Military Leadership Diversity Commission

Decision Paper #2: 

Branching and Assignments

February 2011

MLDC decision papers present the Commission-approved, subcommittee-specific recommendations. 

These recommendations are the product not only of the logic and evidence presented in the decision 

papers but also the values and judgments of the Commissioners. Legally imposed time constraints 

naturally limited the Commission’s ability to undertake extensive research. Thus, the decision papers 

present the evidence that was available and that could be collected during the discovery phase of the 

Commission. The decision papers were reviewed by subject-matter experts external to the Commission.
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

CONTENTS

Introduction .....................................................................................................................1

Charter Tasks and Strategy.................................................................................................................. 1

Commission-Approved Recommendations Related to Branching and Assignments.......................... 2

Organization of This Paper ................................................................................................................. 3

Key Career Fields, Key Assignments, and Their Relationships to Demographic Diversity 

and Rank ..........................................................................................................................4

Officer Occupations and Demographic Diversity................................................................................ 4

Key Assignments and Demographic Diversity .................................................................................... 8

Command Assignments and Demographic Diversity ....................................................................... 16

Barriers Hindering the Advancement of Women and Minorities .......................................19

Barriers Keeping Minorities and Women from Entering Tactical/Operational Career Fields.......... 19

Barriers Keeping Minorities and Women from Serving in Key Assignments ................................... 23

Combat Exclusion Policies in More Detail ....................................................................................... 25

Career Facilitators: Mentoring Programs and Other Career Development Resources.........32

Mentoring Programs ......................................................................................................................... 32

The Services’ Career Development Resources................................................................................... 35

Recommendations and Conclusion ..................................................................................40

Recommendations ............................................................................................................................. 40

Conclusion......................................................................................................................................... 47

Appendix A: Initial Officer Assignments in the Coast Guard, Marine Corps, and Navy ......48

Appendix B: Background Information on Mentoring Relationships and Demographic 

Diversity.........................................................................................................................50

References ......................................................................................................................52
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

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INTRODUCTION

In the military’s closed personnel system, the racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of leadership 

depends on the racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of accessions and on the subsequent relative career 

progression rates of members of each demographic group. For a given level of diversity among

accessions, if women and racial and ethnic minorities progress at lower rates than white men, they 

will be underrepresented in the top ranks. To better understand the drivers of career progression, 

and, hence, the racial, ethnic, and gender profiles of senior leadership, the Military Leadership 

Diversity Commission (MLDC) created a subcommittee tasked with exploring the role that 

branching and assignments play in determining likely promotion opportunities for whites and 

minorities and for men and women.

This decision paper describes the work of the Branching and Assignments Subcommittee and 

provides the facts, assumptions, and opinions that helped the Commission develop its branching and 

assignment recommendations.

Charter Tasks and Strategy

The Branching and Assignments Subcommittee addressed two charter tasks, paraphrased here:

• Assess the precommand billet assignments of officers by race and ethnicity.

• Examine command selection for officers of particular ethnicities.

The first charter task focuses on assignments prior to command, whereas the second charter task 

focuses on command selection and assignments. Although these charter tasks explicitly address the 

race and ethnicity of officers, the Commission directed the subcommittee to examine gender issues 

and issues for enlisted personnel as well.

Based on these two charter tasks, the Branching and Assignments Subcommittee mapped out 

four areas of investigation to delineate its work:

• Key career fields and assignments. The subcommittee examined the relationship between 

racial, ethnic, and gender diversity and assignment to both career fields and specific jobs 

or billets, particularly those that could be called “key” to advancement. The subcommittee 

defined key assignments as those assignments that are recognized to be especially 

demanding, have high visibility, or provide competitive advantage for advancement to 

senior leadership. Key career fields are those that have been historically linked to senior 

leadership.

• Command selection. The subcommittee studied the command selection process and racial, 

ethnic, and gender differences in command selection opportunities and rates.

• Career barriers. The subcommittee investigated whether there are institutional barriers 

that may inhibit women and minorities from entering some career fields and specialties or 

from being selected for command assignments.1

 1

 For its purposes, the Commission has defined a career barrier as an organizational policy, principle, or practice that 

limits or tends to limit employment opportunities for members of particular groups (e.g., sex, race, or ethnic 

background). Later sections of this decision paper will define two important types of barriers—perceptual and 

structural—and describe how they affect branching and assignments for women and minorities.
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• Career facilitators. The subcommittee examined access to and quality of mentoring, career 

counseling, and other career development resources in the Services. This topic extends 

beyond the charter tasks to focus on tools used by the Services to help servicemembers 

advance in their careers.

Commission-Approved Recommendations Related to Branching and 

Assignments2

Evidence from the Branching and Assignments Subcommittee’s work indicates that aspects of the 

branching and assignment process constitute barriers to advancement for minority and female 

servicemembers, especially officers. The Commission approved the following recommendations to 

remove the barriers:

Recommendation 1—

To assess demographic diversity patterns across the military lifecycle, the Secretary of 

Defense shall hold annual accountability reviews with the individual Service secretaries, 

Service chiefs, and Chief, National Guard Bureau. The Coast Guard should be subject to a 

similar review.

