One To One; Guest: Tanya Biank, Author, "Undaunted: The Real Story of America's Servicewomen in Today's Military"

Hello, I'm Cheryl McCarthy of the City University of New York. Welcome to One to One. Each week, we address issues of timely and timeless concern, with newsmakers and the journalists who report on them, with artists, writers, scientists, educators, social scientists, government, and nonprofit leaders. We speak with each, one to one. Women make up more than 14% of this country's active duty military forces. And soon, they will officially be able to serve in ground combat units. Outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta recently signed an executive order, removing the last legal gender barrier in our armed forces. Writer Tanya Bianca, the author of Army Wives, the unwritten code of military marriage,

which was the basis for the cable TV series, Army Wives, now turns her attention to female service women. Her new book, Undaunted the Real Story of America's Service Women in today's military, has just been published by the new American Library Caliber Imprint of the Penguin Group. Welcome. Thanks so much. The book couldn't be more timely, because of the Pentagon's recent announcement about lifting the ban on women serving in combat armed forces. But we all know that for at least a decade, women had been serving in combat zones, leading patrols, getting killed, getting wounded, earning purple hearts. So how is this new move by the Pentagon practically going to make a difference? The differences with lifting this combat ban is that women now will actually be able to be fully integrated into the infantry and armor units. Before this, they were simply attached through a loophole, because they were needed.

And really lifting the ban to me is affirmation of where the military has been headed. This past fall, the army started fielding female body armor for the very first time. And lead contemplation of this, right? I think so. Yeah. It was definitely overdue. The body armor, before it was too bulky, too long, even the smallest size that it came in for women, 85% of the women, it was still too big, too big, too big on them. And last February, the military also eased some of its assignment policies, opening up some more jobs to women. But really, what happened on January 24th is truly historic. Now you are an army wife, and obviously you've written a book about army wives. What made you decide to write a book about women, about service women? Well, I've always admired their courage and commitment, but I really wanted to look at what does it take to be a success in the military for women.

Women success often comes at a personal price for men and women in the military. But women face their own set of unique issues, things that they often deal with privately out of public view. And I wanted to examine that. And you basically, you followed the lives over about a six-year period, about a six-year period, of four service women, Brigadier General Angela Salinas, the Marine Corps's first Hispanic female general. American Army Lieutenant Bergen Flanagan, a platoon leader, Marine Sergeant Amy Stokely, a drill instructor, and Army Major Candice O'Brien, who is a West Point graduate. What was it about these four? Why these four? I wanted to find very successful military women who were trailblazers, who held a number of positions for the first time for a woman.

But really, I liked their stories, I was attracted to their stories because their stories were emblematic of what so many women in the military experience. And I think that being all you can be as a woman in the military often comes at a price. Now these women, as you say, they were very successful. And while one gets a sense from the book that they may have felt pressures to prove themselves, those added pressures to prove themselves, because there are women, I did not see in your book, at least, in these women, at least, any overt examples of sexual discrimination against any of them. I mean, they moved up the ring, they got promotions, they got high-level jobs, they got medals, they got commendations, they were assigned to war zone areas. So I mean, and I just sort of wondered, is there less discrimination against women in

the military than, say, in civilian professional life? Well, I think for service women, it can sometimes be veil discrimination. Many service women feel they have to exceed standards because they are women. And I do think that the four women that I profiled did have to overcome quite a bit because they are women. If you look at General Angela Salinas when she took command out of the Recruit Training Depot out in San Diego, she was the first woman to hold that position. And she was not wanted there. The newspaper covered it extensively. They focused on the fact that she did not have combat experience, but really, they were focusing on that because she was the first woman to hold that position. And so she had to prove herself, Major Candace O'Brien at West Point, the males would

