From Revolution to Rangers, Meet the Women Who’ve Pushed the Military’s Boundaries

Two female soldiers are set on Friday to graduate from the Army’s Ranger School, the grueling nine-week training and leadership course that just two out of every five candidates pass.

That does not mean they will necessarily get to fight. The Army, like the other branches of the military, has yet to officially decide if women will be allowed to take up actual combat roles.

But the two women, First Lt. Kristen Griest and Lt. Shaye Haver, already have experience in jobs that could take them near the front lines. They are the latest in a long line of female fighters who pushed the military’s barriers on what is considered women’s work. In fact, the tradition extends back to 1781.

Here are a few notable stories, including some from the archives of The New York Times:

The First, but Not the Last, Female Soldier to Disguise Herself as a Man

While other women served as nurses and cooks in military camps during the Revolutionary War, Deborah Sampson wanted to see battle. She disguised herself as a man and enlisted in 1781. Before battles, she helped carry out scouting expeditions against British troops.

She endured several attacks, one of which left her with a sword wound on her forehead and a gunshot to the thigh, according to the National Women’s History Museum. Ms. Sampson served for more than two years before she lost consciousness from a sickness and ended up in a hospital. She recovered, but not before her sex was discovered. Ms. Sampson later married, and when she died, her husband received pay as a military spouse.

In the United States-Mexico war (1846-1848) and the Civil War (1861-1865), women disguised themselves as men to join the ranks, according to the Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation.

About 400 women are said to have disguised themselves as men during the Civil War. Others, like Annie Etheridge, served as battlefield medics — openly as women — and rallied the troops.

The First Female Medal of Honor Recipient — Who Refused to Wear Skirts

At a time when women nursed Union and Confederate troops in field hospitals, Dr. Mary Walker, a surgeon, was the first woman to receive the Medal of Honor.

Though she was a surgeon, much of the news media’s focus was on how she dressed. In a brief sent from Richmond in 1865, The Times noted the stir she caused when, upon her release from Confederate forces, she wore pants.

“Ladies congregated upon the corners, and men and boys stopped along the sidewalk to comment upon the novel appearance of a lady in uniform,” according to the brief.

An article in The Times in 1878 demanded the “refeminization” of Dr. Walker in order to restore equal rights between men and women.

When she died at age 87 in 1919, Dr. Walker’s obituary referenced her record as a suffragist and noted that she was the first female prisoner of war in history to be traded for a man of equal rank. But the first sentence of the obituary still focused on her attire: She was famously allowed to wear men’s clothes by an act of Congress.

The First Female Carrier-Based Fighter Pilot

Upon Lt. Kara S. Hultgreen’s entry into an elite force of fliers in the United States Navy, she was often asked to reconcile her beauty — she stood 5 foot 10, with long brown hair — with the Navy.

In an interview, Lieutenant Hultgreen, who hoped ultimately to become an astronaut, acknowledged the macho tendencies of her service.

“I did this to become a fighter pilot,” she told Woman Pilot magazine. “It makes me feel no less feminine and it should not make men feel less masculine.”

Lieutenant Hultgreen, 29, died in 1994, just months after she had finally been certified for aircraft carrier landings.

On Oct. 25, 1994, as Lieutenant Hultgreen came in for a landing, the left engine sputtered, the jet rolled, and she was ejected into the ocean off San Diego, according to an appreciation in The Times Magazine in 1995.

“She died on impact and the jet sank, wasting, in a fraction of a second, one extraordinary pilot’s life,” Catherine S. Manegold wrote.

The First Female Fighters in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

Women are technically barred from combat, but wars in Iraq and Afghanistan saw branches of the military bending the rules. Paperwork loopholes were also used: Women were “attached” rather than “assigned” to combat units, which is still forbidden, according to a 2009 report in The Times.

The article, by Lizette Alvarez, detailed other practices the military used to get women combat action: The Marine Corps began opening up intelligence jobs to women, and soldiers in the Army patrolled streets with machine guns. They could lead units into battle, but they could not fight.

“It’s not a fair comparison to say the deployment is more or less stressful based on gender,” Lisbeth Prifogle, a supply officer who was attached to Marine Aircraft Group 16 in Al Asad, Iraq, told The Times a decade ago. “But there are a whole bunch of little things you have to deal with that men don’t even think about, because it’s their world.”

Will Women Ever Be Assigned to Combat Positions?

In acknowledgment of the increasing number of women on and near war’s front lines, the Pentagon in 2013 overturned an earlier ban on women in combat roles. It is giving military services until January 2016 to open combat positions to women, or apply for an exemption to the secretary of defense, who will decide whether to allow a branch to continue to bar women from a position.

Until then, the women about to graduate from Ranger School will be the only Ranger School graduates barred from even applying to the Ranger regiment.

Update: In December 2015, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter announced that the Pentagon would allow women in all military roles, with no exceptions, opening up about 220,000 military jobs.