WOMEN IN COMBAT:
30 YEARS OF THE RISK RULE RECISSION
By Ashtyn Webb
Lieutenant Colonel Amy McGrath ’97, USMC (Ret.), was 12-years-old when she decided she was going to fly fighter jets off aircraft
carriers.
McGrath never doubted she could do the job. She was always fearless and tough. She had been beating the boys on the basketball courts for years. Naturally, her next step was to take it to the battlefield.
Ultimately becoming a barrier-breaking pilot, she would go on to realize her dream —but young McGrath had grave concerns over the future of her career. They lay not in her intelligence, nor her physical capabilities; instead, her mind was on the lawmakers who dictated which roles were available to women in the Navy and Marine Corps. It wasn’t until 1994, just months before she left for Plebe Summer at the U.S. Naval Academy, that the final legal barrier keeping her from combat was removed.
This came with the recission of the Risk Rule—a decision that was one spark in the fight for women in combat that had been blazing for decades. It wouldn’t be until 1948, after more than 150,000 women volunteered to support the Navy during the Civil War, World War I and World War II, that the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act was signed into law. This triumph for women was accompanied by a comprehensive list of caveats. Most notably, women were excluded from all combat roles.
Over the next three decades, subsequent amendments to the law gradually afforded women more rights in the military. The Vietnam War accelerated the process as women proved their competence in a plethora of essential noncombat jobs. In 1972, it was ruled women had official authority to command men. In 1975, pregnant women were allowed to remain on active duty. And later that same year, four of the five all-male service academies joined the Merchant Marine Academy in permitting the admittance of women. The Merchant Marine Academy began accepting women in 1974.
In 1986, in response to years of successive changes to the law, the Department of Defense (DoD) established the Task Force on Women in the Military to assess the status of women’s roles and strategize for the future. The official purpose of their deliberations, as per a 1998 DoD report, was to “set a single standard for evaluating positions and units from which the military service could exclude women.”
On 2 February 1988, the Risk Rule was enacted into law. Officially, it “excluded women from noncombat units or missions if the risks of exposure to direct combat, hostile fire or capture were equal to or greater than the risk in the combat units they supported.” In practice, it allowed women to be barred from any unit or mission—combat or not—deemed too dangerous for them.
A 2010 report by the Military Leadership Diversity Commission said, “this rule effectively permitted assignments to be closed to women based on factors other than the missions of those units; women could now be excluded based on the context in which those units were likely to perform those missions.” Under the Risk Rule, a woman’s place in a particular unit became subjective, dependent on the level of danger declared by superior officers. "
Thirty years ago this year, the Risk Rule was permanently rescinded. As we reflect on the progress made, Shipmate is sharing some of the stories of alumni who paved the way.
A LEADER’S INFLUENCE
While the laws determined which military communities women could join, it was their immediate chain of command that most affected their day-to-day experiences. The ethical functioning of a unit heavily relies on the character of its commanding officers.
“Ultimately, as a leader, you’re the one dictating the environment,” said Rear Admiral Cindy Thebaud ’85, USN (Ret.), 22 years after becoming the first woman to command a destroyer.
Thebaud hoped to enter the surface warfare community, but the lack of billets available to women on ships made gaining the sea time required for her qualifications a challenge. Fortuitously, she was selected to be one of the few women first assigned to weapons test ship Norton Sound in January 1986, two years before the Risk Rule was enacted. Thebaud remembers that while the Navy was amidst a cultural transition, her commanding officer took an unconventional approach to ensure men and women received the training they needed to advance their careers.
“When we weren’t underway, he would send us to ships in Long Beach so we could work on all of our underway watch qualifications,” she said. Providing such training for everyone “was probably very forward thinking of the CO and XO.”
Not all women were fortunate enough to have such leaders.
Captain Patricia Cole ’82, USN (Ret.), was a newly commissioned ensign when she pulled into work one morning at (then) Naval Air Station Miramar, where she oversaw the training of 120 enlisted maintenance personnel, when she noticed base petty officers directing the towing of cars in front of her training facility. Concerned about the situation, she approached a second-class petty officer, who proceeded to “mouth off” to her in a showing of blatant disrespect.
