This brief history of women in the Navy is intended to chart the progression of women’s
naval service, focusing on crucial turning points that opened up opportunities for women.
The most uplifting advancements for female sailors have come about quite recently.
You will see that these changes often came about under dire conditions
and were largely propelled by concerned activists, both inside and outside of the Navy. But the most
important shapers of policy tended to be patriotic female sailors who saw it as their mission
to better the nation’s fleet by expanding their role and by the small group of male
leaders who had their minds changed by the presence of their bluejacketed sisters.
While the United States Navy was formed back in 1775 and women served as volunteer nurses during
the American Civil War, women did not serve in an official capacity until Congress established
the Navy Nurse Corps in 1908. The original group of Navy nurses—known as the “Sacred Twenty” —went
to Portsmouth Naval Hospital, and soon, all naval bases had them. By 1919, 1,550 nurses had served
in the U.S. Navy at home, aboard hospital ships, and at wartime hospitals in Europe.
In addition to the establishment of the Navy Nurse Corps, another great advancement arrived
in the early twentieth century, the creation of Yeomen (F), the first female enlisted sailors.
As the world plunged into war, Congress passed a Naval Reserve Act to prepare the fleet for the
eventuality of the U.S. joining the conflict in Europe. The subsequent Naval Reserve Act of 1916
established a United States Naval Reserve Force, composed of U.S. citizens who enrolled for four
years. On March 14, 1917, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels ordered that women be allowed
to enroll as yeomen and radio electricians. When Secretary Daniels’ decision became public,
young women across the country swarmed the recruiting offices.
The Navy dubbed the women reservists yeomen (F), the “F” for female. Yeomen (F) primarily served in
secretarial and clerical positions, though some were translators, draftsmen, fingerprint experts,
and ship camouflage designers. In addition, Secretary Daniels ensured that these women
received equal pay, determined by rank, as their male counterparts. Although the 11,000
yeomen (F) sailors who served in the Navy during World War I had proven their value,
those admirals set in their early Navy traditions were happy to see them go when their four-year
term expired. For another twenty years, the Navy returned to a nearly all-male institution.
The situation changed abruptly in 1942, when, in the midst of World War II, the
armed forces desperately needed auxiliary forces to supplement the frantic manpower mobilization
caused by America’s entry into the war. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Congresswoman Edith
Nourse Rogers called for the establishment of military organizations for women.
President Franklin Roosevelt approved of this plan, signing it into law in July 1942.
Women who served in the Navy during World War II were known as WAVES, which stands for Women
Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service. Unlike the yeomen (F), enlisted WAVES could
rise as high as chief and could serve in 30 different ratings. Additionally, WAVES could
be commissioned officers, eventually ranking as high as captain. Though many WAVES served
in clerical roles like yeomen (F), thousands of WAVES performed previously atypical duties in
the aviation community, Judge Advocate General Corps, communications, intelligence, science,
and technology. The aviation community was particularly keen to incorporate the WAVES
into its shore-based services because that freed up men for shipboard duty.
In all, nearly 10,000 female officers and 81,000 enlisted women served between 1942 and 1945.
All kinds of women joined the Navy during World War II and for a variety of reasons. Patriotic
sentiment often stood at the forefront. One woman wrote, “WAVES are typical,
civic-minded American citizens….who possess the urge to serve their country.” Another WAVE wrote,
“Uncle Sam needed me. I know I’m doing my share to help our side win. I’m part of the backbone
on which the boys at the front rely.” Some chose the Navy rather than the Army because of family
connections or because their home was close to a prominent naval base. Some even joined because
the Navy’s designer uniforms appeared more attractive than those of the other services.
Like their predecessors in World War I, Navy WAVES were predominately white and middle class.
The Navy made little effort to recruit racial minorities, and African American
women were noticeably absent, even though they had served in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps
since its inception. It wasn’t until November 1944 that Harriet Ida Pickens and Frances Wills became
the first female African American Navy officers. Only by September 1945, the month the war ended,
did the Navy have an integrated WAVE corps, but with only 72 enlisted black personnel.
