Naval Duty Nearly Impossible for Women

When Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. left office Friday, he was honored with a 19-gun salute. Even that accolade was mild in comparison with the media’s extraordinary praise of his role in building a 600-ship Navy. So much has been written about retrofitting and renovating that we seem to have forgotten that ships don’t defend, that men and women do. But, under Lehman’s command, women were arbitrarily excluded from ships. The contempt shown by Lehman and his newly sworn-in successor toward 45,000 female enlistees is cause for concern.

The Navy’s male chauvinism is unique among the armed services of this country. Women in the Army and the Air Force serve in combat support roles and specialties; Navy women cannot. In the course of congressional hearings concerning women in the military, which I chaired in 1983, we discovered that women in the Coast Guard serve on--and in some cases command--all ships in the Coast Guard fleet. Coast Guard women also are doing an excellent job in the dangerous war on drugs.

At the end of last year Lehman reneged on an October, 1986, announcement that women would be allowed to serve on mobile logistics support vessels. The Navy’s reclassification of six types of logistics support ships to that of “other combatant” prohibits women from serving on them and thus prevents career Navy women from obtaining valuable experience.

Military service is difficult for everyone, but, under Lehman, military and civilian service has been made close to impossible for Navy women--even though the overall quality of the female recruits (as calibrated by the Armed Forces Qualification Test) is higher than that of male recruits. The recent decision of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in favor of civilian submarine engineer Pamella Doviak is a further indictment of the former Navy secretary’s treatment of women.

In 1982 Doviak, who works in the Portsmouth (N.H.) Navy Shipyard, suddenly was denied access to submarine sea trials aboard the Kamehameha--although she had participated before. Doviak specializes in ship silencing--a job that requires her to test her work at sea.

Doviak complained, using the Navy’s own internal grievance procedures. At each level of review the Navy found discrimination and offered her monetary compensation, but no guarantee of future access to submarines. Each time Doviak refused the offer. When the final findings of discrimination were sent to Lehman for review, he overturned them.

Doviak, with the support of her supervisors and co-workers, then took her case to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The commission agreed with the Navy’s internal review, and ruled that the Navy had discriminated against Doviak. But Lehman appealed the decision. For the third time Doviak won, but not really. Despite the commission’s ruling, the Navy still has no plans to allow Doviak to participate in submarine sea trials.

Yet another Lehman assault against women was averted last month when Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger reversed Lehman’s decision to freeze the number of women on active duty rather than stick to the original goal of increasing female enlisted strength by 10% in the next five years.

Recent opinion data suggest that it is Weinberger’s position, not Lehman’s, that is in harmony with the views of the American people. The National Opinion Research Council found a “strong national consensus on extensive participation by women in military roles well beyond the traditional ones of nursing and clerical work.”

Navy Secretary James H. Webb, who was confirmed on April 9, seems inclined to follow in Lehman’s footsteps. Webb, who formerly was assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs, has said that “the military has by and large lost more than it has gained by bringing in women.” Webb also said that women at service academies lower the quality of combat training because such training is no longer as rigorous as when the academies were all male.

Two years ago Weinberger sought to alleviate concern over Webb’s opposition to women in the military. He wrote that Webb “has reversed the position he held five years ago about women at the service academies.”

Yet in a 1986 speech Webb again voiced his opposition to women in the academies. We can only hope that he will abide by the terms of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s decision and forgo further stonewalling in the Doviak case.

Sexism is abhorrent in any environment. But when sound personnel decisions are sacrificed so that a few macho leaders can indulge in nostalgia, we are in danger. The men who monitor the latest in electronic and computer wizardry invoke Navy lore that women at sea are “bad luck.” Is it “good luck” to arbitrarily recruit the less qualified? Does this tradition make us feel safe?