Being Female in the US Navy

Living Life as Usual in a Male-Dominated World

Photo by kyoko sakura on Unsplash

A friend requested that I write about my experience being a female enlisted in the United States Navy. She thought it would be interesting to read about. It’s been hard for me to write about, though not for the reasons you would think.

It’s not because I was sexually harassed while on active duty (though I was). It’s not because I got treated as an inferior by my male counterparts (though I did). It’s because during my eight years of service, most of the time, my gender was completely irrelevant.

Sorry, this isn’t going to be a hit piece on the misogyny of the military. If you were looking for that, you can go ahead and move along. This is the story of how I found lifelong friendships with my fellow shipmates, both men and women. When we’re in a life or death situation and the boat is sinking, I don’t care what your pronoun is, you better be bailing water right alongside me.

(In case you were wondering about the difference between a boat and ship — boats are carried on ships. But also, submarines can be called boats. And I’m getting way off target here, aren’t I?)

I looked it up and found a statistic that said in 2005, females represented 14% of enlisted sailors. It was up to 20% in 2018, but I was enlisted from…