ABSTRACT
In 1973, the unpopular Vietnam-era draft was abolished and the All Volunteer Force established. The AVF lifted the 2 percent ceiling on the number of servicewomen in the U.S. Armed Forces, which had been imposed in 1948. Rather than accepting all of the physically and mentally qualifi ed males provided by the draft, the armed services selected the most qualifi ed of the volunteers, and in the process found themselves accepting increasing numbers of women and assigning women to a wider variety of military jobs. Before the decade ended, the military services decided that they needed to fi gure out how many military positions women could fi ll without weakening deployment and combat capabilities. The 1948 Act, much of which was still in effect, forbid women from serving aboard Navy vessels other than hospital ships and transports, and aircraft engaged in combat missions. These prohibitions left the services signifi cant fl exibility, and some important questions, pertaining to the assignment of women. Should women be trained to fl y noncombat aircraft, for example? How should the Army assign women to ensure that they would not be exposed to combat, and thus remain within the intent of the bill? The services wrestled with these questions for years, during which time the number of women in the service continued to grow. By the end of the decade, with the numbers of women volunteers on the rise, service leaders became increasingly uneasy and began to look for reasons to limit the number of women in the Armed Forces. The Navy and Marine Corps insisted that in order to be able to rotate sailors and Marines from shipboard to shore assignments, at least 55-75 percent of enlisted positions had to be fi lled by males, because legislation prohibited women serving aboard most vessels. The Air Force claimed that because so many bases lacked facilities (restrooms and barracks) for women, the number of positions women could fi ll was limited. The Army conducted a series of tests and studies that indicated the presence of women in the ranks did not adversely impact readiness and effi ciency. The test results surprised the Army, which had been searching for a reason to limit the number of women
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it was accepting. When the Secretary of Defense saw the test results, he ordered the chagrined Army to double its number of enlisted women by 1983. With the integration of women into more career fi elds and units and the dismantling of women’s separate career ladders, it became obvious to many in the military that there was no longer any reason to have a separate chain of command for women that administered (trained, assigned, disciplined and promoted) women separately from men-the need for separate women’s service components and directors was over. The fi rst service to completely disestablish its women’s component was the Navy, a process it began in 1972. The Air Force disestablished the WAF Director’s Offi ce in July 1976. The next offi ce to fall was that of the Director of Women Marines, formally abolished in 1977. The Women’s Army Corps, unlike the women’s networks in the other services, was a bona fi de corps in the Army, just like the Quartermaster Corps, Signal Corps, or Medical Corps. As such, it could not be reorganized or phased out but needed to be disestablished by legislation. This did not happen until October 1978. Two years earlier Congress forced the service academies to accept women. The academies are located at West Point, New York (Army); Annapolis, Maryland (Navy); Colorado Springs, Colorado (Air Force); and Groton, Connecticut (Coast Guard). Although the academies were unhappy with the law, they complied with it. The fi rst year they admitted limited numbers of women, but succeeding years slowly saw greater percentages of women in each class. The leadership at the academies as well as the alumni and the cadets themselves were concerned that the presence of women cadets would change or dilute the academy experience, where young cadets were hardened into military offi cers. Superintendent Sidney Berry at West Point publicly opposed women’s admission, threatened to resign if they came, and did not resign when they did. His attitude did nothing to help the fi rst 119 women cadets of the class of 1980. They were dispersed throughout the class and treated the same as the male cadets whenever possible. The women cadets themselves tried to be invisible. They wanted to be “cadets” rather than “women cadets.” They believed that gathering together would make them stand out, so they avoided doing anything in groups. The cadet offi cers (upperclassmen) did not allow the women cadets to wear skirts or make-up, although regulations permitted it. By the end of the year, 27 percent of the original 119 freshmen women had resigned, along with 22 percent of the male freshmen. Integration was a long, slow process that was tough on the women involved. Although the fi rst female cadets had no real role models to guide them in the quest to become Army offi cers, within 15 years the Army was regularly appointing female offi cers as faculty and company offi cers, thus exposing young cadets to female authority fi gures. Even after 15 years of integration, however, more than 70 percent of female cadets stated in a