At the close of World War II, just like after World War I, most women were sent home from
their duties in the Navy. A crucial turning point for women, however, came in 1948, when President
Harry Truman signed the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act. This act gave women a permanent
place in the armed forces as both enlisted and commissioned officers. The act officially
disbanded the WAVES, although the acronym persisted for another quarter of a century.
But during the 1950s, Navy women again saw their chances for permanent status
imperiled. After a brief surge of female participation during the Korean War,
interest in military service diminished. Between 1952 and 1958, the total number of
female sailors dropped from over 9,000 to just 4,000. For Navy women, promotions were slow,
opportunities to enter technical fields were far fewer than in World War II,
and discriminatory policies discouraged married women from continuing on active
duty and prohibited mothers from serving. Rather than endure this injustice, many women gave up
on the Navy entirely. This stagnation of female enlistment persisted for another twenty years,
mostly due to male resistance and an unwillingness to deploy female sailors overseas. As early as
1965, female officers volunteered to serve in Vietnam, but the Navy steadfastly rejected them.
Eventually, the Navy devised a policy that only those female officers requested by
name by a commanding officer could go to Vietnam. Outside of the Navy Nurse Corps,
only nine female officers and no enlisted served in that conflict.
However, change was not too long in coming. Rapid and wide-sweeping social changes characterized
American society during the 1960s and 1970s, and women demanded—and received—a more equitable place
in society. Navy women were beneficiaries of some of these social upheavals,
and their horizons and opportunities broadened to match those of their
civilian sisters. Women’s rights eventually won over the Chief of Naval Operations,
Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, who undertook a modernization of fleet personnel policies.
Zumwalt hoped to build a Navy with no artificial barriers based on race, religion, or gender.
In August 1972, Admiral Zumwalt explained that he not only wanted women to serve at sea,
but he also wanted enlisted women to have access to all ratings. He wanted female
officers to exercise command ashore, NROTC college programs open to women,
and women to teach at joint service colleges. Zumwalt’s recommendations faced widespread
resistance among the senior staff, including one female officer, Captain Robin Quigley,
who was resistant to his idea because she believed that women could not serve in all
these capacities, including at sea, in aviation, or at the Naval Academy.
Not even the CNO could change the institution in one fell swoop,
and many of Zumwalt’s orders bore little fruit. He proposed opening all 70 ratings to women,
but soon the Bureau of Naval Personnel closed the 15 sea-intensive ratings. Additionally,
certain admirals told Zumwalt that they would not abide by his decree to put women to sea, because
part of the 1948 Armed Services Integration Act expressly prohibited women from performing duty
on combatant ships and aircraft. The act stated that women could serve only on hospital ships
and transports. Thus stymied by the institution, female sailors found a
way to deal with the problem. In November 1976, four enlisted women filed suit in U.S. District
Court in Washington, D.C., asking that this federal statute be ruled unconstitutional.
The plaintiffs claimed that the Navy discriminated against them and 21,870 other Navy women who
could not serve on any major Navy ships except hospital ships and transports. After two years
of litigation, on July 27, 1978, District Judge John Sirica ruled that the statute in question was
indeed unconstitutional. He reported that the statute kept women from “gaining access to a
wide range of opportunities for the development of job skills and areas of technical expertise.”
Although Sirica stopped short of ordering the Navy to send women to sea, the decision was
an important victory in that it put pressure on Congress, which then amended the 1948 act,
forcing the Navy to introduce the Women in Ships Program. Now women could serve permanently
in auxiliary and noncombatant ships and up to six months in any ship not slated for combat.
Four vessels—the repair ship USS Vulcan, submarine tender USS L.Y. Spear, destroyer tender USS
Samuel Gompers, and missile test ship USS Norton Sound—went to sea with 13 female officers and 336
female enlisted sailors. Reflecting the enthusiasm of women serving on these ships, Personnelman 1st
class Vickie Williamson declared, “It’s a good feeling knowing you’re helping to shape history.”
In 1979, 55 officers and 375 enlisted women became part of the crews of 21 ships.
