There have been women in the United States Coast Guard since 1918, and women continue to serve in it today.[2][3][4]
History
Note that some minor wars women served in have been omitted from this history.
World War I
Myrtle Hazard enlisted as an Acting Electrician Third Class in the Coast Guard on January 7, 1918 during the height of the U.S. effort to support the Allies during World War I. She was a trained radio and telegraph operator who worked at Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, D.C., serving there until she was honorably discharged on November 10, 1919 with the rating of Electrician First Class.[5][3][6]
World War II and after until the Korean War
On November 23, 1942, the
Coast Guard Women's Reserve was created with the signing of Public Law 773 by President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt.[7]Dorothy Stratton transferred from the Navy
WAVES to serve as the Reserve's director.[3] Dorothy Tuttle was the first woman to enlist in the Coast Guard Women's Reserve, and in all 11,868 enlisted women and 978 female officers served in it during
World War II.[3] This included
Olivia Hooker, who thus became the first African-American woman to enter the Coast Guard in 1945.[8] In all five African-American women served in the Coast Guard Women's Reserve before it was inactivated in 1947, namely Hooker, D. Winifred Byrd, Julia Mosley, Yvonne Cumberbatch, and Aileen Cooke.[9][10] The Coast Guard Women's Reserve was inactivated on July 25, 1947, but was reestablished on a much smaller scale in 1949.[10]
Korean War and after until the Vietnam War
Approximately 200 women who had been in the
Coast Guard Women's Reserve reenlisted and served during the
Korean War.[11] They mostly served at the Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, D.C.[11]
Vietnam War
The
Vietnam War gave the Coast Guard a surplus of qualified male applicants, and the Coast Guard did not make a systematic effort to attract women during that time.[12]
In 1973 women were integrated into the active-duty Coast Guard and the
Coast Guard Reserve.[14] The
Coast Guard Women's Reserve was ended and those in it were sent to the Coast Guard Reserve.[15] On December 7, 1973 Wanda May Parr and Margaret A. Blackman became the first female enlistees sworn into the regular Coast Guard, and Alice T. Jefferson became the first female commissioned officer sworn into the regular Coast Guard.[15]
In 1976 the
Coast Guard Academy first admitted women; in 1985 Denise L. Matthews became the first woman to graduate at the top of her class at the Coast Guard Academy.[4][16]
In 1977 the first Coast Guard women were assigned to sea duty as crew members aboard Morgenthau and Gallatin.[4]
In 1978 the Coast Guard opened all assignments to women.[4]
In 1990,
Lane McClelland became the first Women’s Policy Advisor in the Office of Personnel and Training at Coast Guard Headquarters.[24] In 1992, she became the first active duty woman since the existence of the
United States Coast Guard Women's Reserve to be promoted to the rank of captain.[24] In 1993, she became the first woman assigned as Chief Trial Judge of the Coast Guard.[24]
In 1993 Patricia A. Stolle became the first woman in the Coast Guard to advance to master chief petty officer.[25]
Before the "
Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy was enacted in 1993, lesbians and bisexual women (and gay men and bisexual men) were banned from serving in the military.[26] In 1993 the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy was enacted, which mandated that the military could not ask servicemembers about their sexual orientation.[27][28] However, until the policy was ended in 2011 service members were still expelled from the military if they engaged in sexual conduct with a member of the same sex, stated that they were lesbian, gay, or bisexual, and/or married or attempted to marry someone of the same sex.[29]
The Coast Guard gained its first female flag officer in 2000 when
Vivien Crea was promoted to rear admiral.[20]
^Technically, the case was decided under the
Fifth Amendment's
Due Process Clause, not under the Equal Protection Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment, since the latter applies not to the federal government but to the states. However, because Bolling v. Sharpe, through the doctrine of reverse
incorporation, made the standards of the Equal Protection Clause applicable to the federal government, it was for practical purposes an addition not to due process, but rather to equal protection jurisprudence.
^Altimari, Daniela (2010-12-15).
"Military academy gets female leader". Times-Picayune. No. Saint Tammany Edition. New Orleans. p. A2. Retrieved 2010-12-15.
"Women's History Chronology". Women & the U. S. Coast Guard. U.S. Coast Guard Historian's Office. Archived from
the original on 17 May 2017. Retrieved 16 August 2015.