Women in Service

The academies of the nation’s armed forces are graduating 282 women among the 2,942 members of the class of 1985 this month. For Annapolis and West Point the number of women is the highest in the six years that women have been among the graduates.

Women represent 9.6% of this year’s graduates. In the armed services as a whole, women constitute 9.9% of the Army, including 10.8% of the officers; 8.6% of the Navy, including 10% of the officers; 11.3% of the Air Force, including 10.6% of the officers, and 4.7% of the Marine Corps, including 3.2% of the officers.

But in the senior ranks women represent only 1.3% of the generals and admirals, 1.9% of the colonels and Navy captains, 3.2% of the lieutenant colonels and commanders. It is that statistic that will be of special interest this year to the women who were in the classes of 1980 at Annapolis, West Point and the Air Force Academy--the first with women. They complete their mandatory five years of service this year. Each service is watching with concern their reenlistment decisions. Those decisions will say something about how this remarkably gifted group perceives the potential for satisfactory lifetime careers in a business where they are excluded from some of the most basic business, that of combat--a circumstance that can prejudice the equality of opportunity. Yet their loss from the services would be the nation’s loss.