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David Ferriero: Good evening. I'm David Ferriero, the Archivist
of the United States and it's a pleasure to welcome you this evening to the William G.
McGowan Theater. Tonight we present the Sixth Annual Forum on Women in Leadership. Our program
tonight is Women in Military Leadership, featuring a distinguished panel of former military leaders
who happen to be women. They will reflect on their own careers and discuss the changes
which have occurred in their roles, opportunities, expectations, and obstacles for women in leadership
positions in the armed services, a particularly timely topic, given the Department of Defense's
lifting of the ban on women in direct combat ground roles.
Before we get started on tonight's program, I'd like to alert you to two other programs
coming up soon here in the McGowan Theater. On Wednesday, March 20th, at noon, we'll present
a program, "Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of our Time." Eight decades have
passed since Franklin Delano Roosevelt rallied the nation in his first inaugural address
with his famous quote, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Professor Ira
Katznelson reinterprets the causes and consequences of the new deal and its aftermath, putting
new emphasis on the role of Congress and Southern legislators in the formation of depression
era foreign and domestic policy. And on Thursday, March 21st, at 7:00 p.m., we'll screen the
film, "Earth Days" in conjunction with our exhibit in the O'Brien Gallery, "Searching
For tonight's program, we want to especially thank Sue Gin McGowan and the William G. McGowan
Charitable Fund, Inc., which has generally supported this series for six years, and a
specific welcome to Diana Spencer, executive director of the Fund. We also want to thank
our partners for this program: the Women's Forum of Washington, D.C., the Military Officers
Association of America, and the Center for Women Veterans of the Department of Veteran
Affairs.
As you may know, here at the Archives, we have millions of military and related records.
Many of them have their origins in wars we have fought and include records of individual
units, accounts of famous battles, and, of course, stories of heroism, including the
records of some 350 women who posed as men to serve in the Civil War, and a letter from
Annie Oakley to President William McKinley offering to raise a troop of 50 sharpshooter
women who would supply their own rifles and ammunition to fight the Spanish-American War.
And in St. Louis, we have the military personnel files of the men and women who served during
the 20th century, including the service records of our panelists. These personnel files are
important to our veterans so they can document their eligibility for veteran's benefits.
And each day we process over a thousand requests for information from those veterans or their
families. To find out more about our military records, go to archives.gov and click on "veterans'
service records."
Earlier I mentioned the Foundation for the National Archives, our private partner in
this terrific public/private partnership. I now have the honor to introduce the chair
and president of the foundation -- the Foundation for the National Archives, A'Lelia Bundles.
A'Lelia is the president of the Madam Walker, A'Lelia Walker Family Archives and author
of "On Her Own Ground, the Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker," the award-winning
New York Times best-selling biography of her great-great grandmother. She's currently at
work, and I wish she would finish, on the first comprehensive biography of her great-grandmother,
A'Lelia Walker, whose Harlem renaissance parties helped define that era. After a 30-year career
as an executive and Emmy winning producer with NBC News and ABC News, A'Lelia now devotes
her time to writing and serving on non-profit boards, mostly this one. She's also an accomplished
and engaging public speaker and has spoken at dozens of events and on all the major television
and radio networks. Please welcome A'Lelia Bundles.
[applause]
A'Lelia Bundles: That's right. I spend all my time here at
the Archives [laughs]. Thank you very much, David. It's always a pleasure to be here and
to be with David. On behalf of the board of directors of the Foundation for the National
Archives, I welcome all of you to the Sixth Annual Forum on Women in Leadership. As the
Archives' private partner, we are proud of our role in helping to build this beautiful
McGowan Theater, and in supporting an incredible slate of free public programs, including author
lectures, film presentations and events like tonight's distinguished panel of women in
military leadership. How many of you have been here before? How many of you? So, you
know all the incredible things that we've been doing all year. We could not have a more
timely topic this evening. Women in the military is a topic that's been in the news on several
different platforms for the last few days. There's always something interesting going
on in this theater. This year alone, we've talked about Civil War, emancipation, the
environment, Congress, and you know that you can go to the nara.gov website and find videos
of many of the programs that have been on this stage.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the William G. McGowan Charitable Fund, a long time champion
for public programming at the National Archives. The Fund, of course, made the gift that built
this beautiful theater and the rare wood on its stage, and continues to offer generous
annual support. In addition to its support of the Archives and our foundation, the Chicago-based
McGowan Charitable Fund promotes, nurtures and funds many other signature programs throughout
the United States in education, health care and medical research, and community programs,
especially those supporting vulnerable populations, including the elderly, victims of abuse, those
with disabilities, and those who suffer from hunger, homelessness, unemployment, or illness;
populations that are often ignored. We are very pleased that our board member, Sue Gin
McGowan, continues to believe in us and have passion about us. And while she is not here
this evening, Diana Spencer, who David told you is the executive director of the McGowan
Charitable Fund, is here. And I'm going to bring Diana up, but I just want to tell you
Diana loves what we do, but she's really passionate about the fellows, the McGowan fellows. There
now are 30 McGowan fellows from 10 of the nation's top business schools. And we know
that in 10 years when they have -- when they're celebrating their -- seven years when they're
celebrating their 10th anniversary, that they will have begun to solve some of the problems
of the world. Diana Spencer.
[applause]
Diana Spencer: Good evening. Well, I'd like to welcome everyone,
on behalf of the McGowan Fund board of directors, to our event this evening. We're very happy
to sponsor this event again tonight. And I was going to tell you a little bit more about
the McGowan Fund, but A'Lelia, thank you so much, did a wonderful job of kind of the entre
into that. So, in addition to the support of this theater, we do support efforts across
the country, wherever our board directors live. In the areas of education, we try to
improve high school graduation rates. And health care and medical research, all around
heart health. We have supported a medical research program that developed -- develops
devices, artificial heart pumps and things in tissue engineering, all to help end stage
heart failure.
What's new is that we are looking at things in prevention around heart disease. So, we're
looking at programs in childhood obesity, which I'm sure everyone here is familiar with
Michele Obama's work. And we're looking to see how we can start on the front end getting
rid of problems before they develop into end stage heart failure later on. So, that's a
very exciting thing. We also have our community programs, which is just what A'Lelia said.
It's programs for very vulnerable populations. So, we're responsive grant-makers, and whatever
our communities bring into us, the requests, the needs that they have, to serve their community,
is what we do through that program. We are -- we're not a national organization, but
we are in seven communities across the country. The Archives is our primary program here in
Washington, D.C. As you may know, Bill McGowan, in MCI Communications, was headquartered here,
and so we've had a presence here for a long, long time. Nearly eight years ago we moved
the organization to Chicago, and myself, so that the board could be more involved. So,
over time, we have reduced, kind of giving to those social programs because, before everyone
gets mad at me, because we give where our board directors reside because the trustees
of this organization get very involved. They go, they make site visits, they're good stewards
to the grants, and it's very important that they be on hand to meet with our grantee organizations.
So we don't have anyone residing in the D.C. area today. We do give in Chicago and Aurora,
Illinois. We've given in Northeastern Pennsylvania, where Bill McGowan was from. He still has
family there. We give in Kansas City, Kansas, Upstate and Western New York, Colorado, and
Reno, Nevada, all where trustees live.
So, just to tell you a little bit more about a direction that we're going to is, something
that you'll here in philanthropy today is impact investing. And everyone's trying to
measure the outcomes of what you do. So, what difference does it make if you give a grant
to a program and they're trying to help kids if you don't know if it's really advancing
the kids or not? So, everyone is looking at this, and we take a very hard look at the
organizations we serve. From time to time, I'll have a moment where I think, "Ah, boy."
First of all, I feel like I work for Bill McGowan. You know, it's his organization.
His family lives his passions and his core values. Sometimes just it seems like on a
daily basis; I do it every day, they don't. But, from -- everything I do, I think, "Oh,
what would Bill think about this?" And there's been a couple of times where I've thought,
"I don't know if he would like this grant so much. I don't know if he would like this
investment." But what I can say with pleasure, is that I know he would love our partnership
with the National Archives. He would enjoy the programs. He enjoyed debate. He was very
intellectually stimulating and stimulated. And so, he would enjoy the conversations,
the dialogues, the important work that goes on here in this theater named for him.
So, we're very happy to be here, happy to support. We're also -- I have -- I would be
remiss if I didn't say thank you to David and his team. They work so hard to put on
these programs. We know it, we appreciate it, and we also appreciate the speakers who
come in for virtually nothing to do these very important conversations. So, thank you
all for coming. Come back often.
[applause]
A'Lelia Bundles: Thank you, Diana. And now it's my pleasure
to introduce our distinguished panelists. Gale S. ***, major general, U.S. Army.
I don't think I've ever introduced a panel with this many wonderful titles with this
much power. I love it. Clara Adams-Ender, brigadier general, U.S. Army; Gina S. Farrisee,
major general, U.S. Army; Sandra A. Gregory, brigadier general, U.S. Air Force; Christine
S. Hunter, rear admiral, U.S. Navy; and Carol Mutter, lieutenant general, U.S. Marine Corps.
Give them a round of applause, and I'm sure that we're going to see them.
