Women Veterans Appreciation Day
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
12 June 2022
PRESS CONTACT:
Victoria Moore
Women Veterans Appreciation Day
Seventy-Fourth Anniversary of the passage of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act of 1948 (PL-625)
Washington D.C.: Today, June 12, is Women Veterans Appreciation Day, also referred to as Women Veterans Recognition Day, marking the Seventy-Fourth Anniversary of the passage of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act of 1948 (PL-625). This act recognized the invaluable service rendered by military women to our country during World War II by opening service in the regular, peacetime forces to them for the first time in our history. Prior to that, women had officially served only in the Nurse Corps or temporarily during the national emergencies of the two World Wars.
This legislation was radical for its time, and yet it placed limitations on women’s service that seem astonishing today. Under the law’s provisions and implementing policies women could:
Constitute no more than two percent of the total force and the number of women officers could not exceed ten percent of that total.
Promotions for women officers were capped above paygrade 03 (Army, Air Force and Marine Corps Captain and Navy Lieutenant) Only a limited number of women could serve above that paygrade, and they could not serve permanently as Navy Captains or Colonels in the other services. They were barred altogether from Flag and General Officer ranks. The Coast Guard was not included in the legislation.
Woman were banned from serving aboard Navy ships except for transports and hospital ships and aboard any aircraft that could have a combat mission. Ground Combat was excluded from this legal ban because Congress considered the idea of women in ground combat as too ridiculous to warrant inclusion.
Women were denied spousal benefits unless their spouses were verified as unavoidably dependent on their wives for at least fifty percent of their support.
Women were also excluded by policy from exercising Court Martial or Non-Judicial Punishment authority over men—which made them ineligible to command any units that were not all-female.
Any woman who became pregnant, became the guardian of a child under 18 or married a man with a child under 18 who spent more than 30 days per year in the household was discharged from service.
The story of women’s military service since 1948 tells us how through their collective effort, generations of military women slowly but ineluctably toppled the 1948 restrictions one-by-one until the last of barrier, service in ground combat units and occupations, was removed in 2016. We celebrate this country’s women veterans, past, present, and currently serving, and thank them for their dedicated service to our nation.