Women In Special Operations Say Bias, Double Standards Are Daily Realities
Women in Army special operations units believe they are kept off missions because of "benevolent sexism" and rejected from leadership positions because "men get 'dibs' on jobs,'" according to a survey U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) released Monday. And while the reported rates of sexual harassment and assault were lower than in the larger Army, harassment remains a "ubiquitous concern" in those units, with "nearly every" woman of junior rank reporting "some degree of sexual harassment" to Army researchers.
Those findings were lowlights of an eight-month Study released on Monday that tracks the progress women have made and the challenges they face in special operations units.
Even activities as mundane as morning PT formations, the study found, can be rife with double standards. Across every special operations unit surveyed, women said that wearing "yoga pants" or leggings led to "countless" reprimands from male superiors for "showing off their body" and "revealing too much" — even as the men who chastise them wear "Ranger panties" to PT and even in the office as a "duty uniform."
The report's conclusion on PT dress complaints echoed a sentiment found across most of the topics in the report's 106 pages: "Most women do not have a problem with ranger panties, they simply loathe the double standard."
The report covered surveys and interviews carried out from February to August 2021. Hard data came from written surveys from about 1,000 women in special operations units and in-person focus groups that interviewed close to 200 women across 13 major special operations units. The resulting report, "Women in Army Special Operations Forces (WiA) Study," was made public Monday as the Army released an updated version, "Breaking Barriers: Women in Special Operations"
In a media roundtable on Monday, Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, the commander of the Army Special Operations Command, said the report had uncovered issues that leaders may not have been aware of.
"This is the largest study we've ever done to see for ourselves the barriers and challenges that women face," Braga said. "This journey took us down so many different holes we didn't realize, everything from healthcare to barracks and standards of living."
Ill-fitting body armor is a common complaint for women in special ops. (Cpl. Emily Knitter/U.S. Army).Though women continue to report major hurdles in nearly every area of their professional lives in Army special operations, the news is not all bad.
The study found that 72% of women in the survey said they would support their daughter's decision to join an Army special operations unit (64% of men said the same), compared to a 2020 survey of families across the wider military in which only 39% of respondents said they would support their daughter serving in a military branch (51% said they would support a son in that survey).
"The majority of women genuinely desire to continue serving in USASOC formations," the study found.
The report covers every unit in USASOC. Researchers held focus groups with women assigned to six Special Forces groups, the 75th Ranger Regiment and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, along with the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School and several psychological warfare and intelligence units.
Women continue to fill in the ranks of special operations, though slowly. About 2,300 women serve in USASOC, about 7% of the force, the report said.
However, their placement in those ranks is uneven.
In media comments, Braga said just six women are assigned to the 75th Ranger Regiment, none as Ranger infantry soldiers.
"We would love to see some of that matriculate through [to the Rangers] now that that barrier has been broken in the regular army and regular infantry. We would love to attract that talent," Braga said.
Though roughly 4,000 soldiers serve in the Ranger Regiment, researchers held just one focus group at the Regiment and spoke with just two women (one enlisted, one officer). In contrast, researchers held more than 20 focus groups at Special Forces groups involving over 100 women.
Braga also noted that only a handful of women — "less than 10, more than 1," he said — have successfully completed Special Forces training to earn a green beret and serve on an operational A-team.
At the core of the report are findings that women in special operations units deal with ill-fitting gear, double standards and constant doubts about their abilities, and gender biases that range from misplaced paternalism to outright hostility.
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The report found that 40% of women in special operations said gender bias in the workplace is a current challenge.
Many said they had been denied assignments or promotions for reasons they traced to gender bias. One woman said she had been one of four women to apply for a leadership job over support troops enabling a Special Forces team when the team's Green Berets did not want to be in charge of non-operators. However, commanders tapped a soldier from the team for the job, who then failed as a leader, she said, because "he didn't want to be there."
"Protective leaders are emplacing invisible barriers," the report said, as male leaders make decisions with an eye toward "protecting female Soldiers."
Another woman said she had been denied the ability to contribute to a mission in an austere environment. "With a frustrated tone [she] stated, 'I had a she-wee, I can wipe my own ass, and I went to SERE school where I slept right next to all the guys.'"