Gale ***: Well, you heard us introduced in reverse order,
so let me introduce you again to the group that I'm delighted to be with this morning
-- this evening. General Mutter on the end, Admiral Hunter, General Gregory, General Farrisee,
General Adams-Ender, and the moderator. It's really a pleasure to be with all of you tonight
and to have the opportunity to lead a discussion with other women leaders from the military
in celebration of Women's History Month. I think it's very important that we pause for
a moment though to thank the National Archives and all of the leaders here in the Archives
and in their supporting organizations that believed it was important to recognize this
group of leaders tonight. So, could we appreciate Susan and David particularly.
[applause]
It's also very important that you recognize, as members of the audience, that we are all
representing our own perspectives. We are obviously not in uniform, so we are not speaking
for whatever service we participated in for however many years we did that. I have a number
of questions that I will take the panel through, and then we'll open it for questions from
the audience. And I hope that you will seriously challenge these women leaders with your questions.
I think that you'll be delighted and amazed at the perspectives that they'll share with
you this evening, and I'd like to start to help you to gain a perspective on women in
the military, so I'll begin with General Adams-Ender. General Clara, as many call you, I know that
you are a student of history. Would you please get us started this evening?
Clara Adams-Ender: I can do that. I'd like to first tell you
how come I qualify to talk about history. [laughs] There was a time when I used say
-- I've always been interested in history -- that I read and studied history a lot.
And then I got to the point where I said, jeez, maybe I can write a little bit, and
so I wrote a few things. But now, having been associated with the Army for 54 years, I am
history.
[laughter]
[applause]
I joined the Army in 1959, so do the math, and you'll be able to tell a little bit about
that. We're going to talk a little bit about changes in roles and expectations, opportunities,
and so on. And I'm going to take about three or four minutes doing that, because I think
I'm going -- and I'm going to cover about 40 or 50 years of that period of time in a
very short period. I entered the Army as a private, as I said, in 1959. I could not enter
ROTC. Women were not allowed to join ROTC at that time. They took their first women
ROTC in 1960. We could not have children and be on active duty. If I had gotten married
at the end of my schooling -- and I was on a scholarship -- but had I gotten married
at the end of my schooling, I would have been discharged from the military immediately.
And we did not have to go on active duty after having gotten married. Most women worked outside.
I mean, I'm sorry, most women worked inside the -- in jobs such as health care, nursing,
medicine, those kinds of things. And most men were -- and administration, secretaries,
typists, so on. And most men worked outside. I noticed that immediately, because I'd grown
up with my brothers, and so I used to spend a lot of time outside. And I found that my
brothers were not there. You know, they were all still outside playing around. Yeah.
The opportunities were limited most, as I said, to health care and to administration.
Few -- there were few women in leadership positions; no female generals, no female generals
in the ‘60s -- in the ‘50s and ‘60s. And I received some good counsel, though,
during that period of time after I was in -- especially during the time that I was a
captain, from a number of male general officers who used to come to an area that I was managing
in health care training. And they would -- while I was there telling them about what I was
doing in that particular area, they'd talk to me about what I needed to do to be a leader
in the military. And I found that quite interesting. Yeah.
In the 1970s were when we saw the first major breakthroughs. The first female general officers
were made general officers in 1970. The first was an Army nurse. She was General Anna Mae
Hayes, and she's living till today. She's 93 years old this year and she lives in Arlington.
And the second one -- and they were both promoted the same day -- was Elizabeth P. Hoisington,
who died in 2007. Women were also allowed during the ‘70s to remain on active duty
and to be -- and if they were married, to be pregnant. Women could claim their husbands
as family members for the first time. Before, you couldn't. The men could, but you couldn't.
The -- and I was talking earlier about the fact that many of the manuals and so forth
that were written, it was clearly a man's Army, no doubt about it. Many of the manuals
and regulations, all of the manuals and regulations that were written, were written in the male
gender. None in the female gender. Now, they used to try to tell us that it was -- what's
that word they use for that? Non-gender specific. Hello. Yeah.
[laughter]
I figured out what that meant very quickly. In the 1980s was when we saw really the major
breakthroughs begin in the military. The draft was eliminated. And when the draft was eliminated,
we moved to an all-volunteer force. I was in recruiting at that time and so I know that
area very well. Men could not -- men would not volunteer and they wouldn't volunteer
because the Army -- the military wasn't paying enough money for them to get shot at. And
that's one of the main reasons why they wouldn't volunteer. So they said, go back and get more
money and we may join. So, the Army decided, what I knew at that particular time, that
they'd go out and they'd see what they could do to recruit women. And they recruited women
because women have never had to be drafted to go into the military. They came in, they
found that their brothers, cousins, and all those folks had told them, and boyfriends
and husbands had told them information that wasn't wrong because they were told they couldn't
cut it in the military. They found out they could. They joined. They went back and told
all their sisters, "Come over here. There's opportunity." And so they came. And they saved
the all-volunteer Army in the beginning until the service could get the monies that they
needed to pay the men to come in during that period.
When the military got more money, then they came in. The DACOWITS, the Defense Advisory
on Women in the Service, played a great role. From the ‘80s, then we're going to the ‘90s,
and until now, we have seen continuous and steady progress. We may not necessarily be
where we want to be, but we are not what we were.
Gale ***: Thank you.
Clara Adams-Ender: Yeah, sure.
Gale ***: Thank you. So, following on historic perspective,
I'd like to start on what's a very hot topic today, elimination of the 1994 ban on women
in direct combat units. General Mutter, will you start us on this one?
Carol Mutter: I'm happy to. Women are in the combat, and
the law is just finally catching up with reality, I think. I think part of the difficulty with
the discussion about women in combat is that we jump immediately to women in infantry and
that's not necessarily the case. All of the services are going through the process now
to define what are the physical, mental standards required for each military occupational specialty
job's specialty to include infantry, tanks, artillery, and so on. And women today are
required in front line units to do things that the men can't do, and especially in Arab
countries where you have road blocks where the women have to be searched by women, so
on. And women are going into the villages and are talking to the women and families,
the children. They know where the weapons caches are; hello? So, there's a lot of good
things that women are doing today in a combat zone. The commanders are having to do a lot
of weasel wording, if you will, to say that the women aren't really assigned to the combat
unit because they're not allowed to be assigned to the combat unit. Well, that makes things
dangerous. I've heard some say that they have to be -- the women have to be ferried out
in the mornings and back in the evening, every evening. They can't stay out. And so, therefore,
they're exposed to more danger because of going back and forth on those dangerous roads
every day. So, there are a lot of things like that where we can eliminate those kinds of
strange and unusual and unnecessary rules by saying that women are allowed in combat
zone in a combat area. And so, I think it's for the best and the services are going about
it right, defining what the physical and mental requirements are for each job specialty, and
only men and women who can meet those qualifications will go into those jobs.
Gale ***: General Farrisee, you were involved with personnel
and assignments. Can you talk to us a little more from your experiences about women in
a combat zone?
Gina Farrisee: I think the most important thing that the
future holds is we do not change any standards based on the fact that women will now be allowed
in certain military occupational specialties that they are not currently. There are women
who can do those roles and there are women who want to do those roles. They should be
allowed to do that. I do not see that they are going to force anybody into a position,
and I think they need to make a big campaign of that so people understand this is not pushing
people into places that they don't belong or that they're not qualified for. It's still
going to be about the best qualified person for the position and that you'll have to meet
the standards. As General Mutter said, women are already serving in many of those positions
and what we have done is done the right thing for all the services to allow commanders to
use their best qualified soldiers in the way they need to be utilized without having to
use some kind of tricks and wording and other things to get them there. So, it's been a
great service for all of the military and for women to be able to receive the awards
that they justly deserve by being assigned to those units.
Gale ***: Admiral Hunter, can you talk about how the
women being assigned to the various ships has helped or hindered them, perhaps, in their
promotion and their aspirations for leadership?
Christine Hunter: Sure, thank you, Gale. I, as the other panelists
are commenting, I'm struck by the fact that this beginning to have women directly assigned
to combat roles in ways that are kind of above the line rather than behind the scenes or
as the general talks about, in roles where they're directly involved but they perhaps
are not on paper assigned to those jobs. It strikes me that over our professional lives
we have seen women move into many, many career fields in the military. So, when I first joined
the Navy, I was part of the first generation of women onboard ships. I went to my first
ship. We had a crew of about 2,000 people. There were 10 women. So, they put us all in
groups so that we could at least have a few peers in the organization. And I learned some
very important things from that role. I learned that you should know your job and do it as
well as you possibly can. I'm a physician, so I had a professional skill at that time.
You should find a mentor. And I found a Marine Corps captain who taught me the ropes of being
in the military and succeeding in that environment. And you should know those around you because
they're going to take care of you, that small unit mentality. And so, for me, that was the
Navy hospital corpsmen. And all the things that I didn't know as a fresh and brand new
graduate from medical school, those Navy hospital corpsmen had years of experience. And they
might not have M.D. behind their name, but they would take care of me, just like they
take care of sailors and marines all around the world.
So, those are important lessons to learn about succeeding in a context. And I think then,
over my career, we saw women introduced to aviation. And as we learned, some were successful,
some were not successful, some maybe went ahead too quickly. And we learned how to adjust
and pick out the ones that would achieve. And more recently, the Navy has looked at
introducing women to submarines, a very restricted environment, not quite the same as on-the-ground
combat, but still what can be a challenging environment. And so, we do this gradually,
we bring different groups, we try to put them in together where they can have a couple of
peers, and be sure that they're well supported and have those mentors, and some backup or
top cover. We are women in the vanguard generation who were able to break some barriers, be able
to give them an example to look up to, and hopefully we can look back and be some of
those mentors.
