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Here’s a little history lesson for everybody who keeps claiming that integration of women into the armed forces was a “social experiment” externally imposed by civilian feminazis who never served. (Note: not this OP, but some of the commenters.) Thread. 1/
Formal integration of women into the armed forces began with the establishment of a contract corps of professional & volunteer nurses supporting the Army during the Civil War. The women themselves chose to serve: every single one was a volunteer who said, “I can.” 1/
The contract nurses were so successful that their service was requested in the Spanish-American War. In a postwar congressional hearing in which Army surgeons were excoriated for poor performance of medicine, the nurses were lauded for professionalism & saving lives. 2/
This led to creation of the Army Nurse Corps in 1901 & the Navy Nurse Corps in 1908. The nurses served w/no rank & lower pay than men w/similar quals & responsibilities. 3/
In order to fill manpower shortages in WWI, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels found a legal loophole allowing women to be recruited as reservists into shore-based administrative positions: the yeomen (F). Anecdotally, the idea came from a young woman who’d just graduated 4/
from a Washington, DC, business high school (though Daniels took credit for the idea himself). 5/
The program was revived & expanded across all branches of service & into more occupational fields in WWII at the urging of women, many of whom had served in either the Navy/Marine Corps, or with the American Red Cross in Europe, during WWI. Women knew they could do the jobs. 6/
Establishment of a permanent women’s component in 1948 was made law thanks to the efforts of Rep. Edith Nourse Rogers (R-MA), who served in Europe w/the Red Cross in WWI, & Rep. (later Sen.) Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME), who commissioned directly into the Air Force in 1950. 7/
Every incremental gain in women’s integration in the coming years was quietly staffed in service personnel departments, where—b/c the non-combatant admin jobs were often considered low prestige & suitable for women—women were often in positions of leadership. 8/
Sometimes the changes were backed by lawsuits. A Navy E-4, IC3 Yona Owens, sued for the right for women to serve at sea in 1973. Her lawsuit was successful, & women were assigned to USN ships—but only those designated “support” & not “combatant” vessels. 9/history.navy.mil/content/dam/mu…
In many cases after the creation of the All-Volunteer Force in the 1970s, policies were quietly adjusted to reflect the reality that women were already doing certain jobs & America couldn’t go to war without them, & that traditional “front lines” no longer existed. /10
A lawsuit brought by former USAF pilot MJ Hegar, former USMC Capt Zoe Bedell, USMC 1Lt Colleen Farrell, USAR SSgt Jennifer Hunt, & the Service Women's Action Network (SWAN) put the last nail in the coffin of the combat exclusion policy in 2015. 11/
I’m sick & tired of hearing the phrase “social experiement” used to describe women’s integration into the armed forces. At every step of the way, women have seen jobs they knew they could do, demanded the opportunity to do them, & worked to preserve those opportunities. 12/
That’s not a “social experiment.” That’s activism, competence, and commitment. So let’s stop using that ridiculous phrase when we talk about integration of women, (& racial/ethnic minorities, & LGBTQ persons—who had similar integration trajectories) into the armed forces. 13/end
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