Though the report found most gender bias was unconscious, institutional, or perhaps ill-placed paternalism, deeply held anti-woman sentiment was not hard to find, particularly among senior Special Forces soldiers. Responses from senior male NCOs included:
Beyond daily examples of bias, the report cites several other areas where women said special operations units are falling flat: equipment, childcare, social support (such as mentoring), sexual harassment, pregnancy, and soldier morale.
When originally issued in 2021, the report made 42 recommendations for improving the experience and integration of women into special operations units. The updated report released this week says USASOC has instituted about half and is working on the remainder.
The recommendations include:
"We still got a lot of work to do," Braga said. "A change of culture takes time. It's not just one briefing, we talk to the force, we talk to one person. But I think we are well along the way on the right azimuth. We must be better."
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Women In Army SOF Sidelined By 'benevolent Sexism,' Study Finds
In the "most masculine community on earth," not only do servicewomen contend with undue interest from their male counterparts, they also encounter hostility from jealous spouses and "benevolent sexism" that can keep them off of deployments and training ops due to perceived fragility. Female soldiers, still an extreme minority in the special operations community, report that they're called out and excluded due to their status as parents; their perception as too stern or too friendly; and even their decision to wear yoga pants, a ubiquitous activewear staple for millions of women. Those are some of the key findings from an internal study by U.S. Army Special Operations Command on barriers to service for women in the ranks.
Completed in 2021 and released this month to Military Times through a public records request, the 106-page study illustrates the obstacles that persist as female soldiers seek equal standing in USASOC, from obtaining gear that fits properly to being recognized as full members of the teams they serve with.
The study also represents a thorough and clear-eyed effort — a first of its scope within U.S. Special Operations Command — to grapple with and understand the hidden factors that keep women from being accepted by their peers in that community. Acting "without external provocation," outgoing USASOC Commander Maj. Gen. Francis Beaudette directed the study be undertaken, with oversight from an organizational psychologist, in early 2021. Over the course of the year, 5,000 USASOC members, including 1,000 women, took a 41-question survey identifying barriers to service. This was followed by 48 women-only focus group sessions held at 14 bases, and 25 command-team interviews throughout USASOC at the group, battalion and company level. Of the 42 recommendations the study generated, all of which USASOC says it's acting on in some form, 18 emphasized increased education and awareness.
Other obstacles to service addressed by the study included access to female-specific health care; pregnancy and miscarriage support; access to child care; and safety concerns in lodging due to poor lighting and lax security.
Of note, nearly all of the women who participated in the research held support rules within USASOC; at the time of the report's completion, there were only three female "18-series," or Green Beret, soldiers within the entire command. (Today, USASOC spokesman Lt. Col. Mike Burns said, there are more than three but fewer than 10 female Green Berets.) This, study leaders indicate, was a driving factor for the project.
"Although disappointed by some of the findings and comments in the study, we are committed to addressing these issues with candor and transparency. I'm encouraged by the report stating that 72% of women would support their daughters serving in an ARSOF formation," Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, USASOC's current commander, said in a letter introducing the study. "I'm confident the incredible men and women in this formation are making USASOC a better place to work every day for our sons and daughters alike."
Benevolent sexismWhile sexual assault and harassment are addressed in the study — 30% of female soldiers surveyed reported sexual harassment as a challenge, and focus group participants agreed the figure should really be closer to 95% — women said they were also harmed or limited by male colleagues and leaders who acted out of a desire to protect them. In one case, a junior noncommissioned officer said she was taken off a deployment roster and replaced with a man because "I wasn't tactically proficient enough for the mission;" however, she added, the pre-mission training had not even begun yet and her leaders didn't have the necessary information to make that call.
Another junior NCO reported that on her last deployment, all the men in her unit had jointly decided it was "too risky" to allow women to leave the wire, dramatically limiting their ability to contribute to the mission. Another woman who described a similar scenario vented her exasperation to investigators: "I had a she-wee, I can wipe my own ass, and I went to SERE school where I slept right next to all the guys."
The Shewee is a brand-name funnel-like device that allows women to urinate discreetly in a field environment.
The common practice of having separate living quarters for women in training and deployed environments, which offers privacy and staves off "spousal distrust" concerns back home, also has a major downside, respondents said: multiple women reported being left behind on missions because of planning changes in after-hours sessions that took place without them.