Gale ***: You mentioned aviation, so that seems like
a wonderful segue way into our Air Force general. Would you please talk about the Air Force
and how direct combat affects some of your members?
Sandra A. Gregory: Well, likewise, with some of the other generals
and admirals here mentioned that women have been in combat for a long time and now the
laws are catching up. So, I have the privilege of -- one of my roommates when I was a lieutenant,
was one of the first women to go through pilot training. So, that year I really got to see
it up close and personal when it came time to -- how women were assimilated. And this
was the -- really only about the second group of women who were actually in an integrated
environment with a man, because the first couple of pilot training for women were just
segregated as women only. So, now when they integrated -- so I get to see the highs and
the lows and, you know, what happens when you almost wash out academically and the rigor
that was in the system, that they did treat the women the same. And so, when they did
measure up to the same standards, they achieved graduation and got their pilot wings.
But what was interesting is some of the initiation, perhaps, is in part of the culture there or
something, the initiation where other services were sometimes saying, "Oh that's one of the
first women to go through pilot training, and she got bit in a place that wasn't very
nice," and she was just standing in a place. And so, these are some things that were things
that had to be part of that -- well, didn't have to be, but were an actual part of the
acculturation that went on at that time, that we hope that that does not happen anymore.
But for women in combat, they were flying missions. They're now flying drone missions.
They're flying with intel missions. They're flying as -- they have flown for weapons systems
officers and navigators for a long time, and crew members. So, even back, for instance,
back in Libya when we did the raids on Libya and there were tanker air crews with women
on them. So, I mean, it's been time now for the laws to catch up.
Gale ***: Thank you. In many of the media discussions
now about direct combat, they've been addressing what they call the different cultures of the
services. And I'd like each of you to address your service perspective from your experience.
And then it will be interesting to see if the women from the different services experienced
the same kind of issues, or if each service had a different challenge for the women that
were involved. So, General Farrisee, why don't you start us on that one?
Gina Farrisee: As far as culture, I think all the services
probably for their combat arms officers, they've not experienced having women there with them.
So, they're very concerned with how did that affect their mission. And I'm only going to
be able to -- had to meet the same standards so that it doesn't affect the mission. And
I really think that's the biggest issue that everybody is concerned about, so long as it
doesn't affect the mission. And I'm not sure everybody's convinced that it will. But that
goes to what General Mutter said about we have to look at -- we're not talking about
every woman going into being infantrymen. That is really not what it's all about. There's
certain many other roles and I think that the culture has already begun to accept that
and that that will continue to grow as some of the positions are open to more women and
they have that opportunity to prove themselves. Many have already done that. They've proven
themselves, and I think many more will continue to prove themselves. And slowly the culture
will change. Culture takes a long time to change.
Gale ***: Well, since we're talking about the Army right
now, General Clara, are your experiences with the Army culture the same as General Farrisee's,
that it's very combat, infantry, tanker focused?
Clara Adams-Ender: Well yeah, yeah. I think so. The issue though
-- and I've gone through this with a number of people over time -- and sometimes I kind
of get some strange and different looks whenever I talk to them about why women -- why all
positions should be open to women in the military, and any area. And I don't deal with the whole
business of whether or not they can pick up the front of a Mack truck or any of those
things that seem to become an issue. We always start talking about the physical thing. Well,
you know that most of the world is computerized these days, and all it takes is a finger,
all right?
[laughter]
And I do remember some of the things that's happened to me whenever I was first exploring
this whole area of dealing with women going into other kinds of positions and expanding
opportunity. I was told that one of the reasons how come they should never go into armor is
because they could not drive a tank, you know. And that's supposed to be one of the big things
that officers do as far as the armor is concerned, is to be able to deal with tanks. Well, it
took me about seven years to find out that tanks are hydraulically powered.
[laughter]
All you need is a finger.
[laughter]
Loop it around very quickly. And I would like some of those same people who told me that,
and they said, "Well, we thought you'd never find out."
[laughter]
The whole -- the basis of the issue, as far as I am concerned, and as we look at what
goes on as far as the service is concerned, and I hope they're grappling with these things
these days, is that I do not believe in the workplace that anything should ever be held
against people that they can't do anything about. I can do nothing about having been
born a female. But I certainly can be the best female I can be, doing whatever job I'm
assigned. And that is what I have seen women do time and time again, when they were not
wanted in positions. And so, I -- but I'm hopeful about what's going on as far as the
Army is concerned these days, and I only talk about the Army because I'm much more closely
related to it. I think many of the leaders have a different attitude than they did when
I was coming up. They know what women have done whenever they've had them in war for
the last 10 years. And for many of them, they are all so willing to stand up and say, yeah,
they do, indeed, need to have the opportunity. And one of the reason how come it's important,
I think, to be able to deal with it much these days, is because of the disparity in what
happens when you deal with veterans. You see, the thing that much of the disability is grounded
in as far as the Veterans Administration is concerned, is that -- what did you do in the
war? All right? What kind of medals did you get? You get so much disability because you
got medals, you get -- and if you're not able to get the medal because you weren't assigned
to the unit, you see, there's a disparity there that should not be. And so, I'm very
hopeful about what I see going on as far as the future is concerned.
Gale ***: What about the Air Force culture?
Sandra A. Gregory: The Air Force culture, of course, we're the
baby service. And what I saw and continue to see is that it's remained quite agile in
terms of change. I think it's much more open to change and it opened up a lot of doors
of opportunity. Now, I was in financial management for almost three decades. And so, that was
a place where, you know, for a while, over half of the major command, the large commands,
the chief financial officers were women, over half. And so, that was the result. Some are
in the audience today. And so, it's interesting to see around the table that we did, as a
result of some of the trailblazers like all of us in our career fields, really pushed
and continued to know our job, practice integrity, be sensitive to others and bring our leadership
to the table, and the doors were opened. So I saw the culture, much of change and innovation
-- not that there weren't road blocks at times, and there still are in areas, so I'm not saying
everything's fixed by any means. But I found the culture. And I also found it interesting
-- this is just my personal correlation, but I really enjoyed working for men who had daughters,
because I think psychologically they realized I want to give that person a fair shot, because
I don't want to put a lot of education in my daughters and have someone give them roadblocks
just because they're women. And so that's something I found throughout my career that
it was good that they sometimes -- they didn't treat you like a daughter, but I think that
it was something going on that they wanted to make sure that the next generation got
a good shot.
Gale ***: Admiral Hunter.
Christine Hunter: Well, I think I could add to the story a little
bit by talking about the ways in which the Navy supports ground combat. So, certainly,
we've had women on ships since I came into the Navy. We introduced women in all types
of aircraft that the Navy flies over the years. But women have more recently made I think
a significant impact in combat support roles where they are on the ground supporting the
other services in many cases. And so, I wanted to call attention to our CBs, our construction
battalion, our engineers, our heavy equipment operators, those sorts of people who may go
in to prepare a landing zone, the footprint for a forward operating base, that sort of
thing. Women have been very successful in the CBs for years. They can do those combat
engineer roles, they can do builder and steel worker and all types of craftsmen, what we
might have thought of as vocational trades. And they excelled there and they're able to
definitely pull their own weight or punch above their weight in terms of the physicality
of those roles.
And then the second thing I'd talk about is hospital corpsmen, of course, because all
of us know and many of you probably know that the Navy supplies the hospital corpsmen for
the Marine Corps. So there's lots of opportunities to go on the ground. And women have excelled
in those roles. And when I'm injured, whether it's downtown D.C. or on a very foreign shore,
if I look up and I'm still awake and I know I'm hurt, I want a Navy hospital corpsman
there and I don't really care what gender.
[laughter]
Gale ***: General Mutter. What do you want to tell us
about the culture of the Marine Corps?
Carol Mutter: Well, the Marine corps is a very male, very
macho culture, as everyone understands --
Gale ***: No, tell me it's not true.
Carol Mutter: I'm telling you something you don't know,
right? It's always been a bit of surprise to me to think -- when people say, "You made
general in the Marine Corps?" The marines are very innovative, very forward thinking,
first to use helicopters among other things, first to nominate a woman for three stars,
thank you very much.
[laughter]
So, I think there are definite cultural issues, thoughts, ideas; "every marine a rifleman,"
that's the first to mantra for marines. We have to learn how to fire weapons, and to
know how to fire weapons. I remember during Desert Storm when the Army women were -- and
men -- were caught in the crossfire and were having difficulty in fending off the enemy,
they happened to be a maintenance unit. And my first question was, "How much rifle training
did they have? When was the last time they cleaned their weapons?" And I think there
was a culture there of, "Well, they're maintenance people. They don't need to worry about that."
And so, the Marine Corps had an advantage saying where "every marine a rifleman," and
I think there've been a lot of lessons learned in those areas, as well.
The Air Force and the Navy in general, notwithstanding CBs, et cetera, I think are more technically
oriented, and the Army and the Marine Corps more ground oriented, and so I think you'll
find a lot of retired male Army soldiers and marines who are very concerned about the women
in combat issue, because they have been in combat. They know how nasty it is. They know
how difficult it is emotionally, mentally, physically, and so forth, and maybe because
they are fathers of daughters, they don't want their daughters exposed to that. But
by the same token, I agree with you, there were a lot of men that I worked with who were
very positive about my making general and, in fact, taking command of a combat-deployable
unit because they were fathers of daughters who were struggling to be, you know, a junior
partner in a law firm and that type of thing. And so, they saw those things going on. They
knew I could handle the job and they felt like I deserved the chance.
