The U.S. Naval Institute Chronicles series focuses on the relevance of history by exploring topics like significant battles, personalities, and service components. Tapping into the U.S. Naval Institute's robust archives, these carefully selected volumes help readers understand nuanced subjects by providing unique perspectives and some of the best contributions that have helped shape naval thinking over the many decades since the Institute’s founding in 1873. Meeting the challenges of gender integration has been a “joint” operation that has encompassed all of the armed forces. This edition of Naval Institute Chronicles tells a significant portion of the evolutionary and revolutionary transition from the days of “yeomanettes” to today’s Navy—where women command ships and wear admirals’ stars.

The U.S. Naval Institute Chronicles series focuses on the relevance of history by exploring topics like significant battles, personalities, and service components. Tapping into the U.S. Naval Institute's robust archives, these carefully selected volumes help readers understand nuanced subjects by providing unique perspectives and some of the best contributions that have helped shape naval thinking over the many decades since the Institute’s founding in 1873. Serving as a companion to the history of women in the Navy, this volume presents the challenges that have accompanied the long road to gender integration. In these pages readers will find edification, clarification, and much food for thought about one of the most significant national defense issues of modern times.

A look at the life and careers of women in the Navy throughout history.

When Sharon Hanley Disher entered the U.S. Naval Academy with eighty other young women in 1976, she helped end a 131-year all-male tradition at Annapolis. Her entertaining and shocking account of the women's four-year effort to join the academy's elite fraternity and become commissioned naval officers is a valuable chronicle of the times, and her insights have been credited with helping us understand the challenges of integrating women into the military services. From the punishing crucible of plebe summer to the triumph of graduation, she describes their search for ways to survive the mental and physical hurdles they had to overcome. Unflinchingly frank, she freely discusses the prejudice and abuse they encountered that often went unpunished or unreported. A loyal Navy supporter, nevertheless, Disher provides a balanced account of life behind the academy's storied walls for that first group of teenaged women who charted the way for future female midshipmen. Lively, well researched, and amazingly good humored, the book seems as fresh today as it was when first published in hardcover in 1998.

The wives and female guests of commissioned officers often went to sea in the sailing ships of Britain’s Royal Navy in the 18th and 19th centuries, but there were other women on board as well, rarely mentioned in print. Suzanne Stark thoroughly investigates the custom of allowing prostitutes to live with the crews of warships in port. She provides some judicious answers to questions about what led so many women to such an appalling fate and why the Royal Navy unofficially condoned the practice. She also offers some revealing firsthand accounts of the wives of warrant officers and seamen who spent years at sea living—and fighting—beside their men without pay or even food rations, and of the women in male disguise who served as seamen or marines. This lively history draws on primary sources and so gives an authentic view of life on board the ships of Britain’s old sailing navy and the social context of the period that served to limit roles open to lower-class women.

Military ways can be enigmatic, resulting in an alien world where acronyms often replace words and where “1330” is a time of day. Add to that, the Navy is not only military, it is nautical, which adds centuries of sea-going terminology and practices to the confusion. While the young men and women who sign on to become sailors in the United States Navy receive extensive indoctrination and training, their parents do not. As their sons and daughters are becoming uniformed, the parents remain uninformed. This book is both a translation manual and a cultural guide to their son’s or daughter’s chosen new world. Alongside chapters covering uniforms, ranks, ships, and aircraft, are explanations and guidance as to what to expect when their child first joins the Navy, the many benefits their sailor will enjoy, and what families should bring and do when visiting their sailors in their new and somewhat alien world. Designed to be an easy read as well as a useful reference work, The Parent’s Guide to the U.S. Navy is essential reading for those parents whose children have chosen to “go down to the sea in ships.