Expecting disciplinary action, she related the incident to her master chief, who escalated it to the naval air station executive officer. To her dismay, during the subsequent executive officer’s inquiry, the XO turned to the offending petty officer and said, “So you were just frustrated because you were trying to do your job, correct?” Cole recalls that in this moment, “that’s when I began to see the way this was going to go.”
Looking back as a now-former commanding officer of the Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station Pacific, Cole is “appalled” at the treatment she received over this situation.
“There was a room full of people that basically said that what he had done did not matter,” she said.
What sticks with her the most is not the injustice she faced, but the lesson imparted by her master chief afterward—that one is solely in control of their own actions.
“You always do the right thing, even if you know for a fact that the next person in the chain of command is not going to do their part,” she said. “That doesn’t absolve you from the duty of doing yours.”
PROFESSIONAL, HARDWORKING, APPROACHABLE
As legal barriers were systematically removed, it took decades for the Navy to fully adapt to the presence of women. The changing of laws didn’t guarantee any changing of minds—a sentiment that rang true both in the fleet and at the Naval Academy.
In 1975, 13 years before the Risk Rule was enacted, the Naval Academy was congressionally mandated to admit women. Commander Elizabeth Rowe ’80, USN (Ret.), was a high school junior when she heard the news. Coming from a middle-class family in rural Maryland, she watched countless women head off to college to get their degrees, only to return home to monotonous jobs in their small town.
Rowe had higher aspirations. It took two rounds of letters with her congressman—initially ending in rejection before the law was amended—for Rowe to receive an appointment. Spirits were high as she set off for I-Day in the summer of 1976, but a harsh reality awaited her.
“I didn’t know what I was stepping into,” she said.
Rowe was one of 81 women, constituting just over 6 percent of her class. But for women at the Academy, one of her classmates explains, this number felt far smaller. A small-town girl from a military family, Captain Barbette Lowndes ’80, USN (Ret.), applied to the Academy for reasons similar to Rowe: financial freedom, secured employment and a chance to see the world.
She said women were divided amongst different companies upon arrival, leaving no space for them to connect over a shared experience. Leaders of the Academy “never had all the women together unless it was for academics or sports, so you really couldn’t even compare notes with other women. You’re really isolated in your experiences,” Lowndes said.
Most women at the Academy were lumped into the “general unrestricted line,” a new designator consisting of onshore communications, technology and supply jobs. They were to be trained as combatants—by default, as per the mission of the Naval Academy—but were not allowed to serve on most Navy ships, let alone in any combat setting. This contradiction did not go unnoticed by their male counterparts. Rowe recalled how “the men, from the seniors to our class, did not want us there. We had taken their place, and we were ruining it.”
This sentiment carried far beyond the Yard. Aboard ships, in training schools and on shore duty alike, women in the Navy were hardly welcomed into their communities. Thirty years before becoming the first female four-star admiral, Admiral Michelle Howard ’82, USN (Ret.), attended surface warfare officer school in 1983. She remembers how the women were made to walk 40 minutes round-trip from their dormitories to the training facility, while the men were housed right next door. But while their sleeping arrangements were segregated, men and women trained together, forcing Howard’s peers to adjust to her presence.
“Some were resigned, and the ones who got over it were cordial,” she said.
Having just completed this training, Rowe deployed for the first time aboard the destroyer tender Samuel Gompers that same year. She was one of five women in a crew of approximately 1,200 personnel.
“We were a curiosity,” she said. “Looking back on it, it was very isolating.”
Though the work was heavy, Rowe found the most daunting task to be managing relationships with her male counterparts.
“Them figuring out who I am and what my boundaries are, and me trying to defend those boundaries so that we could all work together. That was the hard part,” Rowe said.
Women across the Navy learned to navigate those dynamics within their respective communities. Competing constantly with men for promotions and assignments, it was paramount they maintain a razor-sharp focus on their individual responsibilities and behave with the utmost decorum.
Retiring in 2007 as a captain in the Supply Corps, Lowndes became an expert on controlling her image.
“I didn’t want to be seen as a weak female,” she said. “I didn’t want to be seen as a sex object. I tried to lay it out there: I’m here to be a professional.”
“Professional, hardworking, approachable,” Thebaud emphasized—values she carried with her since that
first assignment aboard Norton Sound.