The other point I would make is that I think that the young men and women of today have
had a totally different experience than we have, and that these old retired generals
have had, and it's totally different today. These young men and women have been playing
soccer together since second grade. They have been in the fight together in various ways
all through school. And so, they don't have the same issues in working together as we
might have had coming up because we were initially separated. And it evolved over time for us.
Gale ***: Thank you. You mentioned to concept of "every
marine a rifleman." How did that affect your style of leadership compared to the men? How
would you describe those similarities or those differences? And the rest of you can think
about this question because I'm coming to the rest of you, too.
[laughter]
Carol Mutter: Well, even though we said every "marine a
rifleman," when I first went through basic training the women were not required to qualify
with a rifle. Because going through General Clara's history there -- at that time I was
commissioned in the Marine Corps in 1967 -- women were not in the deployable units. They hadn't
expanded into those roles yet. So there was no need for us to have those skills. We had
familiarization training and we thought we were hot stuff because we got to fire a weapon.
But we didn't have to fire for a score or for a -- and we didn't have to be issued a
weapon and make sure it was clean and ready to go at any time. That came later. And it
was difficult. There was a challenge through your career to evolve into more and more requirements
that you weren't prepared for because you didn't get that training in basic the way
the men had gotten. And I was fortunate to have people help me along the way, mentors
who made sure that I got some additional schooling or help along the way to make sure that I
understood and knew how to do those things as we evolved and were expected to do more.
Thank you.
Christine Hunter: So, I think the question was about how our
leadership style might differ from --
Gale ***: From your male counterparts.
Christine Hunter: -- based on our experiences and journey as
a woman. And so, I would say that my leadership style is a mixture of thoughtfulness, life-long
learning, being very decisive, looking at the hierarchical structure that we all operated
in, and then a little bit of mom.
[laughter]
And that's where it was different and I think it was enormously helpful. Let me tell the
story. I was the commanding officer of the naval medical center in San Diego just about
the time that we learned that many wounded warriors and warrior units around the country
were not receiving the kind of care that we hoped that we were all delivering. And so
it was a crisis, and it was question of, you know, how are we treating these folks who've
given so much to us, and so much to their country, and sacrificed so much? How will
we know when we're doing a good job, because they may not feel free to tell us. Well, I
had been at the command for about two weeks when the first headlines broke. I had on a
pair of jeans and a tee shirt. It was the weekend. I said, "I better get over to the
barracks and figure out what's really going on." So, I walked the halls and I ran into
a young man in a wheelchair, helmet on, obviously disfigured with lots of injuries. He said,
"Who are you?" I said, "I'm the admiral." He said, "Oh no, the admiral's a big guy."
[laughter]
I said, "Well, I'm the new admiral." And he said, "You can't be." And I got them all out
of their rooms and we had a look through those rooms just like your mom would do. And ever
after that, all those wounded warriors knew that we could have a dialogue, that I would
be available, I'd be in the barracks. And their counselors and leaders would say to
them, "Treat the admiral just like your best friend's mom. You have to be respectful, but
you can say what you need to say." And I think that that gave me a significant advantage
over someone who was perceived to be less approachable because of the stars on her shoulders.
Gale ***: Thank you.
Sandra Gregory: The leadership style -- we must have been
twins --
[laughter]
-- I say a lot of the same things, is that really walking around, getting to know your
people, caring about them, making sure that you really put the "m" in mentor and mother
at the same time. So, I think a lot of it's very natural. Plus, if you just have been
given those leadership opportunities as you're growing up is, whether you're being a leader
at home or at school, or at church community, whatever you're involved in, is that those
leadership skills just transfer very easily. So, I was telling someone earlier in our discussion
is that my first duty job as a second lieutenant, I was 20 years old and I had 50 people working
for me, which at that time, you know, I had people old enough to be my grandparents, and
I was not overwhelmed, but I just -- I would take all those problems home and it was this
and that, and to include deaths of spouses and it was a lot of interesting things that
were tough for someone who's 20, 21, 22 years old at that time. I didn't think I ever wanted
children after that. So, I went to the doctor and fortunately they talked me out of it or
else I wouldn't be a mom of two wonderful sons today because I said, "If this is what
motherhood is all about, I don't want anything about it because I've 50 of them now." But
going back to the leadership style was to be very much nurturing and, yes, the mission
stayed on line, but let's bring everyone's talents to the pool. Everyone has a role in
that, very inclusive, we're all going to make -- you know, whatever that mission is. But
we turned that organization around in 18 months. They were ranked worst in the command all
the way to the top. And it was the same mothering skills, the same natural leadership that we're
going to make this happen. And they did it themselves. That's all you do is give them
the confidence and you believed in them and point them in the right direction. Thank you.
Gale ***: General Farrisee.
Gina Farrisee: My first job I had 300 in the company and
I was the XO. They did not talk me out of not having children.
[laughter]
I feel like I've thousands throughout my career. I think there are a lot of similarities and
just a few differences, but the similarities as far as my male counterparts, was to always
lead from the front, to make sure that soldiers knew that you weren't going to ask them to
do something that you weren't going to do yourself, to take good care of yourself and
be able to be physically fit and do those things so those soldiers, especially your
female soldiers, would follow. They would have no excuses not to do the things they
needed to do. And so, I think it's very important to be a good role model and to always lead
from the front, whether that's for your male or your female soldiers, service members.
I do think that the key thing though was -- and Admiral Hunter said it was -- that you are
approachable. I think you have to be approachable, but I think that's part of being a good leader.
If you want to know what's on the mind of those folks who work for you, if you don't
allow them to approach you and for them to think that you are fair and that you will
listen before you make your final decisions, then they don't feel they can trust you. But
when you're approachable, you do learn a whole lot more from the people who work for you.
And I think that's a very key point.
Gale ***: General Clara.
Clara Adams-Ender: I was chief of the Army nurse corps, and so
I managed the Army's 22,000 nurses at that time serving all over the world. And I will
tell you that nurses are a tough crowd.
[laughter]
And I know there's a couple of them in here and they know that. Yeah, see, they're over
there laughing. Yeah. But one of the things that you learn very quickly, I did, was to
draw on some of your experiences from the past. And I never appreciated this before
I got into the military, but I'll tell you, it served me in good stead many a day. I came
from a family of 10 kids. And I was the fourth oldest. And whenever I had to deal with people
and behavior and that type of thing, I always said, "Jeez, my sister used to act like that.
Now what did I do --
[laughter]
-- when she behaved in that manner?" And I'd use that -- those kind of personal experiences
to help me through many situations. I had a mentor very early in my career who saw me
through many a situation and taught me, at that time, I don't need anything from you.
I'm all finished with my career and everything, you just go out there and help somebody else.
And so, I spent a lot of time just trying to make sure that I grew up a lot of other
people so that they could see and understand how it is to manage organizations and to take
care of the people and empower the people that you're dealing with. That is, allow them
to do things in their own way. You know, very often we get into the habit of trying to teach
people to do things like we want them to do it. They can't. They're not you. They never
will be able to do that. So, just then let's give them the direction and the authority
to act, and allow them to do it in their own way and they'll get it done in ways that will
make proud.
Gale ***: Several of you have talked about the importance
of mentors. Can you tell us a little more about your mentors and how you, now, try and
make yourselves available to those that are the up-and-comers that want mentors? General
Mutter?
Carol Mutter: Well, when I joined the Marine Corps we were
1 percent female, so most of my mentors -- and we didn't have the word mentor in those days,
either. But most of the leaders that I looked up to that helped me along the way were men,
obviously, because there weren't that many women around. And they did help me along the
way. I do think -- the theme that you're hearing here about the differences in our leadership
styles I think are that women are more collaborative. And in the military, especially, men tend
to be perhaps more dictatorial. But also, the theme of caring, I think was there as
well, and I always felt like the best male leaders also cared. They're people who cared.
They may show it in different ways, but you knew. They weren't worried about their career.
They were concerned about you and about getting the job done, and that was the most important
thing. And so, I learned from everybody that I worked for and that I worked with. And with
some of them I learned what not to do, and with others I learned what to do. And I'm
just kind of a sponge, so I just tried to learn from everybody. Now, as I got to be
about a lieutenant colonel, I looked around the base and I said, "Whoa, I'm the senior
female around on the whole base, and maybe I need to be thinking about what do I need
to do for the younger women around." And so, we would get together for lunches and share
things. That's where the networking really -- I -- we had a built-in network when I was
a young lieutenant. In fact, we had a female lieutenant colonel on the base and there was
a women's table at the club for lunch every day. And so you could go up to the club for
lunch and sit at that table and know there'd women from all over the base that would come,
and there weren't that many of us obviously, there were six or eight of us, but if you
had a problem with -- and you needed help from that organization, you had somebody you
could call over there. And so, the networking really -- again, we didn't call it that, we
didn't have a special word for it in those days, but it worked. And so, we had people
who preceded us, I think, who figured out what worked, and who taught us what worked,
and we were able to continue those kinds of things and build on them and perhaps do even
more along the way. So, it was a matter for me of just watching and learning.
