Momentum’s Woman of Impact

and

Women’s History in the Military

N. Lee S. Price

Major General (Retired), U.S. Army

I am barely hanging onto my New Year’s resolution to blog at least once a month. The unusually warm weather had distracted me but now the time pressure is on.

I am being presented with an award tonight by Momentum, a Woman’s Leadership forum. The award is given every two years to six awardees recognizing them as “Women of Impact.” It is a true honor to receive the award, especially given the company I am keeping. I invite you to read about the others being honored: https://momentumleaders.org/conference/awards/

As I reflected on what words I might share tonight, I realized that March is close and we will be celebrating Women’s History Month. I lived through some of the most exciting changes in the Army, and thought I would highlight those.

The 1970s were an exciting period for women: the push for equal rights and pay, equal opportunity, affirmative action, Title IX sports, and the ending of the draft. The ending of the draft was paramount for women wanting to serve in uniform because it also lifted the 2% cap on our participation. Up until this time, most women were in the medical corps (nurses) or in administrative positions. I was in an administrative position as well. I had a college degree but did not have a commissioning source, so I joined the army as a Private, clerk-typist. The military academies were not yet open to women and there had not yet been a women commissioned through the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). The third way one can become commissioned is through Officer Candidate School (OCS) and I graduated in the third class of the Alabama Military Academy (Class 21) allowing women and subsequently entered active duty. From the 1970s when the cap was lifted, women’s participation grew from approximately 2% to 15%. Women comprise about 5-8% of the general officer ranks.

I woke up this morning thinking about what words I could leave the audience with and it led me to a rare “aha” moment. I was trying to recall the number of women officer’s I worked for in my 38 ½ years. I pulled out my pile of performance reports and tallied them up. TWO – TWO white female officers in over 38 years. I dug back through the reports to see how many African American male officers I worked and came up with another disappointing number – TWO. So how many white male officers did I work for? An astounding THIRTY THREE. I am speechless; we definitely have work to do on diversity and inclusion; especially in the officer ranks. I am happy to point out, however, that the Army opened almost all of its operational areas to women – that is a huge improvement from the 1970s.

I can’t wait for the Momentum Conference to start tomorrow so we can address ways to increase our presence  – more to come!