always watch what the females were eating and how much they were eating and making comments about their physical appearance and the Lieutenant Lieutenant Bergen Flanagan in Afghanistan. She did not face discrimination from her troops. What mattered to them was, could she do the job as the platoon leader? Her gender didn't matter, however, with the local tribal leaders in Afghanistan and the Afghani police that she was helping to train, they did not like it one bit that a woman was in charge. And there was a lot of cultural differences there which made her her job as the platoon leader much more difficult. One of the things that the challenges that it did seem that the women, one of the other challenges that the women did seem to face was that whether it was in the military academy

or at the base or in the field, they faced this perception that the women were either a slut or a, what was it, either slut or you're a lesbian? Yes, there is derogatory labels that service women have to deal with that their service men do not. So for example, if you're a young lieutenant or a young private and you want to go out with your friends on the weekend and you do so and let's say you go home by yourself at 11 p.m. by Monday morning, rumors will be running rampant and you will be labeled as a slut, very, very common perception. What is that all about? What is that? That's a good question, it's unfortunate, but it's a very common perception and same with if you just keep to yourself and you keep your private life private, there's a lot

of people that you must be a lesbian and so these labels do not apply to men. There's been a lot written about sexual harassment and rape of women in the military, although none of your subjects seem to have experienced that. Right, right. I think some of them have dealt with sexual harassment and also just being in places in the military where they were not wanted because they were the first woman to hold a certain job. But interestingly, there was a study done not long ago where 1100 service members who had recently come back from a combat zone were surveyed and half of them said that they had been sexually harassed, a quarter said they had been sexually assaulted to include rape. And then there's a big scandal going on right now, is it at Fort Bragg?

Where one of the, I don't know if he said, is it a drill instructor? Oh, at Blackland Air Force. Okay, okay. Yes, there's been a big problem at basic training that's made headlines in the air force where the trainers, basically the drill instructors, were having inappropriate relationships with the training. With their trainees. With their trainees. With their trainees. Right, right. Right now. What kinds of, that is a big question and this hopefully is going to go out the window soon, but what kind of institutional barriers remain to women in the service right now? I think right now with lifting this ban is going to go really far as, as far as changing perceptions, but also increasing opportunities for women to rise to the highest levels in the military, the military is a meritocracy and 80% of the generals come from the combat

arms branches, which until now have been close to women. Women make only, make up only 7% of the general officer ranks, even though they are 14.5% of the force. So they are underrepresented at the very highest levels in the military. And we'll tell about the arms, we tell them like infantry, what do we talk about? Yes, the combat arms, the infantry, branches and the armor branch. Okay. Okay. Those that are in the direct combat roles. Right. Now the Marines just announced that they're going to require women to master the same kinds of physical feats as men at the male soldiers during basic training. How is that going to affect women? Do we know? I think the pull ups, I think they're going to be required to do three pull ups where before the women were required to do a flexed arm hand. And women, certainly with practice, be able to do three pull ups, one of the women in the book, Lieutenant Bergen Flanagan, before she left four airborne schools.

She knew that she was going to have to do pull ups. And so she had her parents put a pull up bar in the doorway of her bedroom when summer and she practiced in practice because she couldn't do any. Okay. By the time she left for airborne school, she was able to do three or four. But basically, if you can't do it, you don't qualify for the race right now. Well, that will be a standard, and that's what they're looking at, a gender neutral standards. Okay. They're going to have to practice just to be able to do three or four pull ups as well. Okay. And everybody can't do a single push-up, so we're going to take a short break. Then we'll be back with more with Tonya Bianca, author of Undaunted, The Real Story of America's Service Women in today's military after this message. Ma, guess what? I went back to college. No, I didn't quit my job. I'm finishing my degree with a CUNY online bachelor's in business. I interact online with Real City University of New York faculty on a schedule that fits

my busy life. Ma, you should look who's teaching a CUNY, and it all leads to a high quality bachelor of science degree in business. I can attend class anywhere, anytime, yes, ma, I'm even at your house Friday night trip dinner. The CUNY online baccalaureate, get back to business. Did you know CUNY leads the way for students with disabilities? CUNY leads, means linking employment, academics, and disability services. If you're a CUNY student with a visible or invisible disability, the City University of New York offers eligible students free career development and placement services. To find out if you qualify, visit CUNY.EDU slash CUNY leads. CUNY leads to the career I always wanted. Welcome back to One to One. I'm Cheryl McCarthy of the City University of New York, and I'm talking with Tanya