Gale ***: Thank you. Okay, General Gregory, you've been
itching to answer this question. I've been watching you wiggle over there.
[laughter]
Sandra Gregory: I think mentoring is just one of the most
important things that we can do. And those that have helped us -- and it just doesn't
-- you know, men and women, I think it's important to also mentor people who don't look and think
like us. And then that's what makes us a stronger service, that's what makes us a stronger nation,
that's what makes us stronger neighborhoods, that that's where we really want to reach
out. It's okay to mentor people who look just like us, but also go beyond that and then
it's amazing all the new ideas that you have from a different perspective. So, likewise,
what you had mentioned, General Mutter, is we've had some great mentors, men and women
along the way. So, we learned from them and then give back. And I think one of the key
points is to be accessible. And I think that also the networking among the civilian women
and the military uniform women can be extremely and is very extremely useful. So, right now,
I just want to be accessible. And now with the email and texting, you know, that's what
makes life very interesting and that's what make leadership all worthwhile, is when you
see that next generation continue to prosper. And if you had one little tiny bit of it,
you learn from them and they learn from you. Great partnership.
Gale ***: Thank you. Hopefully some of these questions
have been ones that interested you. But, I'd like to start to open it to the audience now.
I'd ask that you please identify yourself and then ask your question. I will ask you
to get to your question because there's a bunch of people and I'm hoping that there
are more than one or two questions out there, because if you don't have some, I do. And
-- but I thought it would be a lot more fun to find out what's on your minds. So, who's
going to be brave enough to start? Please. Oh, and thank you for bringing to my attention
that there are microphones on either end of the auditorium.
Jim Carr: Good evening. My name is Jim Carr. And two-part
question. I'm just curious how many of you may have been Girl Scouts?
[laughter]
Okay. All right. Thank you.
Gale ***: That's part one.
Jim Carr: And my second question is specifically to
the three flag officers who were in the nurse corps or medical. And that is the combining
of Walter Reed Army Hospital and Bethesda Naval Hospital on the surface looked very
seamless. But we know there were a lot of difficulties. So, I'm wondering if any of
you would be willing to -- now that you're retired -- if you'd be willing to put yourself
in the role of the administrator or the commanding admiral or general, and what things would
you be doing differently or would you have done differently in the combining of Walter
Reed and Bethesda?
Gale ***: Do I get to take a question?
Female Speaker: Sure, go ahead, Gale.
Female Speaker: Your turn.
Gale ***: Okay. I'm brave enough to take that one. One
of the ways that I would have described the transition from one campus to another is that
it was an old and tired facility, and our patients and our staff deserved a whole lot
better. So, rather than talk about closing Walter Reed and making it into this big emotional
thing, "Gee, we need a new campus, we need a new environment. And we have the luxury
of partnering with a sister service to provide a premium location in the world for military
men and women and their families," would have avoided all that emotion and negativeness.
And then, second, I'm out and I have told the senior leaders this so it's not like I'm
talking out of school, if we would allow the mid-grade management and below to simply run
that organization, it would run like peaches and cream. But we have senior leaders whose
egos are a problem. And they have to be the biggest elephant in the room. And because
they can't learn to work and play nicely together -- they all skipped nursery school -- it's
been much more challenging than it needed to be. But at the patient care level, I think
that those men and women of all the services that are there, and their civilian support,
are doing a fabulous job.
Chris, you were involved in a lot of that as well.
Christine Hunter: Well, I would underscore your last point,
Gale, that it's not and it never is about the patient care because patient care is a
ballet, it's choreography, it's you're in the operating room and someone puts you to
sleep and someone is conducting the surgery, and other people are helping and they're all
working together and they're all wearing scrubs anyway. And the language is the language of
the operating room or of the physical therapy unit, or of the oncology ward, those sorts
of things. It's the language of physicians, nurses, patients, allied health professionals
all trying to deliver great patient-centered care. We do have some challenges like any
two groups that have been competitive in the past, you know, for resources, for attention,
for those sorts of things, and bringing them together about something they each held very
dearly, you know. It's like two top-of-their-game sports teams, two universities, two major
businesses that are told to combine. You know, whose name goes on the merged entity, you
know? And how does that make people feel in terms of something that they have given their
lives to? So, it's a challenging and complicated thing to bring our top level iconography together.
We could have merged, and did in many cases, services in many other regions of the country
a little bit more easily than right here in the nation's capital.
Gale ***: Thank you. General Clara, you're the other
medic on the panel.
Clara Adams-Ender: I have a -- I agree with what you both said,
but there is another element that I think has been overlooked in all of this. And that
is, how come? How come the merger from the beginning? And I think if we would just settle
in on that, probably would have saved a lot of -- the fact of the matter is, and I suppose
being a student of history, I've always skipped pretty much what goes on here and looked at
what might happen in the future. And I think what we are drifting towards is one medical
service for the military, one health care service run by somebody.
[laughter]
And that was one of the beginnings. And I think we're going to see more of this happen.
I just -- you know, I have just stayed -- tried to stay out of the fight because I was already
out and I -- and so I try to stay on the outside. But I am just watching the events as they
go. We see monies getting shorter and tighter in terms of dealing with health care services.
And we are going to see a lot more of those combinations come in the future. And I think
that what we're looking at very often, especially if we get a little testy with each other,
is it happens whenever cultures clash. That's one of the -- cultures -- the clashing of
cultures never goes as smoothly as the merger. You ever notice that? Other organizations
have known that and have seen -- we've seen that happen in many, many cases. I work with
a place down in Southern Virginia and it was an American firm. And these people understand,
they worked down there, had never been out of Southwest Virginia. And some -- no, I'm
not going to take it there.
[laughter]
But, anyway, they -- whenever -- the company was bought by -- it was an American firm before.
It was bought by a Danish firm, and they sent over a German to run it. Now, think about
you, the guy down there who's making parts in this particular area, and he says, "Well,
I never been out of Southwest Virginia. I was run by an America company before. Now
I got a bunch of foreigners up here. I don't even understand what it is they're saying,
let alone know where they come from. How am I going to be able to survive in here?" Things
have changed. And it's going to take a while to get that information down and for people
to be able to deal with it. But I just deal with the basic reason how come we're doing
it to start with. And that, you know, kind of eases it for me, and I just watch everybody,
because over time it will all settle in and we'll go on and we'll even remember that there
was a clash at all. But as they have said before, where the rubber meets the road, as
they always said about physicians and nurses, if you want physicians and nurses to stop
fighting, take them to the bed of the patient and they will never fight there. Need to all
get them back to the bedside and let them take care of people.
Gale ***: Thank you. Please, ma'am.
Mindy Reiser: Yes, thank you. My name is Mindy Reiser. I
wanted to talk about the whole issue of diversity. Some of you joined the military when there
were not that many people of color, and certainly that has changed. There are more people from
different ethnic groups in the military now, and I'm wondering how that plays out. We've
already heard some of the challenges of different cultures, and the military certainly has within
it many different cultures. We hear a lot about gays in the military. But I wonder about
lesbians, and what's happened there and are women out, and what does that mean? So, I'd
like you to talk about the challenges of being in a leadership position with people from
very different educational backgrounds, very different family structures, and people who
come from cultures where parental relations are different, peer relations are different;
how did this play out and how did you handle it?
Gale ***: Who's going to jump first?
Gina Farrisee: I will.
Gina Farrisee: I think that diversity makes every organization
stronger. There is something that everybody can learn from it. And I think that because
the services are made up of what this nation is made up of, then it is very important to
have that diversity. And I think it makes your units, your work place stronger, so long
as you as a leader are willing to listen to everyone and you are fair across the board.
Everyone has their opportunity to be a part and that you are one team, and that you work
as one team. So, I believe it strengthens the service and I believe that the services
see that.
Carol Mutter: The example I've always used is a football
team of 11 quarterbacks who will never make it to the Super Bowl. And so, you need different
members of the team with different skills, different backgrounds, different capabilities,
in order to work together to do the best and be the best. So, that's one point I would
make about diversity being a good thing, in general. I lost my second point, so you can
come back to me later.
[laughter]
It's called almost-timers.
Gale ***: Okay. I'll make a comment about the diversity
piece, because we have to look at who we attract into the military. It's the young men and
women of our country. And they -- we've evolved over time as far as what we find acceptable
and what we don't. And when you talk to the young folks, they're just -- they're not plussed
about the fact that a woman is in charge. They're not plussed about the fact that they
could have a gay or lesbian to their right or their left. They want to know whether or
not they're going to be able to do their job and cover their back when they need it. It's
the groups of us that have not grown up with those experiences in a day-to-day basis that
find it harder. But one of the challenges that I think we're going to start to deal
with now, we're a reflection of society, and we've been society's tool to modify behaviors
for years. We eliminated segregation, we brought women in, we practically without anyone noticing,
we transferred from the "don't ask, don't tell" into an open environment, and there's
been very little ripple around our services about that. The challenge that we're being
asked to take on now is *** assault. And I will tell you that your military is going
to figure it out, and then we're going to turn to the rest of society and say, "It's
time for you to start to police out there." Because we count.
[applause]
We're looking to make a difference. And I think that you will see that our diversity
that exists now, because of the other social changes that we have made, will enable us
to survive and to thrive and to change that culture that exists across our nation because
of the strength of our teams.