Recommendation 2—

DoD [The Department of Defense] and the Services should eliminate the “combat 

exclusion policies” for women, including the removal of barriers and inconsistencies, to 

create a level playing field for all qualified servicemembers. The Commission recommends 

a time-phased approach:

• a. Women in career fields/specialties currently open to them should be 

immediately able to be assigned to any unit that requires that career 

field/specialty, consistent with the current operational environment.

• b. DoD and the Services should take deliberate steps in a phased approach to 

open additional career fields and units involved in “direct ground combat” to 

qualified women.

• c. DoD and the Services should report to Congress the process and timeline for 

removing barriers that inhibit women from achieving senior leadership positions.

 2

 The recommendations discussed in this decision paper are the Commission-approved, topic-specific 

recommendations that resulted from the Commission’s understanding and interpretation of the findings from this 

subcommittee. Following the approval of all of the subcommittee-specific recommendations, the Commission 

developed its final recommendations by combining recommendations across subcommittees to reduce overlap and 

repetition. Therefore, the recommendations presented in this paper do not map directly to the recommendations 

presented in the Commission’s forthcoming final report.
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Recommendation 3—

The Services should ensure their career development programs and resources enhance 

servicemembers’ knowledge of career choices, including Reserve Component 

opportunities, to optimize the ability of servicemembers to make informed career choices 

from accession to retirement.

• a. Mentoring and career counseling efforts shall start prior to the initial career 

field decision point and continue throughout the servicemember’s career.

• b. Mentoring programs shall follow effective practices and employ an active line 

of communication between protégé and mentor.

Underlying Assumptions

The recommendations listed above are based on the following underlying assumptions:

• The current set of tactical/operational career fields and specialties that have been 

historically linked to advancement to senior leadership in the Services will continue to be 

linked to advancement to senior leadership.

• A list of all potential barriers that may limit women’s and racial and ethnic minorities’

access to key career fields and assignments is not available.

– Barriers can change over time and will vary across Services and career 

fields/specialties because of different and changing policies, cultures, and 

operating environments.

– The Services and DoD will have to identify barriers that apply to specific 

Services, career fields/specialties, and assignments and continually evaluate and 

respond to them.

• Removing restrictions for women to serve in formal combat roles will eventually lead to 

increased female representation in higher military ranks, particularly in the officer corps.

• Mentoring and career counseling can help servicemembers make informed career choices.

– High-quality mentoring and career counseling will likely increase the number of 

women and racial and ethnic minorities choosing tactical/operational career fields 

and key assignments.

– High-quality mentoring and career counseling is equally beneficial to all 

servicemembers who use it.

Organization of This Paper

This decision paper begins with a review of two relationships that affect the advancement of women 

and minorities to the senior ranks of military leadership. The first is the relationship between 

advancement and career fields and assignments, and the second is the relationship between career 

fields and assignments and demographics. Next, this paper discusses barriers to the advancement of 

women and minorities, followed by a discussion of two career facilitators provided by the Services—

mentoring programs and career development resources. The last section of the paper is organized 

around the three Commission recommendations related to branching and assignments. These

discussions include the reasoning behind each recommendation, including how it is supported by the 

empirical evidence presented in the earlier sections.
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KEY CAREER FIELDS, KEY ASSIGNMENTS, AND THEIR 

RELATIONSHIPS TO DEMOGRAPHIC DIVERSITY AND RANK

To address questions concerned with key career fields and assignments, the Branching and 

Assignments Subcommittee explored the relationship between occupational areas and demographic 

diversity in the enlisted and officer corps.3 Specifically, the subcommittee considered the following 

questions:

• Does demographic composition differ across enlisted occupations?

• Does demographic composition differ across officer occupations?

• Are key assignments related to the demographic composition of leadership?

• Are command assignments related to demographic composition of leadership?

This section presents the subcommittee’s answers to these questions for the officer corps because 

it was the results for officers that primarily drove the Commission’s branching and assignments 

recommendations. In particular, the subcommittee found that occupational assignment is an 

important factor in explaining race, ethnicity, and gender representation in the higher officer pay 

grades but not in higher enlisted pay grades.4 See Issue Paper #15 for details of the investigation for 

the enlisted community.

Officer Occupations and Demographic Diversity

This subsection summarizes the analysis reported in Issue Paper #23, which examined the 

representation of different race, ethnicity, and gender groups across different officer pay grades and 

across tactical/operational and nontactical/nonoperational occupational areas.

Data Sources and Definitions

The data for this analysis were provided by the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) and came 

from the December 2008 extract of the dataset known as WEX/DEERS.5 The analysis does not 

include the Coast Guard because DMDC personnel data for the Coast Guard were not available.