Bianca, author of Undaunted, The Real Story of America's Service Women in Today's Military. It's just been published by the new American Library caliber imprint of the Penguin Group. One thing that came through in your book was a difficulty of having a dual career, dual military career marriage with all of the deployments to different places. She's going there. He's going there. I mean, and especially if you have children, I mean, it just seems crazy. How do people manage that? And does a military make any effort to assign married couples to the same posting? The military does try to assign military couples to the same posting. However, what comes first is the military mission. And what that means is that often these couples have to live apart, or they're not on what's called the same deployment cycle. So one is deploying, as you said, and the other is coming back, and my sister is also

in a dual military couple, and she's lived apart from her husband for a number of years because of different job assignments and deployments. And it is quite difficult, and then you add children into the mix, and it's really tough, because sometimes these couples deploy at the same time. And that means who's going to watch the children, so there has to be a plan in place. The military, there's an official form you have to fill out. Military wants you to fill it out of who's going to care for these children, in absence of the parents. Right. And Candice O'Brien had to deal with her husband's post-traumatic stress disorder. I mean, one often reads about PTSD and connection with male soldiers, but not so much with women's soldiers, though I would think, well, perhaps, because they're, I don't know, is that an issue for some women's soldiers? Yes, it is an issue, it is still being studied.

For male soldiers, we've been able to study that for decades, but it's something relatively new for women. But the VA has found that one in three women that they serve suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, but usually it's tied to military sexual trauma, MST, which is actually an acronym that the VA has for this. And again, they're looking at the best treatment for women. PTSD in women has more to do with depression in men. PTSD has more to do with aggressive behavior, also alcoholism. Right. Women have actually been commanding men in some form another. For years, I mean, Brigadier General Angela Salinas was in charge of training half of the recruits in the Marine Corps. And they were all male, all male. Bergen Flanagan was leading a platoon in Afghanistan, but patrol when she was injured and

lost her leg. And one thing I think that people have become more aware of with the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is the increasing number of casualties among women, soldiers, deaths and grievous injuries. Now Lieutenant Flanagan, who was injured in lost leg in Afghanistan, right, was still in the army when you wrote this book. Is she still? She is. She's an amazing young woman. She lost her leg to an IED while she was on the foot patrol. It was remote controlled, meaning someone was watching her walk by, who was detonated. And she could have gotten out of the army and received 100% disability, but she decided to stay. There were still things she wanted to accomplish. She spent a year and a half at Walter Reed, had more than 20 surgeries fighting infection after infection, went through a lot of depression.

And ultimately, in the end, she decided she wanted to stay. She was determined to be on her feet and be able to walk when her soldiers returned from Afghanistan. And she was there to greet them. And I'm proud to say that now she is Captain Flanagan. And her dream is to someday command a military police company. I think she's going to do that. So people who have had injuries like that who might have had lost in them, obviously they can stay in the military if they're able to. And can they continue to be deployed? You know, with those kinds of injuries. She wants to deploy again. It's amazing when you look at the different generations of the limbs, the new limbs that are service members are giving the things that they can do. They can run on them. The Captain Flanagan is now stationed in Hawaii and she's waiting for a waterproof version of her leg to come out so she can learn to surf.

But so they can do amazing things. They can jump out of airplanes and then pair of shoot out. Yes. Yes. Okay. And she's already pair of shoot qualified. Of course, you have to go through it through a medical board to get cleared for these things. Right. How those kinds of injuries. But she's a young woman and she's in great health and she's going to go far. It was interesting to learn that the Marines, well at least up until the point that you wrote this book, it may change now that the Marines still train female recruits separately from males, unlike the other branches, which where they, I guess they go through basic training together. That's right. The other service branches integrated years ago. But the Marines have chosen at the basic training level to keep it separate. The males and females are trained at Paris Island, but they're in separate battalions. And when I was there, I did ask about that. And the Marines told me that it has worked out very well for them in the all female battalion.

