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On August 26, the nation observed Women’s Equality Day – the official celebration of women gaining the right to vote with the ratification of the 19th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution in 1920.
Since then, and for the past 99 years, women have made great strides to gain full parity with men.
Women in the Army gained full access the same opportunities as their male counterparts in December 2015 with the announcement that all occupations would be open to women – resulting in more than 125,000 new job openings for women to drive tanks, fire mortars, lead infantry Soldiers in combat, and engage in other combat military occupational specialties.
Sgt. Major Gail G. Lashley, the senior logistician, G-4, 1st Theater Sustainment Command (TSC) and Sgt. Major Tonya Cason, the senior enlisted member of support operations (SPO), 1st TSC, said they are proud of the gains women in the Army have made and remember things were different when they were coming up through the ranks.
When Cason joined the Army in 1992 she was determined to be a paratrooper. At that time they were only giving training slots to males. Cason said she wasn’t offered a slot for airborne school until 2002.
She said she also sometimes struggled for her male counterparts to listen to her.
“When I was an E-5 squad leader, some of the combat arms Soldiers didn’t listen to the females,” Cason said. “I could be going back and forth with combat arms Soldiers, but then one of my (male) specialists would come along and say, ‘You don’t understand what my squad leader is saying?’ ‘Get up and go do it!’, and then it would get executed.”
Lashley said she too struggled to be heard as a young female Soldier and is glad that women serving in the ranks today can reap the benefits of the hard fought gains the women who have served before them earned.
“We’ve been demanding to be heard for a long time, and I think because of the strong women who came before us, we are finally being taken seriously,” she said.
Lashley said when she went through basic training in 1994, she found a strong role model in her female drill sergeant.
“She taught me that you should always strive to be the best and to take everything you do seriously,” she said adding that adopting that kind of attitude went a long way toward gaining the respect that many of the male Soldiers automatically received.
“I had to push hard to get respect,” Lashley said. But she added that doing so made her stronger. She adopted the motto that anything others could do, she could do better.
Cason said one of the struggles she had as a young Soldier was finding mentors.
“When it came to mentorship, I was seeing a lot of my male peers being mentored by seniors because the majority of all our seniors were males,” she said. “There were no senior females, sergeant majors, or officers in any of the corps when I was coming up.”
Because of that, Cason said she makes a point to mentor young Soldiers of all genders now that she’s a senior. She and Lashley are founding members of the 1st TSC chapter of Sister in Arms, a program that helps Soldiers achieve their personal and professional goals.
One of the most positive changes both Cason and Lashley said they have seen over the years is that expectations for women’s performance has gone up.
“The expectations have changed. Before it was, ‘She’s a female .. she’s going to get her male counterpart to change the tire or fix engine,’ “ Cason said. “Today, women are treated the same; male or female … it doesn’t matter, you’re expected to go out there and get it done.”
Lashley agreed.
“We never asked for (lower expectations),” she said. “It was just assumed that (women) were the weaker links and (men) needed to help us out, but we can do everything men can do and even outdo most of them.”
Lashley and Cason said they look forward to the future and expect to see women and individuals of all backgrounds succeed in the Army for generations to come.
“Your gender, just like your sexual preference or your color, should not hinder you from doing whatever you have a passion for,” Cason said.
| Date Taken: | 08.27.2019 |
| Date Posted: | 08.27.2019 14:54 |
| Story ID: | 337557 |
| Location: | FORT KNOX, KY, US |
| Web Views: | 33 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Senior 1st TSC Soldiers look back on gains women have made in the Army, by SGT Bethany Williams, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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