2024 USHERED IN TWO FIRSTS FOR MILITARY WOMEN. WE’RE ALL CELEBRATING.

American women kicked off 2024 with two milestones that flipped the script on the way society keeps

judging, classifying and relating to us. The first happened in Annapolis, Maryland, where Vice Admiral

Yvette Davids − a mother of twin boys with an Audrey Hepburn vibe − became the first woman to

lead the 178-year-old U.S. Naval Academy. Then, Air Force 2nd Lieutenant Madison Marsh became the

5 newest Miss America, the first-active duty military officer to win the pageant. Beauty can have brains and

brawn; brains and brawn can be beautiful. Take that, society.

Marsh’s crown matters more when it comes to her job in the Air Force. She busts the myth that women

who do the jobs that used to be held only by men have to look and act like them. This is important at

the Naval Academy, where some graduates watched Davids show compassion, a vivacious personality

10 and maternal pride as her kids cheered her on in a room full of military brass. “It was surreal,” said

Sharon Hanley Disher, 65, one of the first women to graduate from the academy in 1980. She was at the

ceremony promoting Davids, who called out the class of pioneers twice during her speech in Annapolis.

She couldn’t stop thinking about her first evening at the academy, back in 1976. “Miss Hanley, I don’t like

women in my school,” an upperclassman told her, she recalled, pointing his finger in her face. “I don’t

15 want women in my school. It will be my mission to make sure you’re long gone before I graduate.” She

graduated, and Davids, who graduated in 1989, thanked her and others for helping pave the way.

“A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for,” said Davids in her welcome address, quoting

the words of Admiral Grace Hopper. She will face doubt and challenges to her leadership. But besides

proving that she can lead, she will be confronted with the opportunity to address women’s experience as

20 minorities in a school where they are just 28 percent of the student population.

Elizabeth Rowe, who was also in the class of 1980 with Hanley Disher, was celebrated as a pioneer in her

small, Maryland farm town. When she went off to the academy, she was stunned by the hatred she faced

when she got there. “While I knew it was first class and it was all male, I didn’t have any perspective. The

reaction we got − a sort of resentment, hatred, otherness, all of that − was unexpected. I spent four years

25 just trying to get through it. The hazing and harassment − dead rats being left in mailboxes, the constant

put-downs − were largely unaddressed by leaders,” she said.

Sadly, current students still face some of what she endured. Hanley Disher, who married a fellow graduate

and again made history when all three of their children graduated from the academy, said she was thrilled

to see her daughter have more congressionally mandated opportunities available to her. But she was

30 heartbroken when she heard that some of the old school misogyny was still there. “This one guy told my

daughter a joke,” she recounted. He said: “What did the ugliest girl in the world say to the second ugliest

girl in the world? What company are you in?”

Some of the women from the class of 1980 have never returned to the academy to celebrate milestones,

as their colleagues took command in the Navy and rose in the ranks at the academy. They told Hanley

35 Disher − when she reached out to them for reunions or events − that they can’t. But people change, places

change. During their 35th reunion, one of the men who was a primo harasser of women apologized to

her. He told her that he has been living with guilt over the things he said and did, and wanted to apologize

to all of them. So, Disher took him by the arm and said “Let’s go”. She accompanied him on his apology

tour, and then they cried about it at the bar.

PETULA DVORAK Adaptado de washingtonpost.com, 15/01/2024.