The recent decision by the Secretary of the Navy to name a new cargo ship after farm labor leader Cesar Chavez apparently has rankled conservatives in Congress. The ship, a dry cargo and ammunition ship under construction in San …
It appears the lawyers are finally getting into the game. In November, a student team led by Professor Anne Coughlin of the University of Virginia Law School announced that they are going to challenge the combat exclusion …
Sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape are problems that undermine military readiness, reduce morale, harm retention and destroy lives, yet they persist. The issue has been studied ad nauseum with scant progress. Recently, a small group of former service men and women decided to take the fight to the courts. This brave group is …
It appears that we are finally withdrawing from Iraq after eight years there. It is about time. We went in with the stated objective of finding and destroying nuclear weapons and Iraq’s other weapons of mass destruction. We also decided to topple the Saddam Hussein regime with the stated objective of bringing democracy (and …
I finally had the opportunity to tour a Trident-class submarine; you know, the large ballistic missile boats, four of which are soon to be home to several women officers. I was surprised at how big it was inside…yet not. Being a surface sailor, I was trying to visualize how this ship could be configured to accommodate enlisted …
Navy aviation is celebrating its 100 year anniversary this year, and there have been many celebrations throughout the aviation community. Women have been part of the naval aviation community since 1974. That’s 37 years, or more than a third of naval aviation’s history. They were restricted to so-called non-combat aircraft until …
September 9th is my cousin Laura’s birthday. She would have been 62. She died Wednesday, of lung cancer, shortly after I arrived from a 14-hour marathon drive from Bremerton, Wash. On my way down, I prayed that she would die peacefully. Instead she died gasping for her last breaths. It was horrific and heartbreaking.
In this …
Let the generations know that women in uniform also guaranteed their freedom. That our resolve was just as great as the brave men who stood among us. And with victory our hearts were just as full and beat just as fast – that the tears fell just as hard for those we left behind.
— World War II Army Nurse.
Those …
National Public Radio (NPR) recently did a segment on the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and its new superintendent, Rear Admiral Sandra Stosz. The Coast Guard has been at the forefront of expanding opportunities for women since 1977 when it opened all of its jobs to women. It even decided to admit women to the Coast Guard Academy in 1975, …
As the first woman to command a commissioned Navy vessel in 1990, I have been asked to comment on many other firsts. I recently was asked by CBS News to comment on the assignment of Brigadier General Loretta Reynolds as the first female commanding general of the Marine Recruiting Depot at Parris Island, N.C. Simultaneously, I also …
In a turnabout, apparently initiated by the Obama administration, the ban on gays serving openly in the military — “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — is back on the books. After having been rescinded by Congress in December, gay rights groups celebrated their long-overdue victory. But then it became bogged down by a Defense Department …
As the author of Breaking Through the Brass Ceiling: Strategies of Success for Elite Military Women, I was recently interviewed for an upcoming edition of the CBS Early Show. They’re doing a segment on Brigadier General Loretta Reynolds, USMC, who has recently been assigned as the Commanding General of the Marine Corps Recruiting …
The story seems too good to be true, at least for this old (female) salt: a truly gender-neutral military, based on capabilities and not gender!
Wow. But here’s the catch…gender norms are still being applied, and the same old anti-women-in-combat arguments are surfacing:
If I see that it’s a woman on the receiving end of …