Women in the United States Army
[4][5] Anna Maria Lane joined her husband in the Army;[4] her pension notes that she was given $100 a year for life in recognition of the fact that she, "in the Revolutionary War, performed extraordinary military services at the Battle of Germantown, in the garb, and with the courage of a soldier.
[11] In 1917 World War I Army nurses Clara Ayres and Helen Wood became the first female members of the U.S. military killed in the line of duty.
[15] The Hello Girls were created in 1917 due to a call by General John J. Pershing to improve the worsening state of communications on the Western front.
[19] In January 1943, Captain Frances Keegan Marquis became the first to command a women's expeditionary force,[20] the 149th WAAC Post Headquarters Company.
[21] Serving in General Eisenhower's North African headquarters in Algiers, this group of about 200 women performed secretarial, driving, postal, and other non-combat duties.
[25] The United States Army Surgeon General's office issued a circular in 1941 that for the first time classified "homosexual proclivities" as disqualifying inductees from military service; the WAC adopted a similar policy in 1944.
[26] The WAC instituted strict screening policies for candidates, based on physical appearance and gender and femininity conformity, in order to exclude lesbians from service.
[9] Although no Women's Army Corps unit was sent to Korea, approximately a dozen WACs, including one officer, served in Seoul and Pusan in secretarial, translator, and administrative positions in 1952 and 1953.
[32] During the war, Anna Mae Hays, Chief of the Army Nurse Corps, became the first U.S. female brigadier general on June 11, 1970.
[9] An Army nurse (1st LT Sharon Ann Lane) was the only US military woman to die from enemy fire in Vietnam.
[37][38][39][40] Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677 (1973), was a landmark Supreme Court case[41] which decided that benefits given by the military to the family of service members cannot be given out differently because of sex.
[42] West Point admitted its first 119 female cadets in 1976, after Congress authorized the admission of women to the federal service academies in 1975.
[48] In 1983, 170 women in the Army were part of the United States invasion of Grenada as military police, munitions specialists, and signal operators.
[61] As well, during the Iraq War Leigh Ann Hester received the Silver Star for her heroic actions on 20 March 2005 during an enemy ambush on a supply convoy near the town of Salman Pak, Iraq;[62] this made her the first female U.S. Army soldier to receive the Silver Star since World War II and the first ever to be cited for valor in close quarters combat.
[65] In August 2015, Kristen Marie Griest and Shaye Lynne Haver became the first two women to graduate from the US Army Ranger School.
[74] On October 26, 2016, ten women became the first female graduates from the United States Army's Infantry Basic Officer Leader's Course at Fort Benning, Georgia.
[75] In 2017, eighteen women graduated from the United States Army's first gender-integrated infantry basic training for enlisted soldiers.
[77] According to scholars, since at least as early as 1960, Executive Order 10450 was applied to ban transgender individuals from serving in the United States military.
[86] In the case Doe v. Alexander (1981), which was about a transgender woman who had been rejected from the United States Army Reserve due to having had sex reassignment surgery, the Army defended their policy of denying enlistment to transsexual persons by stating that supporting transsexuals would raise a medical problem in the form of hormone supplements not always being available for such personnel.
"[95] In 2013, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta removed the military's ban on women serving in combat, overturning the 1994 rule.
Panetta's decision gave the military services until January 2016 to seek special exceptions if they believed any positions must remain closed to women.
"[102] According to scholars, since at least as early as 1960, Executive Order 10450 was applied to ban transgender individuals from serving in the United States military.
