Military Women: 200,000 and Counting.

Controversies linger on issues such as gender-integrated training and sea-duty

Females now comprise 14.7 percent of the armed forces, compared to 14.1 percent in 1998. That translates into approximately 200,000 women who serve today as part of a 1.4-million active-duty force.

But despite the growing presence of women in the military services, controversies linger in some areas, particularly on the subjects of co-ed basic training and the suitability of female sailors to serve onboard ships.

A Pentagon advisory group known as DACOWITS (Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services) in recent years has advised the Defense Department on these issues.

Established in 1951, the DACOWITS has 30 to 40 members who counsel the secretary of defense on issues relating to women in the services. A Pentagon spokesman told National Defense that members of DACOWITS devote personal time and resources to meet with service men and women around the world and "hear their concerns about matters related to their work, their living environment, their opportunities for advancement and their quality of life."

Female officers and officer candidates interviewed for this story generally agreed that, while controversial, gender-integrated training can help build camaraderie among recruits.

U.S. Naval Academy senior and midshipman first-class NaTasha McEachin said co-ed training should continue, because men and women are generally tasked with the same jobs and must work together. Ninety percent of jobs in the Navy are open to women, she noted. "It's a fact that men are more capable physically, but that does not mean that women can't do the job. If you're going to be working with people of the opposite sex, you're going to need to train with them."

"I don't have a problem with male-female training," said Cadet First Class Bethany Stott, a senior at the Air Force Academy. "You're going to have to work with them, so you should be trained together," she said. Stott said she believes that the mostly co-ed training that female Air Force Academy cadets go through make them more valuable to the military. "Women at the Air Force Academy are just as eager as men to serve and die for their country, if need be. There are certain career fields where you might not want someone who couldn't meet a certain physical standard, but if they can pass the physical test, that's cool."

Female Air Force cadets, said Stott, have gone through extensive training just to get where they are. "You wouldn't be here if you weren't willing to do that stuff," she said. "You have to be someone special to be part of an academy or join the military."

About 18 percent of the U.S. Air Force members are female.

Army Lt. Col. Anita Dixon, now serving as a congressional fellow to Rep. J.C. Watts, Jr., R-Okla., shared some of her experiences during two tours of duty as a peacekeeper in Bosnia. Dixon said that, because the military is now assigned more often to peace operations than combat operations, this "makes the need for women as peacekeepers quite evident." Women make up about 14.8 percent of the active-duty force.

"Women have a combination of qualities - a blend of soldier and social worker [that is] essential to the job as peacekeeper," Dixon said. "Women play a crucial role in a variety of jobs, and represent change in the way we serve our nation.

However, not all service members favor efforts to standardize the roles of men and women in uniform. Brig. Gen. Ann Dun-woody, commanding officer of the Army's only airborne support command, told North Carolina's Fayetteville Observer that "Women are already forward deployed and engaged in today's nonlinear battlefield. We have to be cautious about policy initiatives that jeopardize our war-fighting direct-ground combat capability for the sake of social experimentation," she said.

"We serve in an integrated military, where diversity is considered a strength," Dun-woody said. "We no longer segregate by race, gender or religion. We're all one-we are all soldiers."

Last year, then-Texas Governor George W Bush was asked about his views on gender-integrated basic training. He referred to the work that his national security advisor Condoleezza Rice did as a member of the 1998 Federal Advisory Commission on Gender-Integrated Training and Related issues, known as the Kassebaum-Baker Commission. Bush was quoted as saying, "I think women in the military have an important and good role, but the people who study the issue tell me that the most effective training would be to have the genders separated," he said.

Among the most outspoken critics of mixed-gender basic training is Elaine Donnelly, president of the Michigan-based Center for Military Readiness. "Secretary of Defense Donald 1-I, Rumsfeld has said that he wants a faster, more deployable force. Co-ed training is out of sync with that philosophy, as it is more expensive, less efficient, creates problems that don't need to exist and has introduced sexual issues that don't need to be there," she said in an interview.

Donnelly has initiated a campaign with 15 other advocacy groups to end co-ed basic training in the Army, Navy and Air Force. The Marine Corps has kept its basic training gender segregated and does not plan to change that practice.

The coalition led by Donnelly sent a letter to Rumsfeld, asking him to end co-ed basic training, citing disciplinary problems that have been created in recent years, "as a direct result of gender-integrated basic training in the military."

The alliance, which included the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion and the Center for Security Policy, charged that "there is ample evidence that training men and women together complicates and detracts from the training mission." In contrast, the Marine Corps, which conducts gender-separated basic training, has enjoyed "remarkable success," said the letter. The coalition credits the Marines' basic training policies with the fact that their recruiting and retention numbers have remained consistently high. The Army, Air Force and Navy, according to the coalition, "have had to resort to costly bonuses, remedial instruction and weeks of time-consuming 'sensitivity training' to counter the negative effects of co-ed basic training."

Donnelly charged that "DACOWITS sees co-ed training as an equal opportunity women's issue, despite the information to the contrary," she said. "Co-ed training, at this point of the transformation of the services, costs more, detracts from discipline, and creates a need for an extra week of sensitivity training during basic training. This is demoralizing."

Wamen at Sea

In the U.S. Navy, women constitute 14.3 percent of the active-duty force. Our of 55,000 women, about 18,000 serve on sea-duty-on surface ships only, since they are not allowed aboard submarines.

Women have been stationed aboard combat ships since 1994, and the proportion of women in ships' crews continues to increase, according to officials at the Bureau of Naval Medicine. "One of the most important recent challenges at sea is the introduction of women," said Navy Cmdr. Tom Javery. A physician who currently serves aboard the USS Tarawa (LHA), Javery explained why he believed the presence of women at sea complicates the job of the health care provider. "When a man comes to sick call with belly pain, it is probably one of two things - flu or appendicitis. When a woman comes in, it can be one of 50 things," he said.

Navy Cmdr. Josephine Brumit, a member of the Nurse Corps who is based at the Bureau of Naval Medicine (BMED), in Washington, D.C., disagreed with Javery's views. "There are many causes of abdominal pain in both men and women and the workup would be similar for non-gender specific causes of abdominal pain," she said. Brumit admitted that female stomach pain must be taken seriously because "there are important female specific ailments to consider such as ectopic pregnancy, which can be fatal."

However, she said, "testicular torsion, which is unique to males, is another serious medical problem with potential adverse outcome if not treated expediently."

"Active-duty women are expected to plan their pregnancies around sea duty to limit shipboard crew losses," said Brumit. However, according to Navy Personnel Command statistics, 9.6 percent of women stationed aboard ships are lost each year due to pregnancy, she said. Brumit related that women may stay in their posts at sea until the 20th week of pregnancy, as long as prenatal care is available "within a time frame of six hours." An unwanted pregnancy potentially could derail a sailor's chance for promotion, because sea duty is "career enhancing," she said. Many sailors leave the ship because of pregnancy, and "we can't do anything about it," even though contraception is provided, said Brumit. "The Navy provides contraception to both male and female personnel aboard ships, including emergency contraception, which is an FDA-approved method of using oral contraceptive pills with specific dosing," she said.

Another concern for women at sea, Brumit said, is the availability of child care. Women who go to sea seek high-quality child care services, especially if they serve aboard a ship for a long period of time. DACOWITS has also addressed child care. A 1994 article by the Navy Office of Information included a recommendation that the Department of Defense should take additional steps to encourage expansion of the pool of child care services available to military personnel and their families."