To facilitate inter-Service comparisons, the occupation definitions used here are based on DoD’s 

occupational-classification system. Specifically, DoD defines tactical occupations to include all pilots, 

officers in occupations directly involving ground or naval arms, ballistic-missile system officers, and 

combat and operations staff officers. The fact that some staff officers may not have originated in 

tactical occupations creates a potential for misclassification of flag/general officers (i.e., officers in the 

 3

 For ease of exposition, unless otherwise specified, demographic diversity is used as a synonym for racial, ethnic,

and gender diversity throughout this decision paper. 4 The available data, however, did not allow for an examination of enlisted occupational patterns over time or for a 

detailed search for patterns within occupational areas. For example, demographic patterns for special operations 

forces (SOF) may exist, but in the dataset used in the analysis, SOF were subsumed under the infantry, gun crews, 

and seamanship occupational categories. The subcommittee hopes that future studies will examine these complex 

issues for enlisted occupations and demographic diversity.

5

 WEX refers to the Work Experience File, which is generated from DMDC’s Active Duty Military Personnel 

Master File; DEERS refers to Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System, which serves as a central DoD 

repository of personnel and medical data.
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O-7 through O-10 pay grades). To address this problem, flag/general officers were classified as 

having come from tactical occupations if they held tactical occupations before reaching the grade of 

O-6. In addition, the source data included Service occupation codes, which were useful in checking 

whether officers were properly classified as coming from tactical occupations.

Finally, race and ethnicity are based on self-reported data. As explained in Issue Paper #1, the 

five, mutually exclusive race and ethnicity groups used by the Commission are:

• white non-Hispanic

• black non-Hispanic

• Asian non-Hispanic

• other non-Hispanic (includes American Indians, Pacific Islanders, Alaska natives, and 

“more than one race”)

• Hispanic.

Because these categories are mutually exclusive, each person is counted only once. For instance, if 

a servicemember reports being both black and Hispanic, he or she would be included in the Hispanic 

category but not in the black category. (Throughout the text, these category names are abbreviated. 

For example, non-Hispanic white and black servicemembers are referred to as white and black, 

respectively.) However, not all Services report their data this way. Thus, some of the data presented 

here may look different from data presented by the Services.

Career Field and Rank: A Majority of Flag/General Officers Come from Tactical/Operational 

Backgrounds

In each Service of the U.S. military, flag/general officers tend to come from the subset of occupations 

most closely linked to the Service’s overall mission. In the Army and the Marine Corps, general

officers tend to come from the combat occupations (e.g., infantry). In the Air Force, general officers 

are most often pilots by trade. In the Navy, most flag officers come from the unrestricted line 

communities (e.g., surface warfare). This emphasis on the core-mission occupations shapes the senior 

billet structures in all the Services, which, in turn, shape the occupational profiles of officers in the 

Services’ senior ranks.6

Figures 1 and 2 illustrate this institutional feature of the U.S. military. First, Figure 1 shows that, 

in 2008, a majority (over 60 percent) of flag/general officers across the four DoD Services came from 

these tactical/operational career fields. The figure also shows that, compared with O-3 officers, the 

flag/general officers were more concentrated in tactical/operational occupations. Second, Figure 2 

shows that, even among the flag/general officers, the fraction of officers from tactical/operational 

occupations increased with rank. Together, these patterns suggest that, in general, flag/general 

officers are disproportionately drawn from tactical/operational occupations; overall, it is clear that the 

highest levels of military leadership tend to be populated by officers with tactical/operational 

backgrounds.

 6

 This emphasis does not shape the senior enlisted billet structure to the same extent that it shapes the senior officer 

billet structure; this is one reason that occupational assignment is less of a factor in shaping the demographics of 

senior leadership.
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Figure 1. Percentage of Officers in Tactical/Operational Occupations, December 2008

SOURCE: Defense Manpower Data Center, 2008.

Figure 2. Percentage of Officers in Tactical/Operational Occupations, December 2008, by Pay Grade

SOURCE: Defense Manpower Data Center, 2008.

Career Field and Demographics: Tactical/Operational Occupations Have High Concentrations of 

White Men

The finding that a majority of those in the flag/general officer corps had backgrounds in 

tactical/operational career fields matters for demographic diversity because, compared with other 

occupations, tactical/operational occupations tend to have higher concentrations of white men. As an 

example, Figure 3 shows the percentage of tactical/operational and nontactical/nonoperational
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officers in pay grade O-3 who are white men. (For reference, it also shows the percentage of white 

men among all flag officers.) Even at the O-3 level, 75 percent of all officers in tactical/operational 

occupations are white men, compared with 50 percent of the officers in nontactical/nonoperational

occupations. To be sure, the demographics of recent flag officers depend on the demographics of 

their own cohorts and not on the demographics of officers recently at the O-3 level. Nonetheless, 

Figure 3 demonstrates that the tendency of tactical/operational occupations to contain higher 

fractions of white men persists.7

Figure 3. Percentage of Officers in Nontactical/Nonoperational and Tactical/Operational Occupations Who 

Were White Men, December 2008, by Service

SOURCE: Defense Manpower Data Center, 2009.

