Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks host a ceremony commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act of 1948 at the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., June 12, 2023. (John Wright/U.S. Air Force)
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Monday called female troops a necessary part of the world’s most-advanced fighting force as the Pentagon celebrated the 75th anniversary of a law that allowed women into the U.S. military on a full-time, permanent basis.
“The United States military needs women,” Austin told dozens of people who gathered in the Pentagon auditorium for the ceremony. “This is a priority for the Department of Defense.”
The Women’s Armed Services Integration Act was enacted June 12, 1948, and it permitted women for the first time to have careers in the military. Before the law took effect, women could only serve as nurses or in other limited capacities during wartime.
The law stemmed from a bill proposed in late 1947 and championed by Rep. Margaret Chase Smith, R-Maine, who was the first woman to serve in the House and Senate. There was considerable opposition to the bill in Congress, and it took months of negotiations to get the proposal approved by the House and Senate Armed Services committees.
Several prominent figures, including Army Gen. and future President Dwight D. Eisenhower, stood up for women’s rights to serve permanently in the military, which also meant giving them full benefits. Others who argued in favor of the law included Army Gen. Omar Bradley and then-Defense Secretary James Forrestal.
Four women who served in the military decades ago attended Monday’s ceremony at the Pentagon — former Marine field cook Norma Gene Rambow, former Women’s Army Corps cryptographer Marion Marques, former Navy Women’s Reserve corpsman Corinne Robinson and former Army imagery analyst Hilary Rosado. Rambow, who served during World War II, will turn 100 in September.
Former field cook Norma Rambow in her Marine Corps Reserve Sergeants uniform in Indianapolis. Rambow, who served during World War II, will turn 100 in September 2023. (Norma Gene Rambow Collection, Veterans History Project, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress)
“This anniversary serves as a timely opportunity to celebrate that tremendous talent, tenacity and expertise that women have long contributed to [the military’s] mission,” said Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, the first woman to hold her post. “Today, women are able to serve in the military regardless of their race or identity. … They can serve in combat roles, and they can become Army Rangers, fighter pilots and four-star generals.”
Though the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act opened the military to women on a full-time, permanent basis, it would be decades before they were allowed to take on all combat roles. Women finally were permitted to fly combat aircraft beginning in the early 1990s, and all direct combat roles were ordered to be opened to women by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in 2013. After a study and implementation period, Defense Secretary Ash Carter signed off on the final order to open all military jobs to women, without exception, in 2016.
“It has been a slow process,” Maj. Shaye Haver, who in 2015 became one of the first two women to graduate from Army Ranger School, said at the ceremony. “I am privileged to have grown up in an environment that has not constrained what I can and cannot do. I am humbled that my experiences have been afforded me because of the many women and men that have gone before us and championed these causes.”
Gen. Mark Milley, the Army chief of staff, congratulates then-1st Lt. Shaye Haver and the Army Ranger School Class in August 2015 during their graduation at Fort Benning, Ga., now Fort Moore. Haver and class member then-Capt. Kristen Griest became the first female graduates of the school. (U.S. Army photo)
Navy Vice Adm. Sara Joyner, who became the first female strike fighter pilot to command a fighter squadron, said she felt like an inferior midshipman when she was at the U.S. Naval Academy in the 1980s merely because she was female.
“You were a second-class citizen because you could not serve in combat,” Joyner said, adding she later found inspiration one day during a midshipman cruise when she met a female helicopter pilot.
“When I met her, I figured out women could fly,” she said. “Someday, I wanted to fly a jet off an aircraft carrier. So, that was where it started.”
Joyner flew A-4 Skyhawks and F/A-18s for the Navy and, in 2007, became the commander of Strike Fighter Squadron 105. She said she owes a big part of her life to the 1948 law and the gradual changes that followed, and she encouraged all women to serve if that’s where their hearts lie.
“My daughter is serving,” Joyner said. “Today is a … celebration of what continues today to open doors for women throughout the world.”
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Historian Timothy Francis, then-Rear Adm. Sara Joyner (middle), and then-Assistant Navy Secretary James Geurts (right) speak with guests after the ceremony commemorating the anniversary of the Battle of Midway at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, DC., in May 2021. (U.S. Marine Corps)
Hicks said just 55 women graduated from the Naval Academy in the first coed year in 1976. In the 2023 graduating class a couple of weeks ago, 267 female midshipmen were commissioned.
Though barriers for women in the military have opened during the past seven decades, Austin said there’s still work to do, especially when it comes to sexual harassment and assault. In April, the Pentagon released its Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military, which showed almost 9,000 reports of sexual assault across the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps in 2022.
“We owe it to American women to get rid of bias and to wipe out the cancer of harassment and sexual assault in our ranks,” Austin said. “We owe it to them to make a military career compatible with raising a family — for both mothers and fathers. And we owe it to them to break every barrier in the way of their service.”
President Joe Biden commemorated the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act anniversary by promising more opportunities for American service women.
“Our work is not yet done to ensure women service members are able to have fulfilling careers in the U.S. armed forces and reach their highest potential,” Biden said. “Let us renew our commitment to breaking down the remaining barriers to women’s advancement, opportunity, and well-being in the military.”
During Biden’s administration, he has appointed several women to senior military posts, including Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, Air Force Gen. and Transportation Command leader Jacqueline Van Ovost and Army Gen. and Southern Command leader Laura Richardson. He also appointed Vice Adm. Joanna Nunan as the first female superintendent of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in New York.
