Many women have served in the United States Navy for over a century. As of 2020, there were 69,629 total women on active duty in the US Navy, with 11,076 serving as officers, and 58,553 enlisted. Of all the branches in the US military, the Navy has the second highest percentage of female active duty service members (after the US Air Force) with women making up 20% of the US Navy in 2020.
As of 2025, no woman has been able to finish the process to become a Navy SEAL. In 2019, a woman successfully completed SEAL Officer Assessment and Selection (SOAS), but opted to join another unit of the Navy before reaching the 24-week Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training. She was among five women who had participated in the SOASSEAL Officer Assessment Selection screening process.
In July 2021, the first woman graduated from the Naval Special Warfare (NSW) training program to become a Special Warfare Combatant craft Crewman (SWCC). The SWCC directly supports the SEALs and other commando units, and are experts in covert insertion and extraction special operations tactics.
In November 2023, the United States Senate voted 95-1 to confirm Admiral Lisa Franchetti as Chief of Naval Operations, making Franchetti the first woman to be Chief of Naval Operations and, due to having that position, the first woman on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
History Note that some minor wars in which women served have been omitted from this history. Pre–World War I
Women worked as nurses for the Union Navy during the American Civil War. In 1890, Ann Bradford Stokes, who during the American Civil War had worked as a nurse on the navy hospital ship , where she assisted Sisters of the Holy Cross, was granted a pension of $12 a month, making her the first American woman to receive a pension for her own service in the Navy. She was not, however, the first woman to receive a pension for her military service. Margaret Corbin and Deborah Sampson both received pensions for their service in the American Revolutionary War.
The United States Navy Nurse Corps was officially established in 1908; it was all-female until 1965. After the establishment of the Nurse Corps in 1908 by an Act of Congress, twenty women were selected as the first members and assigned to the Naval Medical School Hospital in Washington, D.C. However, the navy did not provide room or board for them, and so the nurses rented their own house and provided their own meals.Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, United States Navy. "White Task Force: the story of the Nurse Corps, United States Navy." (NAVMED 939 1945), pg. 7. In time, the nurses would come to be known as "The Sacred Twenty" because they were the first women to serve formally as members of the Navy. The "Sacred Twenty" were Mary H. Du Bose; Adah M. Pendleton; Elizabeth M. Hewitt; Della V. Knight; Josephine Beatrice Bowman; Lenah H. Sutcliffe Higbee; Esther Voorhees Hasson, the first Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps, 1908–1911; Martha E. Pringle; Elizabeth J. Wells; Clare L. De Ceu.; Elizabeth Leonhardt; Estelle Hine; Ethel R. Parsons; Florence T. Milburn; Boniface T. Small; Victoria White; Isabelle Rose Roy; Margaret D. Murray; Sara B. Myer; and Sara M. Cox. The Nurse Corps gradually expanded to 160 on the eve of World War I. For a few months in 1913, Navy nurses saw their first shipboard service, aboard Mayflower and Dolphin.
World War I
The increased size of the navy in support of World War I increased the need for clerical and administrative support. The U.S. Naval Reserve Act of 1916 permitted the enlistment of qualified "persons" for service; Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels asked, "Is there any law that says a Yeoman must be a man?" and was told there was not. Thus, the navy was able to induct its first female sailors into the U.S. Naval Reserve. The first woman to enlist in the U.S. Navy was Loretta Perfectus Walsh on 17 March 1917. She was also the first American active-duty navy woman, and the first woman allowed to serve as a woman in any of the United States armed forces, as anything other than as a nurse. Walsh subsequently became the first woman U.S. Navy petty officer when she was sworn in as Chief Yeoman on 21 March 1917. During World War I Navy women served around the continental U.S. and in France, Guam and Hawaii, mostly as Yeomen (F), but also as radio operators, electricians, draftsmen, pharmacists, photographers, telegraphers, fingerprint experts, chemists, torpedo assemblers and camouflage designers. Some Black women served as Yeomen (F) and were the first Black women to serve as enlisted members of the U.S. armed forces. These first Black women to serve in the navy were 16 Yeomen (F)—the total would rise to 24MacGregor, Morris J. Jr., Integration of the Armed Forces 1940–1965 (c) 1980—from some of "Washington's elite Black families" who "worked in the Muster Roll division at Washington's Navy Yard...." Many women were demobilized when hostilities ceased, and aside from the Nurse Corps, the uniformed Navy once again became exclusively male.Susan H. Godson, Serving Proudly: A History of Women in the U.S. Navy (2002)Jeanne M. Holm, Women in the Military: An Unfinished Revolution (1993) pp 3-21
World War II and after until the Korean War
World War II again brought the need for additional personnel. The Navy organized to recruit women into a separate women's auxiliary, labeled Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES), which was created in 1942. WAVES served in varied positions around the continental U.S. and in Hawaii.
