Equal opportunity in the U.S. Navy: perceptions of active-duty African American women.(Special Issue: Women in the Military)

Publication: Gender Issues

Publication Date: 22-JUN-98

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COPYRIGHT 1998 Transaction Publishers, Inc.

The Navy's Equal Opportunity/Sexual Harassment Survey (NEOSH) has been conducted by the Navy Personnel Research and Development Center (NPRDC) biennially since 1989. This survey was developed to measure the degree to which personnel believe they have been treated equitably in the Navy and to monitor sexual harassment. The surveys are mailed to a large sample (approximately 10,000 respondents) of active-duty officer and enlisted personnel. The sample is stratified by gender, race/ethnicity (i.e., Black, White/Other, Hispanic), and rank status (e.g., officer and enlisted), resulting in twelve aggregated groups.(1) Findings from the NEOSH have implored Navy officials to consider unique challenges facing women and minorities in their policy decisions.

One of the more conspicuous findings of the NEOSH is that the perceptions of African American women are significantly different from those of African American men and white women and men. The 1989, 1991, 1993, and 1996 NEOSH surveys reveal that of all aggregated groups, African American women are the least satisfied with the equal opportunity (EO) climate in the Navy. These findings have been consistent for the past six years and have prompted NPRDC to take a closer look at this phenomenon.(2) In 1995, NPRDC launched a series of focus group studies to investigate why African American women perceive the Navy's equal opportunity climate less positively than any other group. One of the coauthors of this article, Commander Schuyler Webb, U.S. Navy, was a member of the research team conducting the study. This article is based on data collected in those focus groups.(3) We are examining issues raised by women in the focus groups in an effort to discover why they are less optimistic about the Navy's equal opportunity climate than are African American men, and women and men of different race/ethnic backgrounds. Our intention is to bring meaning and understanding to the NEOSH survey results relative to African American women. We assert that this information is needed before informed policy decisions can be made. We further argue that the gender and race dynamics found in the Navy are reflective of those that exist in other large, bureaucratic organizations in the United States.

Background

There are approximately 50,682 women serving on active duty in the U.S. Navy today, out of a total force of about 249,639 active duty men and women.(4) African American women currently compose 9.3 percent of all active duty Navy women officers (as compared with 80.7 percent white women) and 30 percent of the Navy's active duty enlisted women (as compared with 55.7 percent white women).

As a result of the National Defense Authorization Act passed by Congress in 1994, which permits women to serve in combat vessels and aircraft, women can now be assigned to all Navy aviation squadrons, the Naval Construction Force, and all classes of ships except submarines. Since March 1994, women have been assigned to combatant ships. Subsequently, the USS Eisenhower deployed to the Persian Gulf on October 20, 1994 with a mixed-gender crew. While this recent change in legislation opens additional Navy occupations to women, those occupations defined by the Department of Defense (DoD) as involving direct combat are still closed to women.(5) Consequently, women are still barred from the Navy's Sea-Air-Land unit (SEAL), and support positions with Marine Corps direct combat units.

The majority of enlisted women are assigned to administrative and medical occupations. It is consistent then that the largest concentration of enlisted African American women is in the field of administration (37 percent), followed by medical/dental occupations, where 13.4 percent of the African American enlisted women are assigned. The presence of women in the Navy's more technical fields of ordnance and engineering, on the other hand, is quite low. Women make up 2.8 percent of the Navy's ordnance personnel and 5.3 percent of Navy engineers. Slightly more than 1 percent of all African American women are assigned in the ordnance field, and just under 8 percent of them are assigned in engineering occupations.(6) The distribution of white women in these occupations does not vary much from that of African American women.

Similarly, most of the women officers are assigned in the area of staff corps and restricted line occupations, while fewer of them are assigned in unrestricted and limited duty officer assignments.(7) Again, the distribution of white and black women officers in the occupational categories is very much the same, ranging from 55 percent assigned to the staff corps to 3 percent assigned to limited duty officer positions. What is glaring, however, is the disproportionately low percentage of African American women in the officer corps (9.3 percent). Moreover, none of the African American women officers were above the rank of captain (O6) until February 1, 1998, when Captain Lillian E. Fishburne was promoted to Rear Admiral (07).(8)

Little has been written about the historical experiences of African American women in the Navy. There is some documentation, albeit sparse, on African American women who served as Navy yeomen during World War I (Miller, 1995). Much of what has been written about African American women who served in the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) during World War II is subsumed in a larger body of literature about African American men (Nelson, 1948) or white women (Horton, 1971; Campbell, 1984).

There have been a few publications centering on experiences of African American women in the armed services during World War II (Earley, 1989; Johnson, 1974; Putney, 1992; Moore, 1996). While African American WAVES are mentioned in some of these studies, the focus of the discussions has been on women in the Army. Still, we learn from these studies that the Navy did not begin to accept African American applicants into the WAVES in the first two and one-half years of its existence (Johnson, 1974:33; Moore, 1996:2). An explanation given by naval officials for not accepting African American women sooner was that there were no African American men going to sea duty for them to replace (Campbell, 1984; Moore, 1996:2). We also know that the number of African American women entering the WAVES vis-a-vis those going into the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) during World War II was relatively small. Unlike members of the WAAC/WAC, African American and white women in the Navy were racially integrated, probably because their numbers were so small.(9)

There is a growing body of literature on the African American woman in today's military. One of the intriguing factors about the subject is that the U.S. military, particularly the Army, is the leading employer of African American women.(10) Several studies have reported differences in the perceptions of African American women vis-a-vis African American men, and women and men of different racial/ethnic backgrounds (Dansby and Landis, in press; Jet, 1997; Webb, 1994; Greene, 1994; Cose, 1993; Firestone, 1992; Moore, 1991a, 1991b). Rosenfeld, Culbertson, Booth-Kewley and Magnusson (1992) reported the "double-minority" status of African American women as reflected in the NEOSH 1989 survey. They concluded that both gender and race are important variables to consider when assessing perceptions of African American women.

While these studies of the contemporary naval force are based on survey data, and report valuable statistical and demographic trends, they do not adequately address the perceptions and attitudes of African American women (Daniels, 1994; Webb, 1994). Despite the wealth of data on EO and sexual harassment issues generated by Navy personnel surveys, it is often difficult for policy makers to interpret the results of these investigations and make appropriate policy decisions. While the quantitative methods and statistical analyses of survey data provide initial insight into potential issues, qualitative methods allow us to identify specific issues and possible solutions to these issues. Unlike the quantitative approach, qualitative research, or phenomenological methodology, allows for scrutiny of the values, attitudes, perceptions, emotions, and motivations of group members.

Data and Methods

In 1995, the NPRDC, San Diego, CA, and the Equal Opportunity Division, Bureau of Naval Personnel, Washington, D.C.,...

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