Demographic Characteristics and Career Field Backgrounds of Recently Selected Flag Officers

To confirm that the relationships between career field, demographics, and rank hold in more-recent 

data, the subcommittee asked each Service to provide the primary career field backgrounds and 

demographic characteristics of officers who recently became flag/general officers (i.e., were selected 

to the O-7 pay grade). Because of the small size of its flag corps, the Coast Guard provided profiles 

for all flag officers. The responses from all the Services are shown in Table 1.

 7

 According to information provided to the Commission by the Coast Guard, a majority of tactical/operational (i.e., 

mission execution) positions are currently filled by white male officers (about 71 percent). However, the same can be 

said of nontactical/nonoperational (i.e., mission support) positions, which are largely held by white male officers 

(about 70 percent).
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Table 1. Demographic Characteristics and Career Field Backgrounds of FY 2009 and FY 2010 O-7 Board 

Selectees from the Four DoD Services and of FY 2010 O-7 Through O-10 Officers from the Coast Guard 

Officer Characteristic Air Force Army Coast Guard Marine Corps Navy

Demographic

Male 90% 97% 88% 100% 97%

White non-Hispanic 93% 82% 92% 90% 94%

Career field background

Tactical/operational 62% 70% 48% 70% 76%

Nontactical/nonoperational 38% 30% 52% 30% 24%

NOTES: Air Force data are based on 29 officers selected to O-7 in FY 2010. Army data are based on 39 Active Competitive Category 

officers selected to O-7 in FY 2009. Coast Guard data are based on ALL 52 officers in the O-7 through O-10 pay grades as of FY 2010. 

Marine Corps data are based on 10 officers selected to O-7 in FY 2009. Navy data are based on 34 officers selected to O-7 in FY 2009.

The data in Table 1 show that recent O-7 selectees for the four DoD Services were 

predominately white and male and came predominately from tactical/operational occupations, 

indicating that the patterns from the 2008 snapshots continue to hold. The Coast Guard’s flag 

officers were demographically similar to the DoD flag officers—both the recent O-7 selectees and all 

flag officers from the 2010 snapshot—but they came in almost equal proportions from 

tactical/operational (i.e., mission execution) and nontactical/nonoperational (i.e., mission support) 

career fields.

Thus, to the degree that officers from the tactical/operational sector continue to have better 

career prospects in the U.S. military, racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in senior leadership ranks 

will be limited by the demographic composition of tactical/operational occupations.

Key Assignments and Demographic Diversity

As seen in the previous section, the racial, ethnic, and gender composition of the senior leadership in 

the officer corps is greatly affected by the racial, ethnic, and gender composition of career fields and 

specialties. This subsection shows that the types of assignments that officers choose and/or are given 

once they enter their career fields can also have an impact. Indeed, the two Commission charter tasks 

that the Branching and Assignments Subcommittee was asked to address were on the relationship 

between race and ethnicity and officer assignments, both precommand billet assignments and 

command. To begin the examination into this important issue, the subcommittee focused on key 

assignments, which it defined as those assignments that are recognized to be especially demanding, 

have high visibility, and provide competitive advantage for advancement.

The subcommittee took a three-pronged approach to gathering information about the 

relationship between key assignments and demographic diversity. First, the subcommittee asked 

other Commissioners whether they could provide information about the key assignments in their 

respective Services. Commissioners representing the Air Force (three Commissioners), the Army 

(three Commissioners), the Marine Corps (two Commissioners), and the Navy (one Commissioner) 

provided information about key assignments.8 Second, the subcommittee asked the Services to 

provide information about key assignments in their briefings to the Commission. Third, the 

subcommittee held a day of meetings with Service representatives to ask questions about key 

 8

 Note, however, that Commissioners’ responses were based on their personal experiences and knowledge about key 

assignments and, thus, do not include all possible key assignments in their Services.
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assignments as they relate to issues of racial, ethnic, and gender diversity. The main finding from the 

subcommittee’s investigation is that the Services do not collect information about racial, ethnic, and 

gender patterns in key assignments in any systematic way. The specifics of what the subcommittee 

found on this topic are described in the following subsections.

It is also possible that assignments could be related to the demographic diversity of senior 

enlisted personnel. However, according to the information provided by Commissioners and Service 

representatives to the Commission, there are very few, if any, key assignments for enlisted personnel. 

The reason lies with how enlisted personnel are promoted. Unlike officers, enlisted personnel rarely 

compete for promotion across specialties (e.g., rating in the Navy and military occupational specialty 

in the Army and Marine Corps). Instead, enlisted personnel are promoted within their specialties 

based on a ranking system that includes some composite of time factors (e.g., time in grade, time in 

service), test scores, medals and awards, and performance ratings. Thus, the type of assignment held 

by an enlisted member does not readily factor into promotion outcomes. For most of the Services, 

differentiation across enlisted assignments only begins to matter to some degree in senior enlisted pay 

grades (i.e., E-7 through E-9).9 Given that enlisted assignments are not ready designators for 

promotion prior to senior enlisted ranks, and given the lack of significant demographic patterns 

across occupational areas by pay grades, the subcommittee did not focus on the issue of key 

assignments for the enlisted corps.

