Existing comment:
1898: Civilian contract nurses work in Army hospitals during the Spanish American War.
1901: Army Nurse Corps established.
1901 ??: The Navy Nurse Corps, based on the Army Nurse Corps, was founded in 1908, giving women their first official place in the Navy. The first twenty nurses, nicknamed the "Sacred Twenty," led Navy nurses for more than two decades.
1912: The Navy Nurse Corps opens training hospitals on Guam.
1917: Women begin serving as Navy clerks during World War I to free sailors to go to Europe. They were called Yeomen (F). The "F" standing for "female," after a gender-blind selection process accidentally assigned some women to ships. Almost 13,000 women served as Yeomen (F) during the war, some came back to lead female reservists during World War II.
1920: The Army Reorganization Act grants military nurses relative rank, meaning they received an officer's rank without full privileges.
1942/43: The five women's military auxiliaries are formed.
1942 ??: Women again filled vacant jobs during World War II. Navy WAVES, Army WACS, Female Marines, and Army Air Force WASPS did many of the same jobs as the Yeomen (F) of World War I, but took on dozens of atypical jobs too. They worked as medical technicians, intelligence analysts, test pilots, and communications specialists, as well as clerks.
1944 ??: Harriet Ida Pickens and Frances Wills joined the WAVES in 1944. They received their commissions from the Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School at Northampton, Massachusetts. They were the first African-American naval officers of either gender to serve.
1948: The Women's Armed Services Integration Act gave women a permanent place in the military and in all Reserve branches.
1949: Air Force Nurse Corps established.
1951: The Defense Advisory Council on Women in Services (DACOWITS) Meets for the first time.
1967: Public Law 90-130 removed promotion restrictions on women, allowing them to promote above O-4.
1969: Air Force Recruit Officer Training Corps opens to women.
??: Nurses deployed with combat groups during the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts. Advances in medical technology meant that more lives could be saved, but casualties needed immediate attention. Working in front-line MASH units, air evacuation teams, hospital ships, and home-front facilities, women served thousands of lives.
1972: Army and Navy ROTC open to women.
1973: The first female Naval aviator enters training. |