Women's History Month 2017

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Stories

Air Force Rugby Program Breaks Gender Barrier

Women's History Month: Celebrating Accomplished Army Women

NCO: Expanding Roles of Women in Military

Army Marks Women's History Month

New York Guard Seeks Women to Lead Armor, Field Artillery Units

Remembering Navy WAVES During Women’s History Month

Navy Celebrates 2017 Women's History Month

Warrant Officer Blazes Trail in Mississippi Guard

19 Ways Army Women Helped Make the 19th Amendment Possible

Missileers, Aircrews Make Military History

Army General Reflects on Women in the Military

Paths of Two Air Force Women ‘Firsts’ Crossed Over Great Falls

Women Celebrate 73 Years of Service to Marine Corps

Women Pilots Set the Standard in 1943

All-Female Missile Alert Crew Makes History

Former Band Soldier Found Sweet Notes Over 43-Year Career

Reflections of a West Pointer: Former Quartermaster Among First Women Admitted

Videos

A Soldier Wearing Protective Bomb Safety Gear

Legacy of Women Aviators Carries on at Fairchild Air Base

Photo Essay

Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Tyler Terrell plots a course during watch on the bridge of the amphibious dock landing ship USS Comstock.

U.S. Military Women Serve Worldwide

More Photo Essays

In the Spotlight

1700s

Women commonly served in "traditional" roles within the U.S. Army, such as cooks, laundresses, nurses and seamstresses. Military garrisons counted on these roles to make service members' lives tolerable. However, some women chose to forgo traditional roles by serving in combat alongside their husbands or disguised as men, while others served as spies.
Mary Ludwig, who earned the nickname Molly Pitcher, first entered the war record on June 28, 1778, when she signed up two years after her husband to serve with Capt. Francis Proctor's company in the Pennsylvania Artillery.

Deborah Sampson served for over a year in General Washington’s army disguised as a man. After she was wounded, her gender was discovered and she was honorably discharged. Later, she received a military pension from the Continental Congress.

1800s

Between 1802 and 1882 Congress authorized the Army to hire laundresses. The women, who often were the wives of enlisted men, received official rations. Their pay, however, came from the soldiers for whom they worked, with the rates set by the post commander.
During the Spanish-American War, the War Department quickly realized it needed nurses to care for soldiers wounded in battle and brought low by tropical diseases. By the end of the war, about 1,500 contract nurses had served in military hospitals, aboard the hospital ship Relief, in stateside camps and in the Philippine Islands, Puerto Rico and Hawaii.

They often worked in primitive, unsanitary conditions, sometimes as battles raged around them. They included almost 250 Catholic nuns and about 80 African-American women. Twenty-one nurses died in the line of duty, mostly from diseases like typhoid and yellow fever. The Army paid the nurses $30 a month, plus rations, but the women weren't granted pensions until 1922.
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker volunteered to care for wounded service members in the Union Army and was later appointed the first female surgeon. In 1865, she received the Medal of Honor for her work and is still the only woman to have received the award.

1900-1950

Feb. 2, 1901: Under the Army Reorganization Act Congress officially established the Army Nurse Corps.
Marine Corps Pvt. Opha May Johnson, 40, became the first female Marine. Johnson enlisted into the Marine Corps Reserve in August 1918.
Early in 1941 Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts met with General George C. Marshall, the Army's Chief of Staff, and informed him that she intended to introduce a bill to establish an Army women's corps, separate and distinct from the existing Army Nurse Corps.

It wasn't until Feb. 13, 1943, during World War II, that women came into the Marine Corps in force. A total of 23,145 officers and enlisted women served in more than 200 military assignments including parachute riggers, mechanics, radio operators, mapmakers, motor transport personnel and welders.
During World War II, Della H. Raney, a graduate of the Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing in Durham, N.C., became the first black nurse commissioned in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. She retired from the Army as a major in 1978.
July 7, 1948, the first six enlisted women were sworn into the Navy. Before this date, with the exception of nurses, women only served during times of war.

1951-1999

In 1968, the first woman was sworn into the Air National Guard following the passage of Public Law 90-130.The law grants women in the armed forces equal promotion and retirement rights and also removed the 2 percent restriction on the number of women who could serve.
In October 1978, in the wake of a court ruling that overturned statutes that forbade women from serving at sea, the Navy launched their Women in Navy Ships program and announced that they would assign 55 women officers and 375 female enlisted personnel to 21 ships during the next year.

The belief that only male officers could command was so firmly entrenched in the Army’s culture that it had been codified into U.S. law and Army regulations. Both 10 USC 3579 and Army Regulation 600-20 specifically prohibited the predominantly female Army Nurse Corps and Army Medical Specialist Corps officers from assuming command positions. In 1980, however, Congress amended §3579 to lift the outdated ban.
In 1988 NASA selected its first Navy woman as an astronaut, leading the way for women to join NASA.
On Feb. 27, 1991, the Black Hawk helicopter carrying Army Maj. Rhonda Cornum, a flight surgeon, was shot down during a search and rescue mission. Cornum, suffering a gunshot wound and two broken arms, was then captured and made a prisoner of war along with the other two survivors of the crash. She survived and retired in 2012 as a brigadier general. More than 41,000 women were deployed to the combat zone during the Persian Gulf War. Two were taken captive.

2000-2010

In 2000, Captain Kathleen McGrath became the first woman to command a U.S. Navy warship.
In 2002, Cadet First Class Sarah Salazar became the first Hispanic female regimental commander at the Coast Guard Academy.
On June 16, 2005, Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester was awarded the Silver Star for her actions during a firefight that took place outside Baghdad. This was the first Silver Star in U.S. military history awarded to a female soldier for direct combat action.

2008 witnessed the promotion of the Army's first four-star general, Ann E. Dunwoody, to serve as head of Army Materiel Command.
On April 9 , 2010, Lt. j.g. La'Shanda Holmes became the first African-American female helicopter pilot in the Coast Guard.

2011-Present

As of 2015, there are 201,413 female active duty service members.
August 2015 marked a milestone in military history; Army 1st Lt. Kristen Griest and Capt. Shaye Haver became the first two women ever to graduate from Army Ranger School.
In April 2016, the Army opened all positions in the armor, infantry and forward observer specialties to women.
On July 8, 2016, Coast Guard Cmdr. Zeita Merchant took command of Marine Safety Unit Chicago, becoming the first African-American female to command a Prevention/Marine Safety Unit/Office.

In January 2017, the Marine Corps made history as three enlisted female infantry Marines join an infantry battalion that was closed to them just one year before.

In the Spotlight

"Throughout our history, women have served our country with valor, from the battlefields of the Revolutionary War, to the deserts of Iraq, and mountains of Afghanistan. These women, military and civilian, continue to make great strides and break down barriers within DoD."

Source: DoD Memo

Blog

A smiling Kayla Williams on her return home from a deployment in Iraq.

Vet's Post-Army Career Highlights Resilience of Female Veterans

Female veterans aren’t always recognized like their male counterparts are, in civilian society or when they’re looking for the help they’ve earned. Blog