As women gained access to sea duty, they also entered naval aviation and the service academy. In
March 1973, four female officers began training at the Naval Aviation Training Command at Pensacola.
Three years later, the first class to include female midshipmen entered the Naval Academy,
graduating 55 women in 1980.
If widespread social change characterized the 1970s, retrenchment described the 1980s.
Navy women solidified many of the advances they had made during the previous decade, and their
numbers swelled along with new job opportunities, command billets, and educational options.
At the same time, however, male resentment of women in the Navy simmered beneath the surface.
Most of this resentment melted away as women proved their abilities, but some problems arose,
including allegations of homosexuality, fraternization, and sexual harassment.
Importantly, female sailors could still not serve in combat.
While this barrier remained, women could never be equal participants in the male-dominated Navy.
The defining test for Navy women came in 1990 with American participation in the Persian Gulf War.
About 3,700 women participated in this war, serving on non-combat vessels. Support ships
with female crews—ammunition, supply, tenders, and oilers—performed vital logistical operations.
Female pilots served in two helicopter support squadrons;
women served as Seabees; and others handled cargo with a port unit stationed in Bahrain.
After the end of the Gulf War, in September 1991, the longtime problem of sexual harassment
in the Navy exploded with a fury at the Tailhook Association convention. During
this 1991 convention of naval aviators held in Las Vegas, after the symposia and panels were over,
drunken male pilots lined the hotel hallway outside the suites, groping women who passed
down their improvised gauntlet. At least 26 women, half of them naval officers,
were molested. Chief of Naval Operations Frank Kelso launched an investigation into the incident,
but it resulted in no charges against the perpetrators. Denied justice from the Navy,
the harassed women went public with their story. The subsequent Congressional investigation
of the abuses led to a promotion freeze on more than 5,000 naval officers until their
innocence could be proven. In the wake of Tailhook, Congress cut 10,000 Navy jobs,
and both Secretary of the Navy H. Lawrence Garrett III and CNO Frank Kelso were forced to retire.
Women’s performance during the Gulf War and their experiences at Tailhook elicited immediate demands
to reexamine the outmoded 1948 combat exclusion law. By the end of 1991, both houses of Congress
voted to change the law, authorizing women to fly in combat planes and serve on warships.
In April 1993, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin ordered the services to assign women to combat
air squadrons. In November, Congress opened jobs on combat ships to women.
These changes in Defense Department policy put women on more equal footing with men for career
and promotion opportunities. By 1995, Navy women could serve in 24 of the 26 officer communities
and in 91 of the 94 enlisted ratings. Nowhere was this progress more apparent than on aircraft
carriers. USS Dwight D. Eisenhower became the first combat vessel with a mixed crew and air
wing, and in October 1994, more than 400 women sailed on Eisenhower on a six-month deployment
to the Caribbean, Middle East, and Adriatic. Chief Petty Officer Chris Jackson remembered,
“I’ve waited my whole career to go on a carrier.” Yet, there was some resistance from the male crew.
The first six female aviators assigned to USS Eisenhower faced ostracism from
the male pilots. The cold shoulder got so bad that all of them eventually left the carrier.
Over the years, women have made great strides in the Navy. The unthinkable—women’s permanent
military service—became possible. But this story was not always a happy one.
We must admit that it was an uneven and often uncertain progress for women. Sadly,
women’s advancement in the Navy did not even mirror the situation of women in American society;
equal rights for Navy women typically lagged behind the civilian sector. Yet the story of Navy
women is also one of dedication and valor. They proudly chose to serve their country as part of
the U.S. Navy and pursued their goal with dogged determination. Women now make up approximately 19%
of all enlisted naval personnel. We must honor the women who broke down those barriers for making
our modern Navy possible. As well, we should also applaud the men who changed their opinions about
women and advocated on their behalf. Without their acceptance, change would not have been possible.
It is more than fair to say, then, that this story is incomplete; there are still steps
that need to be taken to increase women’s opportunities and equality in the Navy.
Women now have the chance to serve on submarines and are allowed to apply
to train for Special Forces billets. We know conclusively that Navy women are making their mark
and that the Navy is at long last ready to give them the full opportunity.