This mindset paid off for women in the military. In the early 1990s, America entered its first major military engagement since Vietnam. Nearly 700,000 U.S. troops mobilized to the Middle East, contributing to the U.S.-led efforts to end Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait. But things had changed for the Navy—women were now a major part of the force. Still serving under the Risk Rule, a woman’s place in a particular unit would be precarious. And yet, for the very first time, men and women geared up to serve in a warzone together.
Howard, now a qualified surface warfare officer, was one of those women. In 1990, she deployed to the ammunition ship Mount Hood, where she served as the chief engineer during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. It quickly became clear to the future vice chief of naval operations that in war, there is no such thing as a low-risk assignment.
“It doesn’t matter what your job is,” she said. “You’re in the zone and you could be a victim.”
It wasn’t long before American leaders, too, recognized this reality. Within a year of the Gulf War’s conclusion, the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces was established “to study the legal, military and societal implications of amending the exclusionary laws,” according to a 1998 DoD report.
By 1994, combat roles were made available to women in the aviation and maritime sectors for the first time, and Secretary of Defense Les Aspin created the Implementation Committee—a blend of government and military leaders tasked with evaluating “the appropriateness of the Risk Rule.” The committee highlighted the contradictory nature of the law: women were permitted to deploy to a war zone, but were banned from settings where they might encounter hostile enemies.
In response to the committee’s evaluation, Aspin signed a new memorandum into law. On 1 October 1994, the Risk Rule was officially rescinded. The recision of the Risk Rule was more than a legal procedure; it was a testament to society’s evolving views toward women. For decades, women in uniform had served our nation with perseverance and grace in the roles available to them. America had finally begun to recognize that, when provided the opportunity, women were an invaluable asset to the nation’s military. They just needed the chance to prove it.
IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME COMING
“Be aggressive in embracing opportunities when they come to you,” advised now-retired Captain Cole, 30 years after that pivotal moment with her master chief.
Today, those opportunities are readily available. Women can jump 17,000 feet from an airplane directly into a combat zone or unleash tactical nuclear weapons from submarines lurking in enemy waters. In 2013, direct ground combat roles were opened to all. There is no job in the military that women can’t do.
In 2004, Commander Becky Calder ’98, USNR (Ret.), made history as the first female pilot to graduate from the United States Navy Fighter Weapons School, popularly known as TOPGUN, flying an F/A-18 Hornet. With six years as a tactical aviator already under her belt, Calder was prepared upon arrival at the elite training school to be the only woman in the room—but her mind focused solely on the job her country relied on her to perform.
“For me, going to TOPGUN was about becoming the best F-18 pilot I could be,” she said. “It was about becoming an instructor and teaching others the tactics they needed to be successful.”
After TOPGUN, Calder spent three years teaching the latest aviation techniques to pilots preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan—some of whom served in the Navy in the mid-90s, at a time when Calder wouldn’t have been allowed near the cockpit of a fighter jet. By the end of her career, Calder had dedicated 15 years to flying the F/A-18 Hornet, trained hundreds of pilots and deployed across the Middle East in support of Operations Southern Watch, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. She is one of the few Navy pilots who have flown all versions of the Hornet and Super Hornet as well as the E/A-18 Growler.
Women across America shared Calder’s determination. Fifteen years after McGrath declared she would one day be a fighter pilot, she became the first woman to fly an F/A-18 in combat for the U.S. Marine Corps. Between 2002 and 2010, she amassed more than 2,000 flight hours and completed 89 combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A few years after her retirement, McGrath chatted with her 6-year-old son, Teddy, as their car inched through traffic on a late-night drive home. Her younger children, George and Ellie, slept in car seats beside him.
“Teddy, what do you want to be when you grow up?” she asked her son.
“Mom, I’m going to be a policeman,” he said.
“Well, that’s good, Ted—policeman, they protect people,” she responded. “What do you think George is going to be?”
“Well, George is going to be a fireman,” Teddy pronounced.
“Great, that’s awesome,” McGrath said. “But have you thought about a fighter pilot? I mean, I was a fighter pilot—that’s a really cool important position.”
Young Teddy didn’t hesitate for a moment.
“No, Mom. That’s what Ellie’s going to do.”