Definitions of Key Assignments by Service

The nine Commissioners who responded to the request about key assignments largely agreed with 

the subcommittee’s definition and believed that it fit with their understanding of key assignments. 

Commissioners from the Army and the Marine Corps were more likely to note that there are now 

more cases in which some key assignments that had once been critical for officer advancement are no 

longer as critical because of the current conflicts in the Middle East. For example, a Commissioner 

from the Marine Corps stated that performing well as an advisor overseas in lieu of having a 

command assignment at the O-5 pay grade could be a designator for promotion to the O-6 pay 

grade in his Service. Furthermore, many of the Commissioners and Service representatives to the 

Commission stated that serving in leadership or other important positions in Iraq or Afghanistan has 

become a designator for officer promotion. The changing nature of what is considered “key” for 

officer advancement (besides the obvious performance requirements) was cited by some Service 

representatives as fitting with the “bloom where planted” concept, which means to perform well in 

any assignment, particularly if it is not within one’s notional career path.

Although most of the Commissioners and Service representatives understood the subcommittee’s 

definition of key assignments, the Services do not define key assignments (or key billets) as broadly as 

the subcommittee. Specifically, the Services tend to define key assignments by branch/community 

and even by career field specialty. For example, the Army breaks the concept of key assignment into 

two parts: key developmental position and key billet. In the Army, a key developmental position is 

“deemed fundamental to the development of an officer in his or her core branch or functional area 

competencies or deemed critical by the senior Army leadership to provide experience across the 

 9

 The Air Force appears to have the earliest differentiation, such that enlisted personnel can become first sergeants 

at the E-7 pay grade. For the Army and Marine Corps, this differentiation largely begins at the E-8 pay grade, 

which is when Army and Marine Corps enlisted personnel can become first sergeants. However, Army and Marine 

Corps Commissioners cited some types of assignments that are important prior to the E-8 pay grade, such as 

recruiter in the Marine Corps and platoon sergeant in the Army. For the Navy and Coast Guard, differentiation is 

primarily found at the E-9 pay grade with the command master chief designation.
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Army’s strategic mission,” whereas a key billet is a “duty assignment at the lieutenant colonel or 

colonel rank requiring specific, highly developed skills and experience that is deemed so critical to a 

unit’s mission that an officer is selected for assignment by Headquarters Department of the Army” 

(U.S. Department of the Army, 2010, p. 14). The Services’ focus on assignments within

branches/communities/career fields makes it difficult to provide a detailed map of all key assignments 

across all branches/communities/career fields.

Common Themes for Key Assignments

Although none of the Services has “a checklist of assignments required for promotion from one grade 

to the next,” each Service branch/community/career field has “a notional career path comprising work 

and educational assignments that will make a due-course officer effective and credible” (Schirmer et 

al., 2006, p. 32). These notional career paths are largely what guided the Commissioners and Service 

representatives when they provided lists of key assignments. For example, the Army’s November 

2009 briefing to the Commission and the Navy’s March 2010 briefing to the Commission provided 

lists of key assignments that were largely based on notional career paths for officers in 

tactical/operational career fields (i.e., combat arms fields—now called maneuver, fire, and effects—

for the Army and the unrestricted line for the Navy). Particularly in the Army and the Marine Corps, 

certain key assignments are not open to women because they are classified as involving “direct 

offensive ground combat” (Issue Paper #23 and Issue Paper #56).

According to information provided by the nine Commissioners and by the Service representatives 

who attended the key assignment meetings with the subcommittee, there are some common themes 

in key assignments across the Services. For officer key assignments, the subcommittee discovered the 

following themes:

• All of the Services identified command assignments as key for officer advancement. 

Command assignments include the command of squadrons, ships, or installations and are 

critical to building leadership credibility. In the Army and the Marine Corps, command 

assignments are important earlier in an officer’s career than they are in the Air Force, the 

Coast Guard, and the Navy. That is, in the Army and the Marine Corps, officers 

(particularly in tactical/operational career fields) should have company commands as 

captains (i.e., at the O-3 pay grade). In the Air Force, the Coast Guard, and the Navy, 

major command opportunities come later, usually at the O-5 pay grade. However, in the 

Air Force, officers in nonrated (i.e., nontactical/nonoperational) career fields have 

command assignments earlier in their careers than do officers in rated career fields. 

According to figures provided to the Commission by the Air Force, about 93 percent of 

Air Force majors (i.e., officers at the O-4 pay grade) in nonrated career fields are 

currently in command assignments, compared with only about 7 percent of majors in 

rated career fields.

• Most Services stress that officers should become experts in their career fields and 

specialties and pursue developmental leadership and staff assignments prior to command:

– Coast Guard officers usually complete two tours for a certain specialty within 

their first three tours in order to establish themselves in their specialty. Also, 

Coast Guard officers often earn graduate degrees prior to making O-5 

command.10

 10 We were unable to gather more information on Coast Guard key assignments because of time constraints.
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– In the Marine Corps, officers in tactical/operational occupations are expected to 

serve in leadership positions, such as platoon leader, prior to making company 

command as a captain.