variety of surveys that they were regularly harassed at West Point, the worst record of any of the academies. At the Naval Academy, 81 women joined 1,212 men to form the class of 1980. Over the following four years, 26 of the women (32 percent) dropped out, as compared with the male rate of 27 percent. Just as at West Point, the avid press attention added to the women cadets’ stress and exacerbated the annoyance of their male peers. They also discovered that because Naval Academy rules only limited how much plebes (freshmen) could be harassed, once they got through their fi rst year, there were no limits on the extent of the harassment they could expect. The women were constantly insulted and some were molested. One reason why harassment often peaked during an individual’s last two years at the academy is that
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this was when it became apparent that women would stay in and become offi cers. Although the worst harassment was not offi cially condoned, midshipmen who complained or reported abuse were punished for having “ratted” on their peers. Thus many women midshipmen whose harassment levels were offi cially unacceptable did not report it and attempted to tough it out. The Air Force Academy leadership approached gender integration somewhat differently than the Army and Navy academies. They selected 157 women for the class of 1980, and deliberately clustered the women together and required them to wear skirts most of the time. The Academy appointed 15 women lieutenants who had received an abbreviated version of academy training to the staff to mentor the incoming female students. The fi rst year, the female attrition rate at the Air Force Academy was the lowest of all the services, even lower than that of the fi rstyear male students. However, the academy was not able to sustain its positive start. Twenty-fi ve years after the entrance of the fi rst women to the academy, several women cadets came forward and accused male cadets of raping them. The subsequent investigation revealed that physical attacks and abuse had been ongoing at the academy for years, but offi cial “blame the victim” type policies and a fear of ostracism for breaking the honor code combined had kept the majority of the victims quiet. The Air Force appointed new leadership to the academy and fi nally removed the well-known sign at the entryway to academy grounds that proclaimed, “Give Me Men.” At the Coast Guard Academy, more than 10 percent of the fi rst-year students were women and by the end of the fall semester at the academy, a woman was fi rst in academic standing. The school, however, had gender-based problems that were diffi cult to pinpoint but easier to quantify. The difference between men’s and women’s attrition rates has remained statistically higher here than at any other military academy; something makes life much tougher for women than for men at the Coast Guard Academy. The academy leadership is now attempting to trace the reasons for this differential so that they can take steps to counteract it. Other than the admission of women to the service academies, perhaps no other military integration issue caused as much interest in the press and public as the assignment of women as military pilots. The Navy was the fi rst service to accept women into its pilot training program in 1973, and six women graduated from the program in 1974 and became naval aviators. In 1983, female Navy aviators fl ew supplies to the besieged Marines in Beirut, and, in 1986, Air Force women served as pilots, copilots and boom operators on the KC-135 and KC-10 tankers that refueled FB-111s during the raid on Libya. By 1990, the Navy had 173 women pilots and 80 women NFOs on active duty. The Army began training women as helicopter pilots in 1974. By 1978, 16 female offi cers and 25 warrant offi cers had entered fl ight training; all but six eventually got their wings. These women understood that, although their positions were offi cially designated as “combat support,” their duties could easily take them into a combat situation. For example, they could be ordered to fl y supplies to combat troops or carry troops into combat. Although by law they could not fl y combat aircraft (aircraft that actually engaged an enemy in combat), they could still be exposed to enemy fi re in the course of performing their duties. The third service to train women as pilots was the Coast Guard, which began assigning women to fl ight training in 1975. The Air Force began training women as both pilots and navigators in 1976. The Air Force initially called the training a “test” to see if women were physically and mentally capable of piloting military