Christine Hunter: I have one more comment about the question
who supports you in this role. So, one of your most difficult moments, general talked
about, being CO of a deployable unit, is sending your people into the fight when they may not
come back. And you have to face that as a CO if you send anyone to deploy. And what
you want to know is who supports you in this role and in your life. And our ability to
include whoever the individual considers to be their family is a great strength in sending
people forth.
Sandra Gregory: I just want to echo that this is -- the military
has been the great equalizer, like you had mentioned -- like Gale had mentioned throughout
the last few decades since we've had women in the military, back to the Civil War, even.
But what's interesting is I find is not only is it the great equalizer, but because of
the training -- we are wonderful training mechanism. And as you've gone through this,
and so that everyone gets the same kind of training, whatever your specialty is. And
it doesn't matter what background you have or what belief you have or how you practice
different things in life. It's all about how you can perform that job and how you're going
to fit on the team. Period. Dot. Is it perfect? It's not always perfect. But it's leading
the pack for the whole nation.
Gale ***: Thank you. I'm going to --
Clara Adams-Ender: I need to just make one --
Gale ***: Please.
Clara Adams-Ender: -- comment in relationship to -- because she
talked about much that had to do with diversity at various times in her experience. I will
tell you that I believe in the environment today that diversity is a lot more valued
than it ever was before. And the reason how come I think that is because of the thinking
of the people who are here at this time. And I will tell you that I'm glad it has changed
because I have seen some disasters about happen because of that. For example, whenever we
had discovered that aid -- we had aides in this country to a very great degree -- I was
chief nurse at Walter Reed at that time. And I was about ready to go down and jump on the
chief of staff of the Army's desk because the Army said we didn't have any gays in here.
[laughter]
And we'd known forever. I mean, anybody who'd ever been in at that point of time knew that
that was not true. And so, we had to make sure that we worked through a number of things
and get to people and say, "You've got to make sure that you clean this up and deal
with this." And I heard that he died the other day. C. Everett Coop is one of the greatest
surgeons general we've ever had in this lifetime, because he defied the president of the United
States to deal with that particular issue. And it turned out very well. So -- and I'm
glad the whole issue of gays in the military has come to the fore because they've been
here all of the time. It was just unfortunate, and I have dealt with a lot of unfortunate
situations as a leader coming forth of people who have had difficulties. But I do believe
that the environment and the atmosphere has changed to a very great degree.
Gale ***: Thank you very much. Please.
Diana Spencer: Thank you. So, I'm Diana Spencer from the
McGowan Fund, and I have like a list of questions for you.
[laughter]
I'll ask probably one, maybe two. So, today there is a big push in education to get women,
young women, girls, starting early into STEMs: science, technology, engineering, and math.
Is there a push to get young women into leadership? Are there programs for young women going into
our armed forces, into the military? Or -- and if there's not, should there be?
Gale ***: Who wants to go?
Carol Mutter: I would just say all of our officer training
programs are leadership programs. It doesn't matter male or female. And if you make the
cut to become an officer in one of the services, you're going to go through -- officer candidate
training is the -- is where -- we at least in the Marine Corps, I think it's true for
all the services -- that's where you say, will they make the cut? Will this person be
able to lead? And then if you got to basic training once you're commissioned and you
say, okay, this is where we teach leadership 101 to everybody, male and female. It's not
necessarily automatic. Now certainly, I do believe that there are a lot of, you know,
captains of sports teams in high school and college. They learn a lot of leadership skills
in a lot of different ways along the way. And there are girls that have opportunities
in that regard as well. We don't necessarily do a good job of recruiting those girls like
we do the men who are captains of the football team. But we do bring them in and then give
them the tools they need to become the leaders that we need them to be so that they do the
best job for those young men and women that the mothers and fathers of America send to
us.
Sandra Gregory: One of the things that I'll just piggyback
on is that's how we use the -- I'll call it like a faucet -- we can turn it on and off.
So, if we need more engineers, people with more high tech mathematical skills, then we'll
offer more, for instance, ROTC scholarships for that. Or in officer's training school,
which is a 90-day program, then we'll, again, we'll take more people who have those particular
skills because they come with already a college degree. And same thing with the academies,
we'll just gear more towards what specific things that we need towards STEM. But it is
a wonderful program, and like I said, that's how we gear our scholarships if that's how
we're going to increase the number. And that's going to be based on, you know, how well rounded,
what kind of grade point average, just like any other college scholarship. But it's going
to be the needs of that particular service.
Gale ***: And I would also submit that when the services
are looking for leaders, they're looking for people that are demonstrating potential. You're
not just doing a great job in your day-to-day job. You're demonstrating to those around
you, at both your peer level and your superior level, that you have the ability to do more.
And as you start to assert yourself in that way, I think that often other opportunities
to develop those skills are afforded to you. So, some -- there will always be some element
of self-drive, trying to move yourself forward. But you mentioned you had a couple of questions.
Diana Spencer: Well, I do.
Gale ***: I'll give you one more, but then I'm going
to have to go over here.
Diana Spencer: I'll just ask real quickly this one because
this one is very interesting to me. So, I see a lot of programs come through today for
post-traumatic stress, and it just struck me as all of you were talking, which I have
enjoyed tremendously -- but it just strikes me that, you know, they've all been, except
for one, all have been for men for post-traumatic stress in coming out of the armed services.
What do you know about post-traumatic stress that's occurring in women that are coming
up? Is it there? Is it not there? Is it just less prevalent, or less known about.
Gale ***: I'm going to jump right into that one because
I was a student nurse at Walter Reed during Vietnam, and I watched the women nurses come
back then and have significant issues. It is not a gender-specific disorder. You know,
it has to do with what we're exposed to. And for the docs and the nurses and the medics
who every day dealt with a severely injured body of a young man or woman, you know, it's
almost overwhelming. It -- I admire them so much for their ability to continue to do their
job, day in and day out. But it is not a male -- that is not a male club.
Christine Hunter: Let me add a little bit to that. I think that
we recognize that post-traumatic stress affects both men and women, you know, based on their
experiences and their whole life experience, you know, that experience in context with
other things. And so, many of the programs that were focused on women's needs for PTS
also incorporated elements of *** trauma. And that is fine if that's the group that
you fall into, and certainly there are many needs, but young women said to me, "There
isn't a comfortable place for me to deal with my issues. I don't fall into the category
of military *** trauma. I do have combat-related PTS, and I'm in a group of men with whom I
don't feel a close connection as we're going through our group therapy to try to work these
issues out." And so, there's a real gap in programs for women, and I think that all of
us as health professionals are trying to step into that, not only to figure out what techniques
really are most effective for people to resolve or address these issues so they can go on
with their lives, but also, are there gender differences in how we respond to treatment
or the context in which we will feel safe to engage in treatment? And both the military
and the VA, and the joining forces campaign that is reaching out to medical schools and
professional training schools, nursing schools across the country, are seeking solutions
to that problem. So, maybe some of you in the audience, you know, have a part of the
formula that will work. And, you know, please, we encourage you to engage.
Gale ***: I know you have a couple of others, if you
give me a moment to go across? Please.
Anne Miles: Hi, I'm Anne Miles and I'm a retired lieutenant
colonel in the Air Force and taught at the Air Force Academy for four years back in the
‘80s, ‘90s -- 80s and 90s. And, in fact, one of my fellow professors has now been named
to be the superintendent, Michelle Johnson. And so academies are sort of in my mind at
the moment, and some of your comments went along those lines, so forgive me if I don't
phrase this exactly right. But what I'm interested in hearing your comments on are whether we
need to change, reform, look at the service academies in terms of the way they deal with
women, in terms of improving the way women are treated throughout the military and the
leadership roles that they're going to be privy to down the road. Some of the -- specifically,
I can mention that, for example, in a typical academy class of 22, for example, there would
be two women. So the proportion of women to men in a typical academy classroom is pretty,
you know, is wildly disproportionate. And so, there's lots of evidence to suggest that
women do not participate in academy classes the way they would in a normal college classroom,
for example, because of that inequity. And there's lots of other inequities. I could
go on and on and on. And not to disparage the academies, I'm just saying that that is
a reality. And so, anyway, I know that Michelle Johnson will probably be interested in some
of those sort of standard operating procedures, but we really leave the academies pretty much
off the table in most discussions about any kind of changes within the military, whether
it's -- whether we're talking about joint-ness, or whatever. And so, I know it's a really
hard question, but if you were, you know, sort of chief of staff of the Army, Air Force,
Navy, Marine Corps, for a day, would you be interested in looking at the service academy
issues? Does that bother you in any way?
Gale ***: General Mutter.
Carol Mutter: In 2003, I was the chair of DACOWITS. I had
retired at that point and chaired DACOWITS, and that was when the Air Force academy ***
assault scandal broke, and DACOWITS could -- you all know what DACOWITS is, Defense
Advisory Committee on Women in the Services. We could easily have descended upon the Air
Force Academy like everybody else did and study it and try to figure out what was wrong,
and we said, "No, they've got enough people doing that. We'll wait, maybe we should go
back in four or five years and see if their actually implementing the recommendations
that all these other people are making at this point." But, I did, as the chair of DACOWITS,
go and visit the Air Force academy, talk to the superintendent. And I ended up talking
to the superintendents of all the academies at that time, including the Coast Guard academy.