– In the Army, leadership positions similar to those in the Marine Corps and 

certain Army staff positions, such as aide-de-camp, are important for company 

grade officers, who generally command as captains.

– In the Navy, being a flag lieutenant or aide at the O-3 pay grade is important, 

and completing certain educational milestones prior to O-5 command is 

important.

– In the Air Force, pilots complete a number of assignments and meet different 

training and educational milestones prior to competing for command. For 

example, pilots in the O-1 through O-3 pay grades (i.e., company grade) would 

be expected to serve as instructor pilots or flight examiners, succeed at Fighter 

Weapons School, and serve as squadron tactics or squadron weapons officers. In 

the late O-3 through O-4 pay grades, Air Force pilots are expected to complete 

in-residence Intermediate Development Education, complete another staff 

assignment, have another cockpit assignment (e.g., operations officer in a 

squadron), and compete for in-residence slots at the War College or other Senior 

Developmental Education location.

• Officers are expected to meet certain educational milestones, primarily in terms of 

professional military education and getting advanced degrees.

• Executive officers or executive assistants to flag/general officers (especially 3- and 4-star 

flag/general officers), chiefs of staff, or similar staff positions at the Pentagon, major 

commands, and Service headquarters are key assignments. These types of positions are 

usually held at the O-6 pay grade.

• Completing joint assignments is required by law for officers who desire to be promoted 

to flag/general officer. Joint assignments at strategic locations, such as major commands 

and the Pentagon, tend to provide greater visibility than other joint assignments.

Of course, there are differences across the Services in some of the types of key assignments for 

officers. For example, only the Marine Corps and Army Commissioners and representatives listed 

leadership positions (e.g., command) at recruiting locations to be important for officers. Also, 

according to information provided to the Commission by the Air Force, Air Force officers tend to 

complete joint-qualified assignments later than Marine Corps and Army officers. Other assignments 

that appear to be unique to specific Services include inspector/instructor (Marine Corps), advisor 

overseas (Marine Corps), leadership positions at the Personnel Services Center (Coast Guard), 

Combat Training Center observer/controller (Army), and instructor pilot (Air Force). Despite these 

differences, the Services generally emphasize that as officers progress through their careers, they 

should take on assignments with more leadership responsibilities, complete joint assignments, and 

meet certain educational milestones.

Demographic Characteristics and Assignment Histories of Recently Selected Flag Officers

The Services had difficulty providing racial, ethnic, and gender breakdowns for all key assignments. 

In general, the problem appears to be that the demographic information for key assignments is not 

collected and tracked in a systematic way. For example, one Service representative reported that 
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information on the demographic characteristics of personnel in key assignments was not accessible 

because the information is not recorded in a single database.

Because the Services had difficulty providing demographic information about all key 

assignments, the subcommittee asked each Service to provide key assignment histories, including

information on primary career field backgrounds and demographic characteristics, of recently selected 

flag officers. These assignment histories are summarized by Service in Table 2, which references the 

same officers described in Table 1 with one exception—the Navy did not provide key assignment 

information about the eight restricted line (i.e., nontactical/nonoperational) officers selected to O-7 

in FY 2009.

Table 2. Key Assignment Histories, Career Field Backgrounds, and Demographic Characteristics of FY 2009 

and FY 2010 O-7 Board Selectees from the Four DoD Services and of FY 2010 O-7 through O-10 officers from 

the Coast Guard 

Officer Characteristics Number

Air Force (N = 29 officers selected to brigadier general in FY 2010)

Gender

Male 26

Female 3

Race and ethnicity

White non-Hispanic 27

Black non-Hispanic 0

Hispanic 1

Asian non-Hispanic 0

Other non-Hispanic 1

Career field background

Rated (i.e., pilot, air battle manager, combat systems officer) 18

Nonrated 11

Pre–flag/general officer assignments

Intermediate Developmental Education, in residence—Service 16

Intermediate Developmental Education, in residence—Joint 10

Squadron/detachment command 28

Group command 17

Wing command 28

Senior Developmental Education (War College level), in residence—Service 9

Senior Developmental Education (War College level), in residence—Joint 14

Military assistant 7

Executive officer (XO) 10

Fellow (e.g., White House fellow, National Defense fellow) 6

Below-the-zone promotion at least once in career 26

At least one deployment in career 18
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

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Officer Characteristics Number

Army (N = 39 ACC officers selected to brigadier general in FY 2009)

Gender

Male 38

Female 1

Race and ethnicity

White non-Hispanic 32

Black non-Hispanic 5

Hispanic 0

Asian non-Hispanic 2

Other non-Hispanic 0

Career field background

Maneuver, fire, and effects 28

Operational support 4

Force sustainment 7

Pre–flag/general officer assignments

Aide-de-camp 10

Battalion operations officer 18

Battalion XO 16

Brigade 8

Brigade XO 11

Battalion command 33

Brigade command 33

Division XO 4

Headquarters Department of the Army XO 10

Served in Operation Desert Shield 13

Deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom 33

Coast Guard (N = 52 officers in O-7 through O-10 pay grades as of FY 2010)

