Females now comprise 14.7 percent of the armed forces, compared
to 14.1 percent in 1998. That translates into approximately 200,000
women who serve today as part of a 1.4-million active-duty force.
But despite the growing presence of women in the military services,
controversies linger in some areas, particularly on the subjects
of co-ed basic training and the suitability of female sailors to
serve onboard ships.
A Pentagon advisory group known as DACOWITS (Defense Advisory Committee
on Women in the Services) in recent years has advised the Defense
Department on these issues.
Established in 1951, the DACOWITS has 30 to 40 members who counsel
the secretary of defense on issues relating to women in the services.
A Pentagon spokesman told National Defense that members of DACOWITS
devote personal time and resources to meet with service men and
women around the world and “hear their concerns about matters
related to their work, their living environment, their opportunities
for advancement and their quality of life.”
Female officers and officer candidates interviewed for this story
generally agreed that, while controversial, gender-integrated training
can help build camaraderie among recruits.
U.S. Naval Academy senior and midshipman first-class NaTasha McEachin
said co-ed training should continue, because men and women are generally
tasked with the same jobs and must work together. Ninety percent
of jobs in the Navy are open to women, she noted. “It’s
a fact that men are more capable physically, but that does not mean
that women can’t do the job. If you’re going to be working
with people of the opposite sex, you’re going to need to train
with them.”
“I don’t have a problem with male-female training,”
said Cadet First Class Bethany Stott, a senior at the Air Force
Academy. “You’re going to have to work with them, so
you should be trained together,” she said. Stott said she
believes that the mostly co-ed training that female Air Force Academy
cadets go through make them more valuable to the military. “Women
at the Air Force Academy are just as eager as men to serve and die
for their country, if need be. There are certain career fields where
you might not want someone who couldn’t meet a certain physical
standard, but if they can pass the physical test, that’s cool.”
Female Air Force cadets, said Stott, have gone through extensive
training just to get where they are. “You wouldn’t be
here if you weren’t willing to do that stuff,” she said.
“You have to be someone special to be part of an academy or
join the military.”
About 18 percent of the U.S. Air Force members are female.
Army Lt. Col. Anita Dixon, now serving as a congressional fellow
to Rep. J.C. Watts, Jr., R-Okla., shared some of her experiences
during two tours of duty as a peacekeeper in Bosnia. Dixon said
that, because the military is now assigned more often to peace operations
than combat operations, this “makes the need for women as
peacekeepers quite evident.” Women make up about 14.8 percent
of the active-duty force.
“Women have a combination of qualities — a blend of
soldier and social worker [that is] essential to the job as peacekeeper,”
Dixon said. “Women play a crucial role in a variety of jobs,
and represent change in the way we serve our nation.”
However, not all service members favor efforts to standardize the
roles of men and women in uniform. Brig. Gen. Ann Dunwoody, commanding
officer of the Army’s only airborne support command, told
North Carolina’s Fayetteville Observer that “Women are
already forward deployed and engaged in today’s nonlinear
battlefield. … We have to be cautious about policy initiatives
that jeopardize our war-fighting direct-ground combat capability
for the sake of social experimentation,” she said.
“We serve in an integrated military, where diversity is considered
a strength,” Dunwoody said. “We no longer segregate
by race, gender or religion. We’re all one—we are all
soldiers.”
Last year, then-Texas Governor George W. Bush was asked about his
views on gender-integrated basic training. He referred to the work
that his national security advisor Condoleezza Rice did as a member
of the 1998 Federal Advisory Commission on Gender-Integrated Training
and Related issues, known as the Kassebaum-Baker Commission. Bush
was quoted as saying, “I think women in the military have
an important and good role, but the people who study the issue tell
me that the most effective training would be to have the genders
separated,” he said.
Among the most outspoken critics of mixed-gender basic training
is Elaine Donnelly, president of the Michigan-based Center for Military
Readiness. “Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has said
that he wants a faster, more deployable force. Co-ed training is
out of sync with that philosophy, as it is more expensive, less
efficient, creates problems that don’t need to exist and has
introduced sexual issues that don’t need to be there,”
she said in an interview.
