March is Women's History Month. I'm proud to be a woman among the ranks of those serving! Whenever I meet a young lady who's considering pursuing STEM-related fields as a career, I'll be the first to proclaim how great the armed forces can be! In today's military, well over 90% of jobs are available for women, with U.S. Navy female submariners just about to enter the operational force. There's some incredible geekiness among the female ranks. Just read on to learn more!
- Department of Defense Women's History Month Homepage. A jumping-off point for several other Women's History Month resources, particularly some good resources for the history of WASPs, WAVEs and women in space. Unfortunately, I also encountered several dead links. This page was from the early 2000s.
- Women in Military Service for America Memorial. This memorial is co-located with Arlington National Cemetery. I personally haven't visited it, but will plan to do so on my next visit to Washington, D.C. This site includes a link to local Military Women's History Month events.
- U.S. Army Women's History. Their page is very well-maintained, featuring roles of women in the Army dating back to Molly Pitcher in 1775. The page includes some outside-the-box tributes, such as NASCAR's highest-placing female truck-racing champion, Jennifer Jo Cobb, driving the US Army-sponsored truck.
- U.S. Navy Women's History. Here you can learn about Lenah S. Higbee, the first woman in the Navy to earn a Navy Cross and also the first woman to have a ship, the USS Higbee, named after her. Also you can learn more about one of the U.S. Navy's geekiest influential women, Rear Admiral "Amazing Grace" Hopper, one of the developers of UNIVAC-1, the COBOL computer programming language, and the first person to coin the term "bug" to describe a computer problem, and "debug" as a means to solve a computer problem. Admiral Hopper actually removed a moth from a problematic computer once!
- U.S. Air Force Women's History. I was hoping to find an official U.S. Air Force website, but this recent blog post from the Air Force Association will suffice just as well. It's a well-written brief history of influential women in America's youngest armed service, from Amelia Earhart to Lieutenant General Janet Wolfenbarger, the highest ranking female in today's Air Force (so far!). Lt Gen Wolfenbarger attained that rank not as a pilot, but as an MIT-educated aeronautical engineer, leading the F-22 R&D efforts in the late 90s.
- NASA Women in Space. This page is nearly a year old, but is chock-full of fascinating facts about female astronauts.
