First Women Cadets Enroll at West Point
The first female cadets were enrolled at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on this day. Sixty-two members of this group graduated on May 28, 1980.
The Women’s Armed Services Integration Act of June 12, 1948 allowed women to become permanent members of the armed forces.
Other barriers to women in the military fell when the Navy allowed women to serve on submarines on April 29, 2010, and when the Pentagon authorized women to serve in combat, on January 24, 2013.
Read: Lance Janda, Stronger Than Custom: West Point and the Admission of Women (2002)
Read about women at the Virginia Military Institute: Philippa Strum, Women in the Barracks (2002)
Learn more: Evelyn Monahan and Rosemary Neidel Greenlee, A Few Good Women: America’s Military Women from World War I to the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (2010)
Visit the U.S. Army Women’s Museum: http://www.awm.lee.army.mil/