Two groups of Navy nurses (Navy nurses were all women then) were held prisoner by the Japanese in World War II. Chief Nurse Marion Olds and nurses Leona Jackson, Lorraine Christiansen, Virginia Fogerty and Doris Yetter were taken prisoner on Guam shortly after Pearl Harbor and transported to Japan. They were repatriated in August 1942, although the newspaper did not identify them as Navy nurses. Chief Nurse Laura Cobb and her nurses, Mary Chapman, Bertha Evans, Helen Gorzelanski, Mary Harrington, Margaret Nash, Goldie O'Haver, Eldene Paige, Susie Pitcher, Dorothy Still and C. Edwina Todd - some of the "Angels of Bataan" - were captured in 1942 in the Philippines and imprisoned in the Los Baños internment camp there, where they continued to function as a nursing unit, until they were rescued by American forces in 1945. Other Los Baños prisoners later said: "We are absolutely certain that had it not been for these nurses many of us who are alive and well would have died."Kathi Jackson, They Called Them Angels: American Military Nurses of World War II, pg 46 (2000)(First Nebraska paperback printing 2006). The Angels of Bataan (also known as the "Angels of Bataan and Corregidor" and "The Battling Belles of Bataan"According to research by Dr. Elizabeth Norman, the nurses first referred to themselves as the "Battling Belles of Bataan" in 1942; the phrase "Angels of Bataan" appeared later, in 1945. E. Norman, We Band of Angels, pg. 53, pg 296 note 8.) were the members of the Navy Nurse Corps and the Army Nurse Corps who were stationed in the Philippines at the outset of the Pacific War (a theatre of World War II) and served during World War II's Battle of the Philippines (1941–42). When Bataan and Corregidor fell to the Japanese in 1942, they, 11 Navy nurses and 1 nurse-anesthetist (and 66 army nurses) were captured and imprisoned in and around Manila.E. Norman, We Band of Angels, Appx. II; E. Monahan and R. Neidel-Greenlee, All This Hell, pg 193-195 (Appx. G). They were freed in February 1945.
In October 1942, Navy Lieutenant, junior grade Ann A. Bernatitus became the first American recipient of the Legion of Merit. She was also the first person authorized to wear the "V" Device with the award. She was one of the Angels of Bataan and the only U.S. Navy nurse to escape from Bataan and Corregidor during the war.All Hands Magazine, November 1942
Also in 1942, Susan Ahn Cuddy, who was Korean-American, became the first Asian-American woman to join the U.S. Navy. By 1946, she had become the first woman gunnery officer in the U.S. Navy and the first Korean-American in U.S. Naval Intelligence.
In 1943, Thelma Bendler Stern, an engineering draftsman, became the first woman assigned to perform duties aboard a United States Navy ship as part of her official responsibilities.
In 1944, Lieutenant Harriet Ida Pickens and Ensign Frances Wills were commissioned as the first African-American female navy officers.
The first Black woman sworn into the Navy Nurse Corps was Phyllis Mae Dailey, a Columbia University student from New York, on 8 March 1945. Three other African American women—Edith Mazie DeVoe, Helen Fredericka Turner, and Eula Lucille Stimley—also became ensigns in the Navy Nurse Corps during the war.
World War II ended in 1945. The Women's Armed Services Integration Act () is a United States law that enabled women to serve as permanent, regular members of the armed forces, including the Navy. Prior to this act, women, with the exception of nurses, served in the military only in times of war. However, Section 502 of the act limited service of women by excluding them from aircraft and vessels of the Navy that might engage in combat.
On 7 July 1948 six women, former WAVES, were the first enlisted women to be sworn into in the regular Navy: Chief Yeoman Wilma J. Marchal, Hospital Corpsman First Class Ruth Flora, Aviation Storekeeper First Class Kay L. Langen, Yeoman Second Class Edna Young, Storekeeper Second Class Frances T. Devaney, and Teleman Doris R. Robertson. Edna Young was the only Black woman out of those six, and thus the first Black woman to be enlisted in the regular Navy.
On 15 October 1948, the first eight women officers were commissioned in the regular Navy: Joy Bright Hancock, Winifred Quick Collins, Ann King, Frances Willoughby, Ellen Ford, Doris Cranmore, Doris Defenderfer, and Betty Rae Tennant took their oaths as naval officers.Ebbert, Jean; and Hall, Marie-Beth; Crossed Currents: Navy Women from WWI to Tailhook [Revised]: Brassey's; 1999.
Korean War During this war women (and men) in the Naval Reserve were recalled for duty.
Vietnam War Nine Navy women who were not nurses served within the country of Vietnam during the war. Navy nurses served on the hospital ship called USS Sanctuary.
Iraq War Women in the Navy served in the Iraq War from 2003-2011.
Iran War Women in the Navy served in the 2026 Iran war.
Women in the navy since 1970
Major changes occurred for navy women in the 1970s. Alene Duerk became the first female admiral in the navy in 1972. In 1976 RADM Fran McKee became the first female unrestricted line officer appointed to flag rank. In 1978, Judge Sirica decided in favor of Petty Officer Yona Owens, and ruled the law banning navy women from ships to be unconstitutional in the US District Court for the District of Columbia case Owens v. Brown.US Navy, 'America's Navy,' Yona Owens, Petty Officer 3rd Class https://www.navy.mil/DesktopModules/ArticleCS/Print.aspx?PortalId=1&ModuleId=2652&Article=2959051🖉 That year, Congress approved a change to Title 10 USC Section 6015 to permit the navy to assign women to fill sea duty billets on support and noncombatant ships. During the 1970s, women began to enter the surface warfare and aviation fields, gained access to officer accession programs previously open only to men, and started to screen for command opportunities ashore.
Susan Livingstone served as the first female Acting United States Secretary of the Navy from January 24 to February 7 of 2003. Although this is a civilian position, it is included in this article because the Secretary of the Navy is the civilian leader of the Navy (and the Marine Corps).