For years, I carried a deep frustration about being the "only."
If you served as a woman in the military, you know what it means to be the "only." The only woman in the platoon. The only woman in the briefing room. The only woman at the table. Sometimes the only woman in the entire building.
That experience is exhausting. It is also — and I want you to hear this clearly — one of the most powerful leadership development experiences a person can have.
The Weight of Being the Only
Let us be honest about what the experience actually costs before we talk about what it builds.
A 2025 systematic review of 19 qualitative studies involving female veterans across five countries found that women in the military were consistently described as outsiders — navigating environments that were not designed for them, performing under standards that were not applied equally, and carrying the additional burden of representing their entire gender in every room they entered.
The research also found that women who were the "only" in their units were more likely to experience isolation, hypervisibility, and the pressure to suppress aspects of their identity in order to be accepted. That is not a small thing. That is a sustained, cumulative psychological weight.
Alfred Adler would have recognized this dynamic immediately. He wrote extensively about what he called the masculine protest — the social pressure placed on women to prove themselves in male-dominated environments, to suppress their femininity, and to perform at a standard that was never applied equally. He was clear that this pressure was not a reflection of women's actual capacity. It was a reflection of a social structure that devalued women by design.
The weight is real. The inequity is real. And naming it is not complaining — it is diagnosis.
What the 'Only' Builds
But here is what the research also shows, and what I now know from lived experience: the experience of being the "only" builds something that cannot be taught in any classroom, replicated in any training program, or acquired by anyone who has not lived it.
It builds a calibrated self-awareness that most people never develop. When you cannot blend in, you are forced to know exactly who you are. You cannot coast on group identity or borrowed confidence. You have to find your own.
It builds the capacity to lead without validation. When you are the only one who looks like you in the room, you quickly learn that waiting for external approval is a losing strategy. You develop the ability to trust your own judgment, to act on your own conviction, and to move forward without consensus — which is, incidentally, exactly what the most effective leaders do.
It builds a perspective that is genuinely rare and genuinely valuable. Research on organizational diversity consistently shows that teams with diverse perspectives — including gender diversity — produce better outcomes, identify more creative solutions, and make fewer collective errors. The woman who has operated as the "only" brings a perspective that the room literally cannot generate without her.
And it builds resilience — not the performative kind, but the deep, structural kind that comes from having been tested and having held.
The OWNIT™ Framework: A Map for the Journey
Adler believed that the striving to overcome feelings of inferiority — when directed toward contribution rather than compensation — was the engine of human growth and achievement. He called this healthy striving social interest, or Gemeinschaftsgefühl: the drive to contribute to the community, to use one's unique gifts in service of something larger than oneself.
For women veterans who have been the "only," this framework is not abstract. It is a description of what you have already been doing.
- O — Own Your Story: Your experience as the "only" is not a footnote. It is a chapter. Own it fully — the weight and the gift.
- W — Work Your Gift: The gifts that were forged in the fire of being the "only" — the self-awareness, the independence, the perspective, the resilience — are the gifts you bring to every room you enter now.
- N — Navigate the Change: Transitioning from a world where you were the "only" to a world where you can choose your community is itself a kind of liberation. Navigate it with intention.
- I — Ignite Impact: The "only" who stayed, who led, who refused to disappear — you changed what the next generation believed was possible. That is impact. Build on it.
- T — Take Bold Action & Thrive: The legacy of the "only" is not survival. It is transformation. Take bold action in the direction of the life your service prepared you to build.
The Legacy of the 'Only'
You were the "only" — and you stayed. You led. You refused to disappear.
That is not a burden. That is a superpower.
This post draws on research from Smith, A., et al. (2025), Cedeno, R., & Torrico, T. J. (2024), Rupert, J., et al. (2009), and Armour, V. (n.d.). The OWNIT™ Framework is a proprietary coaching methodology developed by Renea Jones-Hudson, Founder and CEO of Beyond the Uniform Consulting Group.