Gender

Male 46

Female 6

Race and ethnicity

White non-Hispanic 48

Black non-Hispanic 1

Hispanic 3

Asian non-Hispanic 0

Other non-Hispanic 0

Career field background
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

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Officer Characteristics Number

Mission execution 25

Mission support 27

Pre–flag/general officer assignments

O-5 command/O-6 command 47

Department head/precommand assignment 41

Advanced degree (master’s or doctorate) 49

Senior Service School/Senior Service Group 30

Assistant Commandant for Resources Directorate (CG-8) 11

Personnel Service Center (officer personnel management or enlisted personnel management) 7

Special assignment (e.g., Congressional Affairs, White House, flag aide) or chief of staff assignment 41

Marine Corps (N = 10 officers selected to brigadier general in FY 2009)

Gender

Male 10

Female 0

Race and ethnicity

White non-Hispanic 9

Black non-Hispanic 0

Hispanic 1

Asian non-Hispanic 0

Other non-Hispanic 0

Career field background

Ground combat element 4

Ground combat support 2

Aviation 3

Aviation support 1

Pre–flag/general officer assignments

Platoon command 7

Leadership position at supporting-establishment billet (e.g., recruiting) 2

Company command 6

Maintenance officer, squadron maintenance officer, or squadron XO (aviators only) 3

Battalion staff (e.g., XO) 7

Battalion command 10

Inspectors/instructors 0

Advisor overseas 3

Headquarters Marine Corps or Division staff (e.g., XO) 9

Regiment or Marine Expeditionary Unit command; Marine Air Group command (aviators) 9

CO at Marine Barracks, OCS, The Basic School, Naval Academy, etc. 1
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

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Officer Characteristics Number

Attended Naval War College 8

Joint positions at U.S. major commands (e.g., U.S. Central Command, U.S. European Command, U.S. 

Joint Forces Command)

7

Joint positions at Marine Corps locations (e.g., HQMC) 2

Navy (N = 26 URL officers selected to rear admiral lower half in FY 2009)

Gender

Male 26

Female 0

Race and ethnicity

White non-Hispanic 25

Black non-Hispanic 1

Hispanic 0

Asian non-Hispanic 0

Other non-Hispanic 0

Career field background

Aviation 10

Submarine 5

Surface warfare 9

Special warfare (e.g., Navy SEAL) 2

Pre–flag/general officer assignments

Graduate degree 22

Flag lieutenant/aide 2

O-5 command 26

Chief of staff 6

(Deputy) Executive assistant to flag officer 9

Major command (i.e., command at O-6) 26

Joint tour at O-6 18

Washington, D.C., tour (e.g., Pentagon) within last two tours 18

Other staff assignment (e.g., Finance/Strategy, Legislative Fellow) 20

NOTES: ACC = active competitive category. CO = commanding officer. HQMC = Headquarters Marine Corps. OCS = Officer Candidate 

School. SEAL = Sea, Air, Land. URL = unrestricted line. The numbers for the assignments do not add up to the total number of officers in 

the relevant sample. The numbers for the assignments represent how many of the officers in that sample had that type of assignment. 

For example, in the Navy sample, of the 22 officers who have graduate degrees, it is not clear how many had joint tours at the O-6 pay 

grade. 

The data in Table 2 show that some of the common themes in key assignments that were 

identified by Commissioners and Service representatives can be found in the assignment histories of 

recently selected flag/general officers in the Air Force, the Army, the Marine Corps, and the Navy 

and of the current flag corps of the Coast Guard. The main similarity across Services is that most of 
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

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the flag/general officers had command assignments prior to making flag/general officer. Another 

similarity across most of the Services is that these officers completed certain educational milestones, 

such as receiving a graduate degree or completing in-residence professional military education.11

Likewise, three of the Services noted that many of their recently selected brigadier generals had been 

deployed, most likely to the Middle East. Interestingly, many of the officers described in Table 2 

were not fellows, executive assistants/officers, or military assistants, nor did they serve in other similar 

staff positions prior to making flag/general officer. It is unclear whether these types of assignments 

are not as “key” as they once were or whether this cohort of flag/general officers is somehow unusual.

As previously stated, the Services had difficulties providing information about demographic 

characteristics of officers in key assignments. The information the Services did provide—and which 

is summarized in Table 2—did not allow the subcommittee to examine the relationship between the 

demographic characteristics of the officers and their assignment histories, nor did it allow the 

subcommittee to determine if women and racial and ethnic minorities have been selected for most 

key assignments at lower rates than men and whites.

However, some of the Service briefings to the Commission did provide demographic information 

for selection to one type of key assignment: command. The subcommittee’s findings about the 

relationship between demographic diversity and command assignments are detailed in the next 

section.

