning should all have a positive effect. The CAF may not reach its 25 per cent target but at least momentum will be maintained.

The other front is cultural transformation—to turn a masculine martial environment into one in which women, Indigenous and visible minorities can see themselves as full contributors. Again, the CAF has plenty of distance to cover but there is a well-intentioned effort to evolve into an inclusive military that is also an effective fighting force. At least the CAF leaders had the gumption to set a stretch (and very public) recruitment target five years ago. It’s more than just about any Canadian CEO—with an easier row to hoe—has been willing to do.

The fact is that the CAF is doing better than most militaries in integrating women in combat and trades positions. This is not a retention issue: There are few differences between men and women Regular Force members on their intentions to voluntarily release or satisfaction with their work.

“Ultimately, this is about bringing about cultural change both within the military and the Canadian population, and that’s not going to happen in five years,” says Thomas. “But the more women are in the military, the more the military changes as an institution and the more public views will change. Maybe 50 years from now we’ll be looking at a very different scenario.” 

The Queen’s research team includes Smith School of Business doctoral students Sarah Evans and Aybike Mutluoglu.