And you're right, the academies are neither fish nor fowl. They're not active duty yet,
so they're not in the military yet, and so, at that time, and it may still be the case,
they all come under the direct leadership of the chief of staff of the service, who
has a few other things to worry about. And so, they get very little supervision, oversight,
attention. The IGs, inspector generals of the services didn't even go out and look at
the academies at that time. And I don't know if that's changed or not. But it should have.
And we certainly made some recommendations along those lines. But, yeah, I believe that
there are a lot of things that need to be -- the academies need to be paid attention
to. There are things that need to change. Things have changed, but there's more that
can be done. And if nothing else, make sure the IG goes and sees them on a normal schedule
like they do everybody else.
Gale ***: One of the things that I think will positively
affect change in the academies is women have now been in the services long enough that
they're beginning to be in senior leadership positions across the academies; department
chairs, for example, the -- what in the Army we'd call the supe, the superintendent of
the academy. So, I think as people become more and more visible in those positions,
we'll start to see more change, which in our -- I think collectively -- I hope we've communicated
that we've all seen a great deal of change and we consider it quite positive. So, I think
that there's good news on the horizon. It won't always be easy. But it usually ends
up good.
Sandra Gregory: Gale, I want to mention something, and Dr.
Miles, thanks for bringing that up. I think what we have to create in the whole era of
not just the service academies, but whether it be ROTC or OTS or the basic training, we
need to have the culture that we will listen and pay attention to what's really happening
at the ground level. Just like in command, whether you're in command of a ship or of
a hospital or of a huge garrison, we need to be listening and then use the avenues that
are there or make new avenues so that people are really listened to if there's something
going wrong. And like I said, now I think -- for the Air Force academy, yes. With General
Johnson going in, from one of the early classes of women at the Air Force academy, she has
seen the whole spectrum now. And so, I have great confidence, just like others have worked
hard to improve them, we still have some avenues to work on. And so, I think that'll be a new
change and that's why, perhaps, that's why she's going in there.
Gale ***: Thank you. Please.
Jess Bice: Hi, my name's Jess Bice. I'm an Army officer,
went to West Point actually. I have a question about ethics. So, over the last year I read
the newspaper and I'm actually disappointed because some of the leaders that I've looked
up to over the last 13 years or so, have been in the newspaper for ethical wrongdoings,
if you will. I want to ask you, maybe if you could provide an anecdote or story of a time
when you were put in a position where you thought something was unethical, and how you
handled that, and how it came out.
Gale ***: I know that Admiral Hunter had been thinking
along those lines because of the questions that we had talked about that we could potentially
use. Would -- do you want to start that one for us?
Christine Hunter: Sure. I think, you know, we -- some of the
news stories, of course, have been about personal transgressions and people who have, you know,
violated integrity boundaries. But I think in every leadership position, you get placed
in a situation where you have to do the right thing even though it may not enhance your
career or be good for your immediacy, let's say that, your immediate comfort. And so,
when that happens to you, first of all, I think you've got to examine how do you know
what the right thing is? You know, you have -- we're all swayed by our emotions. We're
all creatures of our surroundings, and you feel like you're ethically conflicted and
you know you're facing a difficult decision as a leader, and you've got to make it right.
That's where those mentors, where those touch tones, where -- who are the people who are
going to come to you and say, "You're a little off." You know, where do you get that feedback?
In the Navy, that's -- most often comes from our command master chief, our senior enlisted
leader. And when I see those failures, I go home, and my husband and I, the dialogue we
have over the dinner table is where was the CMC? Because when I've been a little bit off,
you know, that command senior enlisted leader has walked through the door, closed the door,
and said, "Captain, admiral," you know, whatever rank I was at, "we got to talk, you know,
because my job is to keep you in a place where you can lead this entire unit to the best
of your ability and to our best outcome." And so, I would say that those sort of leadership
challenges are sometimes I think a failure of touch tones. And maybe that's because you
get too close to those people in your leadership triad. And they become your friends, and they
don't want to tell you, or maybe it's because you never invested the time in the relationship
and so they don't feel welcome to make that kind of observation. But I have been redirected
to true north by a savvy senior enlisted leader more than once.
[laughter]
Gale ***: Please. General Clara.
Clara Adams-Ender: I'd like to talk about, she said an example
of a situation that I had when I got to be a general officer. I was one of the females
that was there, and the Army had just implemented a policy that said that whenever there were
promotion boards that met and there were females to be considered, there must be a female of
equal rank or above on the board. Well, at that time, we had four general officers in
the -- females in the entire United States Army.
[laughter]
Okay. So I sat every fourth board, all right.
[laughter]
And this particular day I was there, and it was a brigadier general board, and I was in
a situation and in many of those situations you have numbers of other officers that you
have to deal with and to be able to do the things that are necessary for individuals
to be selected. And there was a young man that was a colonel that was the deputy of
a fellow that I knew, who was being pushed -- was -- he was pushing him to make general
officer. And I knew that that young man had been considered in many situations to be a
harasser of women, that he treated women very badly in many, many situations. I'd seen him
do that personally in terms of talking to them and things of that nature. And this fellow
that was promoting him, came to me and said, "Listen, I'd like for you to support my guy
over here because I -- and he's my deputy and I'd like for him to go ahead," and that
type of thing. And I didn't say anything at the time, but I had an opportunity, because
the day closed and I had an opportunity to go home and think about it. And I will tell
you, I had a very, very, sleepless night that night. And I learned -- someone told me one
time, when you think through situations and you think about the worst thing that could
ever happen to you, it never will. And when I went back that next morning, and I had practiced
my speech and everything in front of the mirror, I went back and I told him, "Listen, I can't
support you in this situation and these are the reasons why." And he said, "Oh, no, Clara,
that's okay." He said, "I know you know the situation." And he didn't support him either.
And so --
[laughter]
-- he didn't make general officer. But, you know, whenever an ethical situation comes
up, and they do very often, it's important that you think it through and know where your
ethics are at the time. And make sure that if it's on something that is of importance,
you don't want to be wavering on it at that time. Because if you waver that time, the
chances are you'll forget SENA [spelled phonetically] before too long. And so, I think that when
you have those ethics and you know what it is that you ought to be about doing, that
you ought to keep on being about doing.
Carol Mutter: I had an opportunity to talk to similar groups
at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, and I remember in the maybe 10,
12 years ago, talking to a group of majors and lieutenant colonels, and they were very
concerned at the time about all the different deployments that we were being asked -- the
military was being asked to do at the time. And they were being stretched very thin, and
they thought a lot of these things were inappropriate and they weren't things that they should be
doing, and the question was why aren't the generals throwing their stars on the table
and saying, "We ought not be doing these things." And the answer is, I'd like to provide that
-- to have you think about it in a little bit different perspective here, because, one,
you do that behind closed doors. You do make your ideas known, your concerns, your thoughts.
You're true to your ethics behind closed doors, but it's still the guy's -- the lead guy's
decision, and usually it's a guy. But, you know, the guy in charge has to make the decision
and has to take the responsibility for that decision. Now, yes, there may come a time
in a situation where it is so important that you feel like, "Okay, I just can't handle
this. If that's the decision it's going to be, I'm going to resign. I'm out of here."
And I remember General Ralston, I think it was, chief of staff of the Air Force, who
did that over a situation about 10, 12 years ago.
Sandra Gregory: General Fogleman.
Carol Mutter: Fogleman, excuse me. And he did that. He left
as chief of staff of the Air Force, the number one guy in the Air Force. And when he left,
he had zero influence over what would happen the next day. When you're still there, you
still can work inside the system to try to change things. But it may be that you've made
up your mind, "It ain't happening and I ain't going to be able to change things, and so
I'm leaving." And that may be a time for you to go. But those are the decisions that you
struggle with. Is this something I can continue to work at and change from the inside? Or
is it something that I just can't live with anymore and it's not changing, and so I'm
Gale ***: I think a final thought on that is power corrupts.
Or absolute power corrupts absolutely. And I think that leaders in the military, in government,
in business, they can -- they lose true north. And I think it's good that we're offended
when they do. So --
Carol Mutter: On the other side, if I could say, I was head
of manpower before I retired from the Marine Corp. On any given day, I forget the number
now, it was either one-third or two-thirds of the general officers in the Marine Corp
were under investigation. It is too easy for anybody to make an accusation. And whenever
an accusation is made, you have to take it seriously. You have to investigate it. I was
accused of a number of interesting things --
[laughter]
-- and under investigation.
Female Speaker: Join the club.
Carol Mutter: So, I am not at all happy. I hope there are
no media people here. We're on the record, so forgive me, but, I mean, the media will
run with a story before they figure out if it's true or not. And they'll say, you know,
unconfirmed, but they still run with it. And poor General Allen got whipped up in this
whole thing with General Petraeus. And I'm very disappointed in General Petraeus. I had
a lot of respect for him. But General Allen didn't deserve what he got and it was eventually
proven that he didn't deserve it. But in the meantime, what did he and his family go through
and his command and his ability to do his job? It is too easy for people to make accusations
and for it to make a huge difference in the ability to accomplish your mission and lead
those poor young men and women that need good quality leadership.
Gale ***: I'm going to take one last question. Take
two. Oh, I'm sorry. I hadn't seen anyone come to that side. So, I think you were standing
up first. Okay.
