Livestream of “A Sea Change: Navy Women on Combatant Ships” Exhibit Opening

Opening Remarks:
CW5 Phyllis Wilson, US Army Retired
President, Military Women’s Memorial

Special Remarks:
The Honorable John Dalton
70th Secretary of the US Navy

Keynote Remarks:
Admiral Lisa Franchetti, US Navy
Chief of Naval Operations

The 1948 Women’s Armed Services Integration Act (PL 625) prohibited women from being “assigned to duty on vessels of the Navy except hospital ships and naval transports”—to which only a handful of women were actually assigned.

Nearly 25 years later, in 1972, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr. first chipped away at the “at-sea” discrimination when he issued “Z-Gram 116,” assigning women crew members to the hospital ship USS Sanctuary as a pilot program for future assignment of women to non-combatant ships. Later, in 1978, a more permanent barrier was removed when U.S. District Court Judge John J. Sirica ruled “unconstitutional” the law banning women from nearly all Navy ships. As a result, for the first time, women would be routinely assigned aboard all non-combatant vessels. Finally, after 15 more years of wrangling, the law prohibiting women on combatant ships was repealed.

With this new exhibit, the Military Women’s Memorial seeks to present the extraordinary, hard-fought story of Navy women’s journey to serve aboard combatant ships and examine the challenges and accomplishments of a three-decades-plus statutory blockade to their full participation.