Among female officers in particular, the study found, jealousy from spouses and significant others was a major barrier to equality and camaraderie within units. Women in focus groups described being excluded from casual and social events for this reason. One officer said she was only referred to by her last name to hide the fact that she was a woman.
"I went to a hail and farewell," a company-grade officer told researchers. "Two spouses approached me and told me not to talk or text [their] husband[s] outside of duty hours."
Because of these isolating factors, loneliness also emerged as a concern. While an encouraging 69% of women said they had mentors and felt comfortable asking men and women alike for career guidance, female soldiers said they struggled to develop real friendships in their units. While some respondents reported unprofessional attention from male colleagues that forced them to hide their social media profiles or avoid social interactions, comfortable camaraderie often appeared to be missing. Of note, the study pointed out that all these sensitivities and barriers to cohesion were lessened in units where women have been present and fully integrated for years.
"The decision to separately house female soldiers was often described as a leaders' attempt to maintain good order and discipline by avoiding perceptions of unprofessional relationships or infidelity; however, most women view it as career preservation for those leaders," the study found.
Ranger panties and yoga pantsEven PT gear could be a source of angst and exclusion. During workouts and other occasions where casual civilian attire was allowed, women in USASOC reportedly would get "called out" for wearing yoga pants or leggings as too form-fitting or revealing. This particularly rankled because the men habitually wore "Ranger panties," or tight, scanty shorts, with impunity.
"Most women do not have a problem with ranger panties, they simply loathe the double standard," the study found.
To address problems related to gender bias, both implicit and overt, the report called for the creation of an internal newsletter addressing issues faced by women in Army special operations, which launched in 2022 with an overview of the study featured in its first issue. It also recommended integrating study findings and the work of the newly launched Women in ARSOF Initiative into the pre-command course and onboarding processes within Army special operations' premier training center, the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Liberty, North Carolina. This recommendation remains in progress, according to the study.
Lt. Col. Rachel Cepis, director of the initiative, told Military Times that she and study leader Dr. Monica Moore have been briefing onboarding classes at the training center and speaking to civil affairs classes at brown-bag lunches over the last year to help build awareness at the outset of cultural challenges facing women and the need to communicate and listen well. While it's still too early to gauge the impact of these briefs, Moore and Cepis said they're planning a three-year review to assess cultural progress.
"What better way to say what is ARSOF culture than by showing what the culture is in the schoolhouse, and saying this is how we treat our teammates," Cepis said, "So they understand, this is a culture I'm walking into [rather than] trying to change a culture later on, which is a little bit more difficult."
The survey did uncover a proportion of Special Forces soldiers openly opposed to women in their ranks. The 871 single-spaced pages of write-in comments returned with the survey included declarations from multiple male soldiers in senior enlisted ranks that they'd rather retire before welcoming women into Army Special Forces. Others questioned the motives of women who wanted to go to SOF units.
"The men that choose to lay down their lives and do missions that only great men can do are warriors … women like warriors," one male soldier wrote. "These are the facts."
No bad daysThe everyday challenges cited by many women in the study, however, pointed instead to a broader uncertainty among male soldiers about how to treat their female counterparts, and a hesitancy to have the candid conversations required to achieve greater understanding.
As a visible minority, women in USASOC said they felt they "cannot have a bad day" because they were constantly being observed and having to prove their competency and value. While male soldiers are believed to be capable until they prove otherwise, the opposite is true for women, focus groups reported. Even demeanor provokes scrutiny: one NCO said if she smiled, she was perceived as too friendly, but her neutral demeanor was called "resting b—- face."
"Men can be neutral, but I can't," she said.
Surveyed women stressed, though, that they didn't want any special placement or opportunities just because they were female, and that worries over whether they were selected to a position just for their gender or that standards were lowered for them in some way contributed to feelings of insecurity and lack of belonging.
One solution the study identified in several places was simple: to listen more to women, include them in decisions that involve them, and "have the hard conversations," whether with spouses about living arrangements, or between soldiers about exclusionary behaviors and unmet needs from lodging safety to proper gear. These conversations will become increasingly critical, the study added, as the population of women grows and deployments that include women in Special Forces specialties become commonplace.
"A couple of years from now, what I want to see is that just it's become just second nature," Cepis said. "I've been in ARSOF for a long time. And I've always felt like I've been part of the team, but I understand that that's not everybody's experience. What I want and what I hope is that that becomes everybody's experience."
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