Sexual Harrasment and Women in the Millitary
...and/or pursue a military career. Some women who enlist and are enrolled and active in the military will never experience this, but a lot will. Sexual Harassment among women in the military is prevalent and the armed forces must address the problem more thoroughly. The issue is slowly progressing, and needs a more rapid progression, but the line between what can and cannot be considered sexual harassment is so thin and hard to define. According to The American Heritage Dictionary, sexual harassment is defined as “the making of unwanted and offensive sexual advances, remarks, or acts, especially by one in a supervisory position” (761). Women in the military is a very controversial subject by itself, when you add the issue of sexual harassment, an equally controversial issue, into the equation you then have double the controversy and difficulty. Many people to this day are still opposed to women in the military, some 90 years after they began serving in the military, and feel even more uncomfortable and opposed to women in combat roles. They feel that women who are in combat roles give us the appearance of a weaker defense. I think that a woman is just as qualified as a man to die for their country. To gain a better understanding of the issue of sexual harassment among women in the military one must understand women’s history evolving role in the military. “Women were recruited for military service for the first time during World War I (1914-1918)” (Women in the Military 3). Since most able-bodied men eligible for the draft had already been drafted, the United States needed people to fill jobs that were vital to the war effort. “An estimated 23,000 women served as Army and Navy nurses during the war. They also served as clerks, translators, radio technicians and telephone operators.” (Women in the Military 3). When the United States entered World War II in 1941, women were asked to “free a man to fight” (Women in the Military 3), by joining the armed forces. Most of the women joined the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), which formed in 1942. They served various nontraditional roles. They also flew aircraft in the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), a force that flight-tested and ferried plane across the Atlantic Ocean. Some 350,000 American women served during World War II. “In 1948, congress passed the Women Armed Services Integration Act to create a permanent place for women in all branches of the military” (Women in the Military 4). The law put a 2% cap on the overall number of women allowed in the military. During the 1970s and 1980s there was a major increase of women into the military. After the drafted ended in 1973 the armed forces became all-volunteer and a new law lifted the 2% cap formerly placed on women’s military participation. The military needed women, women made up just over 2% of military personnel in 1973. That percentage has grown over the years and when the article “Women in the Military” was published in 2000 was at about 15%. In 1978, Congress abolished each military branch’s separate female auxiliary corps, creating gender-integrated forces for the first time. In 1993, Defense Secretary Les Aspin Announced that the military would relax the combat exclusion rule by allowing women to serve on combat aircraft and on war ships. It is clear to see that women’s roles in the military have evolved tremendously, but I could just begin to imagine the type of harassment they had to deal with thru the evolution. In recent years there have been many sex scandals that have plagued the United States military, and although there have been cases involving women as the aggressor, the majority of the cases deals with men as the aggressor. More than 100 naval officers were accused of groping and sexually assaulting at least 80 women at the Tailhook convention, a meeting of naval aviators in Las Vegas, Nev. in September 1991. Many of the officers involved have been denied promotions or forced to retire. “In November 1996, 12 drill instructors at the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground, a training base in eastern Maryland, were accused of raping and sexually abusing some 50 female trainees.” (Women in the Military 1). In April 1997, one of the instructors, Staff Sgt. Delmar Simpson, was convicted on 18 counts of raping six women and sentenced to 25 years in prison. The Aberdeen cases prompted an investigation that uncovered sexual misconduct at several other bases. In February 1997, the highest-ranking enlisted man in the Army, Gene C. McKinney, was accused of sexual harassment and assault of a former subordinate. He was formally charged with sexual misconduct involving four servicewomen over the course of three years. Each new scandal has added fuel to the ongoing debate about the role of women in the military. Although sexual harassment of women in the military has declined in recent years, it remains fairly high. “A 1995 Defense Department poll found that 55% of all military women reported receiving unwanted sexual attention from military men in the previous year” (Sexual Harassment in the Armed Forces). That is a 9% decrease from a 1988 poll, in which 64% of 20,000 women reported some kind of harassment. A lot of women report misconduct on pollsters, yet only a small percentage ever file formal complaints. The Army receives about 1,200 harassment complaints every year. Many women may feel that if they report the harassment they may be ridiculed or retaliated against. The 1995 survey found that 55% of military women didn’t feel free enough to report the harassment. In order for sexual harassment to continue to decline in the future we must have leaders who are willing and able to enforce the policies implemented to deter sexual harassment. After y...