Female Speaker: Good evening, ladies. I had a question in
the context of I see a lot of, my female officer peers getting out of the Air Force because
they feel that they need to choose between having a family and having a career. And I
was wondering if you could talk about any programs or initiative to retain quality female
officers or anything that you would recommend to do in order to be successful at both.
Carol Mutter: How many of us are married?
[laughter]
How many of us have children? And we still -- we did it, but it was not easy, was it?
Sandra Gregory: No, but there are a couple things that I've
mentored people who have wanted to make some of those same choices. First of all, I've
got a great partner and he's in the audience, who is also a veteran of the Air Force. And
we did this together. I would not be here today as a retired one-star if it hadn't been
for my husband, Retired Colonel Tom Bradley. And when I first told him I didn't want children,
when we got engaged and then the marriage was going great and he said, well, I perhaps
brought it up, and said "Okay, I'll have one." And then we decided that we would have a nanny,
that we were going to put a lot of money into a nanny who fortunately stayed with us for
21 years. She died four years ago at the age of 84. My husband wanted some beautiful, young
nanny.
[laughter]
And I was the hiring authority and so --
[laughter]
-- I hired -- we hired Francis, who was 64, and had had eight children of her own. Her
first one was born with she was about 15. She had a Ph.D. in motherhood. And I've had
a lot of people here, some in the audience, who, you know, sometimes their husbands decided
to step out of the career path that they were in and they've done that very successfully.
Others who have continued on a civilian career path or maybe went into the Guard or Reserves,
there are many different ways. The biggest thing when I mentor people, say, "I respect
your choices, and I speak that you respect mine." We ended up having two children because
nanny wanted us to have a second one --
[laughter]
-- who's a wonderful 22-year-old now. And the other one's 25. But, so it's a partnership,
when we get promoted, she'd get pay raises. We always paid taxes on her and everything
was above board when it came to the IRS. But she said, "How -- I don't know how much money
you make," and this was when we were majors, she said, "But you work a lot." And so she
was the partner. So that's what, like I said, worked for us. I know other people have had
au pairs who have had great success. I know somebody in the audience who's had great -- so,
I think the key thing is as we mentor people, there isn't a one-size-fits-all. So, it took
my husband a lot of understanding. We put a lot of money into nanny. People always said,
"We want to be your nanny, you know, you come with a car and insurance and taxes paid for,"
and they want to come and work. But we treated her with great respect, the same leadership
principles that we used as leaders at the work place worked with Nan. And so, it was
a beautiful partnership. She was my best friend. I miss her a lot. Tom, you're now my best
friend.
[laughter]
So, I don't know if that answered it, but I tried to put a little bit of humor in it,
too, but it's a very serious, tough question. And so, if you're going to have, like I said,
whether you have an au pair or nanny, you can't do it -- I mean, it's hard, I mean I
know single moms who have done it, it's eight times as hard. My hat goes to you. But it
is a tough choice, so, like I said, we put money -- our number one priority, which was
our children and our mission to get our job done. And so, I sort of rest with that. That
worked for us. I wish I could make carbon copies of her. She was phenomenal and she
would tell me if I were , you know, "you're about two pounds away from being plump," and
my uniform didn't look right, so she nannied all of us.
[laughter]
So, like I said, and I think too, is to mentor each other in our personal board of directors,
is that we have to be sounding boards for each other. And so, I remember a woman who
later retired as a two star, she really gave me some great advice. One of our classmates
in air command and staff, when I was pregnant with our first son, and it was hard being
the token pregnant woman in a class of 435 men and about 30 women, was that -- we shared
questions on what to ask a nanny. And we laughed about them later. You know, Francis was 63,
you know, I asked her the normal questions, do you use drugs?
[laughter]
What do you think about your philosophy of raising children? You know, here she had eight,
I had zero.
[laughter]
But, like I said, somewhere in the archives I've kept that because it was, again, the
partnering of other women to help me get to the point, and I'm eternally grateful to that
other major who shared those questions and her experiences. And she, too, was able to
keep nannies and au pairs for a long, long time. So it's those same leadership things.
So it's -- hope -- a long answer to -- we'll be happy to talk more later if you'd like,
but it can be done. But I couldn't have done it without my partner of almost 30 years,
Tom Bradley.
Clara Adams-Ender: I want to just make one comment because I
ran a female profession in the military, primarily. The nurse corps at the time that I was in
was 75 percent female, and that was 1987. And I can tell you that the rest of the services
were not at all interested in the fact that I had mostly females, because they had to
make sure that all these guys got the jobs that they were supposed to get. And I was
interested in the fact that the nurses got to the places they needed to be so that they
could take care of those guys who needed the jobs that they needed. Whatever. So, we talked
to married couples. And I used to say that the nurse corps married everybody.
[laughter]
And they told -- one infantry officer told me when they stop saying that, say they have
discerning taste. I said, "All right."
[laughter]
But they married Air Force, marines, everybody, you see. And so, as a result of that, we had
to look at trying to get those -- everybody with a career together so that they could
be in the position they needed to be in order to be able to move ahead, because everybody's
trying to move ahead. And I will just say one of the first things that you need to do
if you're going to deal with this is, get together with your partner and decide whose
career is going to be advanced and when, because yours is just as important as the partner
is. I -- you know, I can't say that I can't send this nurse over here because she's got
to go with her husband to this job that he's going to over here in this area. And I don't
have a position for her in that particular place. You see the dilemma that is created
there? The mission of the Army, or the mission of the military does not change because you
get married, you know. It really doesn't. And as a result of that, you have to work
those kinds of things out. And if they don't work, then you might have to consider making
other choices, because you do have other choices. You may not like them, but you do have them.
[laughter]
Yeah, and that's the way I think it's important for us to look at it.
Carol Mutter: The most important thing I just have to echo
is your partner.
Clara Adams-Ender: Absolutely.
Carol Mutter: I had a wonderful -- have still, a wonderful
life partner who supported me unfailingly in my career, and again, would not be where
I ended up if it were not for him. So, that's number one most important thing. But, I'd
also like to talk about this from a slightly different perspective, because I think your
question was getting at programs that the military might put in place, too, that help,
because the last Marine Corps command screen board for colonels came out and there were
not any women on the list. I emailed the commandant and said how come? And he said, "I'm finding
out." And he's now got a task force working on why -- and it's because of family issues
-- 10 of the 11 women who were eligible for a command took their names out of the running,
and said, "I do not want to be considered for command," which obviously is key for the
next step in your career. And it was for family reasons. And, so the question is are we not
supporting these women enough in their family choices in order for them to feel like they
can make the choice to stay. And I -- they've got a task force looking at it. I know DACOWITS
is looking at it again. When I was with DACOWITS for three years in 2003 to 2006, 2007, we
looked at work/life balance issues. There are a lot of reports and a lot of recommendations
out there. One of the recommendations had to do with having a sabbatical program where
the women can leave for a few years -- men could leave, too, and take care of an aging
parent. I mean, there are -- or go to an advanced degree program if the military wouldn't send
you. There are a lot of good reasons to have a sabbatical program. Coast Guard has done
this. They have learned the lessons about how to do it well and what works and what
doesn't work. And I know DACOWITS is looking at it again, and I know the Marine Corps is
looking at it to say what are some things that we can do to ensure we're not doing things
that force people out and, in fact, we are proactively doing some things that can help
them make the decision to stay. So, because you're losing a lot of talent and expensive
training and expertise that you've put a lot of time and money into for years in training
people up to this point, and then they leave. And we can't afford to do that.
Sandra Gregory: I'll just have one quick short one that - because
I don't know if I fully answered it either and you just brought that up, General Mutter.
One of the things that my husband and I said to our career people was, "We would take any
job that the Air Force needs us for, as long as you keep us together." And so, we knew
that -- and we had made the decision then, I guess, that my career took a lead. But my
husband got phenomenal jobs. He always had a lot more fun than I did.
[laughter]
So, they kept me on career path within financial management, but he has a résumé -- like,
for instance, he got to do strategic planning and war gaming and quality. And he just did
-- and then international affairs, so he got to have -- so it can, like I said, but we
were very flexible with our career monitors, just like all the things that you had to deal
with. Wow, we just said, "Listen, we'll go anywhere, and we'll work hard, just like you
do." So it can be done and there are many of us, I think, also is it's important that
the women who have done some of those same things ahead of you, you shouldn't feel like
you're on an island by yourself. Please call on us, we'll be happy to share with you one-on-one
or in groups, brown bags, wherever you're working, we'd be happy to come.
Gale ***: Yes, I would encourage people to reach out
to us. You know, if we can figure out how to get to your location, we're generally,
you know, can be listeners. We can ask some really tough questions about areas that you
might not have considered. So, you know, reach to the other women that are out there that
are either going through or know people who have gone through similar challenges.
Sandra Gregory: And our fees are small, they're cheap.
[laughter]
I think we had one more question.
Female Speaker: The question was just asked.
Clara Adams-Ender: Oh, oh, all right.
Gale ***: I hope that the thoughts of my colleagues
were interesting for you this evening. I know we had fun just on email and thinking about,
well, what would we really want to share with the audiences tonight? I think we could have
talked for days, but that wasn't what we were afforded. So, thank you all for your patience
and for sticking with us through the evening. I know that I'm -- I'll stay. This is my friend,
Cruiser; we'll be around for a little bit if anyone has questions. And I would just
really like to thank my colleagues here for a great evening. Thanks very much.
[applause]