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Benefits of military service also for women? There are many - Israeli Jews (I'm talking specifically about Jews - not all citizens) currently once again have above replacement fertility rates - above 2.1 kids per woman. This rise of fertility has been attributed to compulsory military service for women - female soldiers get educated about the importance of motherhood for the nation's future. Women also become more patriotic after serving in the army. Whereas in Europe, it has been observed that there is a big gap in patriotism between men and women. Also in Poland this is the case - women much more often than men vote for very left-wing and unpatriotic parties. In Israel that's not the case:
^^^
Israel has achieved the above replacement level thanks to compulsory military service for women, which changed their mentality.
Here is a good article about it, I'm posting Google translation to English:
"The demographic success of Jews in Israel, i.e. the secret lies in the minds of women":
https://wpolityce-pl.translate.goog...wi-sekret?_x_tr_sl=pl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=pl
"(...) Nobody will force women to bear children today. They themselves must want to be mothers with many children, which in today's world - focused on consumption, self-realization and entertainment - is rather rare.
In Israel, it was successful. Families with many children, which in the 1970s were limited only to orthodox Jewish communities, are now becoming a cultural norm again. The religious premises did not turn out to be decisive, because the followers of Orthodox Judaism constitute only a dozen or so percent of the Jewish population, and the society of Israel is one of the most secularized in the world. However, the issue of national consciousness turned out to be crucial.
Something forces Israeli women to give up the offers of an easy, light and pleasant life offered by today's world, and choose childbirth, upbringing, loss of free time, restriction of professional opportunities, retardation or end of career, etc. Why Jewish women in Israel make different choices life than their peers in Western countries? (Of course, this does not apply to all Israeli women, but to a large enough number of them to change the demographic trend in the country.)
It may sound pathetic, but it is true. They are aware that they are responsible for the fate of the nation, that the future of Israel rests on them, that if they do not have children, Adolf Hitler will achieve his victory from beyond the grave - the Jewish nation will cease to exist.
It was instilled in them in school and after-school classes, but compulsory military service, which for women lasts two years, was decisive.
There they see that their nation is in a state of constant war; they feel an existential threat to their community; recognize that independence is not given once and for all; they realize how thin a hair hangs on their nation's future; they realize how important the attitude of each of them is in the post entrusted to it. During the action, they experience that the life of one depends on the behavior of the other. They experience hardships, nuisance and humiliation, but they know it makes sense. They learn duty and sacrifice for their relatives and for the whole community. They know that they are part of one great collective organism for which they also feel responsible.
In this situation, the selfish refusal to have children appears as a denial of all their service, abandonment of the post, betrayal of the nation. Conversely, the birth and upbringing of children gives life an internal coherence and a sense of meaning.
The case of Israel is important in the context of nations undergoing a demographic collapse and threatened with being dominated by more numerous neighbors. (...)"