Donnelly has initiated a campaign with 15 other advocacy groups
to end co-ed basic training in the Army, Navy and Air Force. The
Marine Corps has kept its basic training gender segregated and does
not plan to change that practice.
The coalition led by Donnelly sent a letter to Rumsfeld, asking
him to end co-ed basic training, citing disciplinary problems that
have been created in recent years, “as a direct result of
gender-integrated basic training in the military.”
The alliance, which included the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the
American Legion and the Center for Security Policy, charged that
“there is ample evidence that training men and women together
complicates and detracts from the training mission.” In contrast,
the Marine Corps, which conducts gender-separated basic training,
has enjoyed “remarkable success,” said the letter. The
coalition credits the Marines’ basic training policies with
the fact that their recruiting and retention numbers have remained
consistently high. The Army, Air Force and Navy, according to the
coalition, “have had to resort to costly bonuses, remedial
instruction and weeks of time-consuming ‘sensitivity training’
to counter the negative effects of co-ed basic training.”
Donnelly charged that “DACOWITS sees co-ed training as an
equal opportunity women’s issue, despite the information to
the contrary,” she said. “Co-ed training, at this point
of the transformation of the services, costs more, detracts from
discipline, and creates a need for an extra week of sensitivity
training during basic training. This is demoralizing.”
Women at Sea
In the U.S. Navy, women constitute 14.3 percent of the active-duty
force. Out of 55,000 women, about 18,000 serve on sea-duty—on
surface ships only, since they are not allowed aboard submarines.
Women have been stationed aboard combat ships since 1994, and the
proportion of women in ships’ crews continues to increase,
according to officials at the Bureau of Naval Medicine. “One
of the most important recent challenges at sea is the introduction
of women,” said Navy Cmdr. Tom Javery.
A physician who currently serves aboard the USS Tarawa (LHA), Javery
exp-lained why he believed the presence of women at sea complicates
the job of the health care provider. “When a man comes to
sick call with belly pain, it is probably one of two things —
flu or appendicitis. When a woman comes in, it can be one of 50
things,” he said.
Navy Cmdr. Josephine Brumit, a member of the Nurse Corps who is
based at the Bureau of Naval Medicine (BMED), in Washington, D.C.,
disagreed with Javery’s views. “There are many causes
of abdominal pain in both men and women and the work-up would be
similar for non-gender specific causes of abdominal pain,”
she said. Brumit admitted that female stomach pain must be taken
seriously because “there are important female specific ailments
to consider such as ectopic pregnancy, which can be fatal.”
However, she said, “testicular torsion, which is unique to
males, is another serious medical problem with potential adverse
outcome if not treated expediently.”
“Active-duty women are expected to plan their pregnancies
around sea duty to limit shipboard crew losses,” said Brumit.
However, according to Navy Personnel Command statistics, 9.6 percent
of women stationed aboard ships are lost each year due to pregnancy,
she said. Brumit related that women may stay in their posts at sea
until the 20th week of pregnancy, as long as pre-natal care is available
“within a time frame of six hours.” An unwanted pregnancy
potentially could derail a sailor’s chance for promotion,
because sea duty is “career enhancing,” she said. Many
sailors leave the ship because of pregnancy, and “we can’t
do anything about it,” even though contraception is provided,
said Brumit. “The Navy provides contraception to both male
and female personnel aboard ships, including emergency contraception,
which is an
FDA-approved method of using oral contraceptive pills with specific
dosing,” she said.
Another concern for women at sea, Brumit said, is the availability
of child care. Women who go to sea seek high-quality child care
services, especially if they serve aboard a ship for a long period
of time. DACOWITS has also addressed child care. A 1994 article
by the Navy Office of Information included a recommendation that
the Department of Defense should take additional steps to “encourage
expansion of the pool of child care services available to military
personnel and their families.”