Photo By Chief Petty Officer Diana Quinlan | 150514-N-WF272-057 PEARL HARBOR (May 14, 2015) Vice Chief of Naval Operations (VCNO)...... read more read more
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PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii - The vice chief of Naval Operations hosted an all-hands call (AHC) May 14 at the historic Bloch Arena on Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
Adm. Michelle Howard, spoke about gender integration, sexual assault and cyber security issues facing the U.S. Navy today.
Addressing the topic of gender integration, Howard discussed the steady increase of women in the Navy and the importance of promoting a gender-balanced Navy.
“By the time I came to the Navy in ’78, we were about 5 percent women,” said Howard. “We’ve steadily grown about 5 percent with each decade and we’re about 17 percent women right now. In the U.S., women make up about 46 percent of the workforce and there have been studies that have been done that talk about what’s the right percentage in an organization for people to be successful, because it turns out when you don’t have quite enough of a group of people, the challenges are difficult.”
According to Howard, the Department of Labor has determined that threshold to be approximately 25 percent - a statistic she believes should be the baseline for total women in the Navy.
“Generally, what that does is as you get to about that percentage, the workplace, relationships get normalized,” said Howard. “And because we’re globally distributed, if we don’t get to 25 percent [of women throughout the Navy] we’ll continue to have ships and organizations, squadrons that are sometimes … [made up of] just a few women.”
Howard went on to discuss how gender integration can go on to influence and prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.
“If we have pockets where people are isolated, that’s sometimes when behavior isn’t so great,” said Howard.
In a Workplace Gender Relations Survey (comprised of 29,000 responses) regarding unwanted sexual contact, Howard said the prevalence of sexual assault for women in the Navy over the last 12 months was approximately 5 percent, with sexual assault for men in the Navy being approximately 1 percent.
“What we also found out was about one in three women [were] willing to report [sexual assault], but when men were sexually assaulted, only about one in 12 men came forward,” said Howard. “So what that tells me is that whatever we have going on out there, men do not feel comfortable reporting.”
Despite these statistics, Howard said the survey revealed that bystander intervention was becoming a more prominent occurrence, with nine in 10 individuals who have witnessed a sexual assault taking action against it.
“It says 90 percent of you, when you see something wrong, you say, ‘I’m going to help fix it,’ whether it’s taking the person to somebody in their chain of command, doing something yourself or talking to your shipmate,” said Howard. “That is fantastic Good Samaritan behavior and I wanted to say thank you for that. You are taking care of your shipmates and I ask you to continue to do that.”
Going forward, Howard said general military training will continue to bring awareness towards sexual assault and harassment, and top Navy leaders will continue to work to identify the factors that seem to be promoting inappropriate behavior throughout the fleet.
“We should be able to stand up, look each other in the eye and say, ‘we’re fine Sailors, we’re fine officers, and we take care of each other,’” said Howard. “Because in the end, if we can’t take care of each other in peace time it’s going to be hard if you have to go out and fight together.”
Howard also spent some time commenting on the growing demand and the presence of the cyber culture within the Navy.
“What I have found is that the cyber domain has matured and it’s its own world of activity that can be innovative and fun,” said Howard. “But it could also have vulnerabilities to it.”
According to Howard, seemingly innocent behavior on social media or throughout the Internet can lead to possible Operational Security oversights with negative repercussions.
“There are people in [the cyber] domain that are using all available information in this domain to find us, and try and target us,” said Howard. “Everything that could happen in the physical world can happen in [the cyber] domain.”
She added that while previous generations have enjoyed liberty in the physical domain, much of the younger generation are enjoying liberty in the cyber domain.
“For many of you, if you are a leader, [you’ve] got to get smart on [the cyber] domain and help your Sailors, your junior Sailors work their way through [it],” said Howard.
After her points of discussion, Howard opened the floor for questions from those in attendance. Some of the topics she discussed with Sailors were: changes in retirement, improving organizational technology and women on submarines.
Howard will wrap up her trip in Singapore representing the U.S. Navy at the International Maritime Exhibition (IMDEX) Asia 2015 where she will speak at the Asia Pacific Submarine Conference (APSC) and the Internal Maritime Security Conference (IMSC).
| Date Taken: | 05.14.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 05.15.2015 17:28 |
| Story ID: | 163492 |
| Location: | JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, HAWAII, US |
| Web Views: | 88 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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