An all-female F-15E Strike Eagle aircrew steps to the flight line in observation of Women’s History Month at Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England, on March 22, 2021. (Madeline Herzog/48th Fighter Wing Public Affairs)
The Air Force’s top civilian leader has directed the closure of a working group that since 2008 has sought to eliminate arbitrary barriers to women’s service, such as by providing equipment for female pilots who for decades relied on gear designed for men.
The Air Force Women’s Initiatives Team is among the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs across the federal government ordered to cease operations under executive orders signed by President Donald Trump as he took office.
A memo signed by acting Air Force secretary Gary Ashworth on Jan. 21 and obtained by The Washington Post directs the “disestablishment” of the Women’s Initiatives Team, “effective immediately,” along with other Air Force working groups that dealt with disability, LGBTQ and racial issues.
In response to questions from The Post, the Air Force said in a statement that its offices are “implementing all directives outlined in the Executive Orders issued by the President, and ensuring that they are carried out with utmost professionalism, efficiency and in alignment with national security objectives.”
The role of women in the military was a centerpiece of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bruising confirmation hearing earlier this month. Hegseth, a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, has drawn scrutiny for comments opposing a 2015 policy that allowed women to enter front-line combat jobs, but under questioning from lawmakers he appeared to retreat from that view. Instead, he said he was focused on ensuring that the standards for such roles have not changed to accommodate women.
“Women will have access to ground combat roles, combat roles, given the standards remain high,” Hegseth told Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a fellow Army veteran and proponent of women being allowed to serve in combat. “That’ll be one of the first things we do at the Pentagon is reviewing that in a gender-neutral way, ensuring readiness and meritocracy is front and center.”
It’s unclear how ending the Women’s Initiatives Team comports with that position. The group has not been focused on training standards, but instead on obstacles to women who are already performing their assigned jobs.
A spokesman for Hegseth did not respond to a request for comment. He has said that driving the administration’s decision to target the military’s DEI programs is a desire to “bring a war fighting ethos back to the Pentagon.” Trump, Hegseth said last month, wants a focus on “lethality, lethality, lethality,” and “everything else is gone.”
This week, the Air Force faced severe blowback - and was forced to backtrack - after briefly removing from its recruit-training curriculum educational films about the role that female pilots and the famed Black Tuskegee Airmen of World War II played in the service’s history. It appears in that case that in attempting to follow the administration’s vague DEI directives, officials overstepped.
In the Air Force, where women were not permitted to fly in combat until 1993, adapting to a growing female population has been particularly slow and hard-fought, advocates say.
Since 2019 alone, the Women’s Initiatives Team has secured permission for more pilots and crews to perform duties while pregnant; led development of a two-piece flight suit and “bladder relief system” for female Air Force and Navy pilots; and won authorization for a broader range of military hairstyles that accommodate flight helmets and do less damage to the scalp.
Air Force Lt. Col. Alea Nadeem, a reservist who headed the Women’s Initiatives Team, maintains that the program does not belong among the DEI initiatives that proliferated across government during the Biden administration. Rather, she said, it’s a working group that has operated for 17 years with a volunteer staff and negligible government funding.
Nadeem, 40, emphasized that every policy proposal the team made came backed by data and linked to job effectiveness.
“What I hope is that this administration really understands, this is ops and readiness for service women to do our jobs,” said Nadeem. “… We’re asking for your help to make us more lethal and more ready, and give us the equipment and resources that we need to do that.”
The two-piece flight suit in particular was a boon for women, who make up nearly 10 percent of pilots. Women service members, especially pilots and aircrew in front-zipping one-piece flight suits, commonly dehydrate themselves to avoid having to fully disrobe to urinate in the field or - at times a near impossibility - in the cockpit.
Nadeem said she believes the flight suit solution and bladder relief aids that her team lobbied for will be crucial for female pilots as the service plans to deploy more troops to bare-bones bases and far-flung airstrips in future years, which could exacerbate a documented pattern of urinary tract infections among deployed women.
Jessica Ruttenber, an Air Force lieutenant colonel and KC-135 refueling aircraft pilot who retired in 2021, said the work of the Women’s Initiatives Team is far from over, in part because members of her generation of female pilots and crew were generally unwilling to draw attention to themselves by asking for accommodations.
“They were still trying to survive, whether they perceived it or not, and that meant not asking for any special treatment - and to them, [special treatment] meant asking for a uniform that fit,” said Ruttenber, 46.
Nadeem’s project list, at the time of the dissolution memo, included procuring cold-weather maternity gear for pregnant women standing guard duty, and pushing for broader distribution of ballistic vests that accommodate the shape of a woman’s torso and don’t cause musculoskeletal damage over time.
She worries no one will step up to continue that work.
“I think the [military services] are scared, and they’re trying to lean in to what this administration wants,” Nadeem said. “And I understand that, but I think they cut to the bone. They cut too far.”