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aircraft. The female trainees proved beyond doubt that women were fully capable, and the Air Force began training women pilots for assignment to noncombat missions such as tanker refueling, weather reconnaissance, and aero medical airlift. As military women took to the skies for the fi rst time since World War II, the Navy decided to experiment with sending women to sea. In October 1972, the hospital ship Sanctuary sailed with a mixed gender crew aboard. Although the experiment was offi cially a success, proving that “women can perform every shipboard task with equal ease, expertise and dedication as men do,” the Navy did not appear to be anxious to integrate any more of its vessels. It would ultimately take a court case to prod the Navy into action (see below). The Coast Guard assigned women to sea duty as crew members aboard the Morganthau and the Gallatin in 1977. When the crews of both ships performed well and no problems arose, the Coast Guard lifted all restrictions on sea duty assignments for women the following year. In 1979, the Coast Guard made history by placing a woman in command of the cutter Cape Newagen. Although the Army, like the Coast Guard, was not constrained in its combat assignments by the 1948 Integration Act, the Army historically has had the most diffi culty with the combat issue. After the disestablishment of the Women’s Army Corps, the Army developed its own combat exclusion policy, implemented through the Direct Combat Probability Code (DCPC). The coding system evaluated every position in the Army based on its duties and the unit’s mission, tactical doctrine and position on the battlefi eld. The codes ranged from P1 to P7, with lower P ratings indicating a higher probability of routine engagement in direct combat. Women were prohibited from holding P1 positions. Operation Urgent Fury, the invasion of Grenada in 1983, was the fi rst test of the Army’s combat exclusion policy. Approximately 170 female soldiers deployed during the Operation, most of them members of Army units out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Female military police rode armed patrols, stood guard at checkpoints and perimeters, and guarded POW and detainee camps. Other female soldiers worked as members of maintenance and intelligence units or served as interrogators, signal and communications specialists, truck drivers and medical personnel. Twenty-six women were stevedores with a transportation company out of Fort Eustis, who worked loading captured weapons and ammunition onto ships and aircraft. One ordnance captain was responsible for detonating unexploded ammunition. Initially some military policewomen were sent back to Fort Bragg by the commander on the ground in Grenada because of the high risk of exposure to combat. The commanding general of the 82nd Airborne overrode the action and the women were returned to Grenada. The women of other services also participated in the operation. Coast Guard women crewed aboard vessels sent to patrol the waters around the island. An Air Force woman pilot delivered troops to the island, and women were fl ight engineers and loadmasters on other aircraft involved in the operation. In 1988, the Department of Defense (DOD) created the Risk Rule, which set a single evaluative standard for all the services to use when classifying specialties and units as male only. Women would be excluded from certain noncombat units and areas on the battlefi eld if the risks of exposure to direct combat, hostile fi re or capture were equal to or greater than the risk experienced by associated combat units in the same theater of operations. The Risk Rule and its application by DCPC was tested almost immediately when the U.S. invaded Panama during Operation Just Cause in 1989. Approximately
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800 servicewomen were involved in the operation. They were either already stationed in Panama or deployed from Fort Ord, California, or Fort Bragg, North Carolina. They made up 4 percent of the 18,400-man invasion force. Army women were MPs, truck drivers, helicopter pilots, or assigned to intelligence or signal corps units. Female helicopter pilots ferried combat soldiers under fi re into Panama, and one received the Air Medal. Female truck drivers delivered infantry troops into the downtown area around heavily defended Panamanian Defense Forces Headquarters. A supply offi cer transported 150 gallons of fuel through the streets of Panama City. Air Force women served as pilots, navigators, fl ight engineers and loadmasters or were involved in logistics, maintenance and administrative support. Army Captain Linda Bray, the commander of the 988th MP Company, became the best-known military woman of the invasion. One of the 988th’s missions was to seize a Panamanian Defense Force K-9 Corps stronghold, and Bray took part in a fi refi ght, fi ring at least one shot at enemy attackers. But the Army, the Pentagon and Congress did not want to admit that Bray and the women under her had participated in combat, because that would mean that the Army’s assignment policies had failed to protect women from combat. But when newspaper reporters in Panama heard Bray’s story and published it, the general public could not understand why the Army claimed Bray had not been in combat. The Army, concerned that its carefully drawn combat exclusion policies would be called into question, tried to prove that the “combat” involved did not occur at the time Bray was there. Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder brought the Army’s fears home to roost when she demanded that Congress take a careful look at the Pentagon’s combat exclusion policies. She even suggested that the Army open up a combat unit to women for a four-year “trial period.” Few other lawmakers were ready to take her suggestion seriously, however, and the controversy eventually died down.
