Official U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives Aviation Machinist's Mate 3rd Class Violet Falkum turns over the Pratt & Whitney R-1340 radial engine of an SNJ-4 training plane, at Naval Air Station, Jacksonville, Florida, 30 November 1943. While women played vital roles in both World wars, it was not until 1978 that they could actually serve as members of a ship’s company.

The first program to send women to sea as an integrated part of the ship’s company was in 1972, when Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Elmo Zumwalt directed that women be assigned to USS Sanctuary (AH 17). Fifty-three enlisted women and two officers reported aboard the ship. While the women performed well in their assignments, there were still a number of legal constraints that kept women from serving at sea, and Zumwalt’s immediate successors did not seek to change the laws.

In July 1978, the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. ruled in a class action lawsuit brought by female sailors that the section of the federal code prohibiting women from sea duty was arbitrary and unconstitutional. The ruling opened the door to women at the same time that the Navy was experiencing severe manpower shortages. The Navy reacted quickly to the ruling by establishing the Women in Ships program in October 1978.

One of the key features of the Women in Ships program was the establishment of workshops to help allay the fears of sailors and their spouses about opposite sexes serving together at sea. Female aviators and enlisted women in aviation ground support ratings were also being integrated, in small numbers, into non-combat squadrons. But the remaining policies that restricted women from serving on combatant platforms continued to make it difficult for Navy women to have a sea-going career. Many of the first women who became Surface Warfare Officers for example, left the Navy or sought reassignment to non-warfare designators because they could not get the experience at sea they needed to be professionally competitive.

The next big break for women came in 1987 when the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, known as DACOWITS, issued a report detailing widespread sexual harassment of women throughout the Navy. The report received plenty of media attention, prompting then - Secretary of the Navy James Webb to direct the service to open assignments to women on three more classes of ships: Oilers, Ammunition, and Combat Stores.

During the first Persian Gulf War, the public got its first widespread exposure to women serving at sea and in danger zones. When USS Acadia (AD 42) deployed to repair the frigate USS Stark (FFG 31), which had been damaged by an Iraqi Exocet missile, the media gave much attention to the fact that there were 240 women in Acadia’s 1,300-member crew. As public awareness grew, resistance to the idea of women serving in non-traditional roles began to erode, but the issue of women serving in combat was still highly controversial.

The Tailhook scandal in 1991 proved to be a watershed event for the integration of women into combatant roles in the Navy. Public and

Congressional outrage over the incident led senior Navy officials to acknowledge that sexual harassment was a problem in the Navy and had to be dealt with. They noted that the combat exclusion laws contributed to the problem by relegating women to de facto second-class status, encouraging ‘‘unofficial” discrimination in other ways. Congress finally passed legislation in 1993 that permitted women to be assigned to combatant ships and aircraft.

Just as the establishment of the All Volunteer Force in 1973 played a large part in the successful integration of Navy women into seagoing billets, their performance in those demanding assignments has made a major contribution to the continuing success of the All Volunteer Force.