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Girl In A Military
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The Royal Norwegian Navy became the first navy in the world to permit female personnel to serve in submarines, appointing a female submarine captain in 1995, followed by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) in 1998 and thereafter Canada and Spain, all operators of conventional submarines.
Social reasons include the need to segregate accommodation and facilities, with figures from the US Navy highlighting the increased cost, $300,000 per bunk to permit women to serve on submarines versus $4,000 per bunk to allow women to serve on aircraft carriers.
Recent US Navy policy allowed three exceptions for women being on board military submarines: (1) Female civilian technicians for a few days at most; (2) Women midshipmen on an overnight during summer training for both Navy ROTC and Naval Academy; (3) Family members for one-day dependent cruises.
In October 2009, the U. S. Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus announced that he and the Chief of Naval Operations were moving aggressively to change the policy. Reasons included the fact that larger SSGN and SSBN submarines now in the Fleet had more available space and could accommodate female Officers with little or no modification. Also, the availability of qualified female candidates with the desire to serve in this capacity was cited. It was noted that women now represented 15% of the Active Duty Navy and that women today earn about half of all science and engineering bachelor’s degrees. A policy change was deemed to serve the aspirations of women, the mission of the Navy and the strength of its submarine force.
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