MILITARY ENVIRONMENT AND FECUNDITY : A STUDY OF WOMEN IN UNIFORM.

Fecundity is an area where individual experiences, community belief and anecdotes cloud scientific evidence. It has been a common belief that working women experience various types of subfecundity like infertility, abortion and prolonged waiting time for pregnancy. Work environment may be contributing to this end, besides the delay in starting a reproductive career. Since working women in military environment are exposed to factors like mobility, shift duty, anaesthetic gases etc, it was decided to study their fecundity vis-a-vis housewives of same sodo economic status. In this study 204 subjects returned the questionnaire with a response rate of 68%. It was found that higher shades of subfecundity exist among women engaged in military service but does not reach the level of statistical significance (p=>0.05) to attribute it to the work environment.