The chain of command, the lieutenant colonel is a woman, the command sergeant major is a woman. And they told me that it provides role models for these very young impressionable young women. Many of them are just out of high school. Then make up only about 6% in the Marine Corps. And so it can be very difficult when they go to their units to find women role models, simply because there's not enough of them. How this lifting this man will affect that, I don't know, it will be something to watch. The Marines also have not had to deal with some of the issues like the Air Force has because they have kept the training separate at the very basic level of making Marines. It was also interesting to read about the female Marine drill sergeants who placed a lot of emphasis on looking pretty, wearing false eyelashes, acrylic fingernails with French tips,

perfume. What is that about? I've been around the military my whole life and I thought I had pretty much seen everything, but when I arrived at Paris Island, I clearly had not that clearly surprised me. But I think the drill instructors do that. They know that they are role models for these young women, impressionable young women. And I think they want to get the point across that, yes, we are Marines, yes, we are drill instructors, but first we are women, not men. And that's something that Sergeant Stokely often told her recruits, remember who you are. We're going to make you into a good Marine and into a good woman. It was also fascinating to learn to read about, I guess this was basic training, a rifle qualification, a basic training in the Marines, where the recruits are carrying rifles at

all times. But I guess when they're not on the firing range, they're not allowed to carry bullets because they might shoot their drill instructors. It's very interesting detail in the book, just behind the scenes kind of detail. Training on the rifle range happens at the midpoint of basic training. And so by that time, the drill instructors hope that any Looney Tune will have to read it out. We did it out and sent home. And by that time, there will be some loyalty to the drill instructors, but they don't want to take any chances. So when they're doing live fire with bullets out on the range, the drill instructors stay in the back and out of sight. And then after that training, they're checked, the recruits are searched for, if they're hiding any bullets.

They're all aware of full metal jacket, what happens in that movie. So it was interesting. What kinds of complaints did you hear from your subjects? I mean, in terms of how they would like to see the military culture changed? Well, I think that they are all trailblazers, and I think that future generations of women are going to be standing on their shoulders. They have truly paved the way for those who are going to come. I don't think that even before the lifting of this ban, I don't think any young woman has joined the military thinking that she was going to be held back or would not be able to reach her full potential. When I asked my sister, and this was just before the ban was lifted, my sister's been in the Army for 23 years, I said, do you feel like you've ever been held back in the military? And she said, it doesn't look like I've been held back. And I think the four women in the book would answer in a similar fashion.

They're very, these are very determined women who are willing to take on any challenge. So you had four very interesting subjects, did you have a favorite? You know, I think each story was very unique, and the women were quite different from each other. They were different ages, from a junior enlisted ranks to general officer level. They all came to the military on a different path. And I was very grateful to them to be willing to open up and to share their life with me. Do you learn from your book? Are there changes that you in particular changes that you would like to see in the military? I think that lifting this ban will speak volumes. And I just, I hope that they are given a fair shake. The infantry and armor branches, it's not for everyone, it's not for many men. Many men choose a different path in the military.

But some women will be attracted to the infantry branches, and they will be able to handle the physical demands of that job. But the male culture will have to adjust in those branches because it's been all male. And so it may take some time for the culture to adjust. It will really be up to the leadership, the leaders in those units to set the example and to implement these changes that are coming without affecting the military mission. Right. Most very interesting, a very informative book. So I, we're out of time now, but I want to thank Tanya Biak for joining me today. Undaunted, the real story of America's service women in today's military has just been published by the new American Library caliber imprint of the Penvin group. For the city universe of New York and one to one, I'm Cheryl McCarthy. If there are any people you'd like to hear from or topics you'd like us to explore, please

let us know. You can write to me at QETV 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10016, or you can go to the website at cuny.tv and click on contact us. I look forward to hearing from you.