Command Assignments and Demographic Diversity

The second Commission charter task for the Branching and Assignments Subcommittee concerned 

the command selection process. Because of this task and because command assignments were 

identified as key assignments for officer advancement, the subcommittee took a closer look at the 

relationship between command assignments and demographic diversity. To do this, the 

subcommittee asked the Services to provide information about command selection outcomes when 

they briefed the Commission in November 2009.12 Three of the Services—the Army, Navy, and 

Marine Corps—provided command selection outcomes by gender, race, and ethnicity. Specifically, 

the subcommittee was able to compare outcomes of the O-5 and O-6 command selection and 

screening processes for the command selection boards, by fiscal year (FY), in FY 2006–FY 2010 for 

the Army, FY 2006–FY 2009 for the Marine Corps, and FY 2007–FY 2009 for the Navy aviation 

surface warfare officer (SWO) communities.13 Analysis of these outcomes is summarized here and 

described in detail in Issue Paper #32.

 11 The Services have educational requirements for career progression for commissioned officers, and not meeting 

these requirements renders one ineligible for promotion. Additionally, exceeding these educational requirements 

may make candidates for promotion more competitive. Therefore, educational requirements are used both as a 

cutoff for promotion and to distinguish between qualified candidates.

12 The subcommittee also asked each Service to describe its command selection process. Because the command 

selection process generally parallels that for officer promotion, the Promotion Subcommittee pursued the topic of 

command selection and promotion boards in Issue Paper #34. 13 The Army brief to the Commission provided command selection rates for the Army’s ACC, which means that 

officers are selected by a central board based on competitive category. The Marine Corps brief to the Commission

provided command screening results. We used only data on individuals who were selected to command (i.e., who 

were on the primary, not alternate, list for command). The Navy brief to the Commission did not supply command 

selection rates for the submarine community. Therefore, command selection rates for this community could not be 

provided.
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

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The command selection outcomes were analyzed in two ways. First, subcommittee research staff 

calculated within-group selection rates, which are the percentages of selected individuals from the 

eligible pool within each race, ethnicity, and gender group (e.g., the percentage of eligible female 

officers who were ultimately selected for command).14 Second, research staff calculated the 

percentages of total selectees from each race, ethnicity, and gender group—or, in other words, the 

percentages of selectees who were nonminorities (i.e., white non-Hispanic), minorities, and women.

Across the three Services that provided data, minority selection rates were 1–5 percentage points 

lower than nonminority selection rates for O-5 command. For O-6 command, minority selection 

rates were 2–13 percentage points higher than nonminority selection rates in the Marine Corps and 

the Navy SWO and aviation communities. In the Army, the minority selection rate was about 3 

percentage points lower than the nonminority selection rate. Female selection rates for O-5 

command were 2–4 percentage points lower than male selection rates in the Army and the Marine 

Corps and 4–9 percentage points higher than male selection rates in the Navy SWO and aviation 

communities. For O-6 command, female selection rates were 2–6 percentage points lower than male 

O-6 selection rates in the Army and the Marine Corps and 4–9 percentage points higher than male 

selection rates in the Navy SWO and aviation communities.

To properly interpret these differences in selection rates, it is important to note that, across 

Services, they are based on very different underlying sample sizes. Almost 400 women were eligible 

for command at the O-6 level in the Army, but no more than 30 women were eligible in the Marine 

Corps and the Navy SWO and aviation communities. Similarly, for O-5 command, more than 1,100 

women were eligible in the Army, compared with fewer than 65 in the Marine Corps and the two 

Navy communities. Thus, the small sample sizes for women in the Marine Corps and Navy data 

reduce the strength of the findings for gender because they make the female selection rates extremely 

sensitive to the selection of just one or two fewer (or additional) women. For example, for O-5 

command, the selection rate for female SWOs was nearly 9 percentage points higher than the 

selection rate for male SWOs—30 percent versus 21.3 percent. However, if just 2 fewer women had 

been selected (four rather than six), the female selection rate, now only 20 percent, would have been 

lower than the male rate.15

Turning to female and minority percentages of total selectees, the data show the following. 

Across the three Services that provided data, men and whites made up at least 80 percent of the 

officers selected for O-5 or O-6 command. At the O-5 level, the largest differences in terms of race, 

ethnicity, and gender were in the Marine Corps: Only 9.6 percent of the officers selected for O-5 

command were minorities, and only 1.7 percent were women. At the O-6 level, the largest 

differences were in the Navy aviation community, where only 5.4 percent of the officers selected for 

command were minorities, and only 1.2 percent were women.

 14 The selection rates calculated by the subcommittee are raw or unconditional selection rates; the data provided by 

the Services did not allow the subcommittee to calculate rates controlling for factors other than race, ethnicity, and 

gender. In particular, the Army data include tactical/operational and nontactical/nonoperational competitive 

categories, which have an unknown effect on the selection rates for women and minorities.

15 Because of these differences in sample sizes and because statistical significance is so largely driven by sample size, 

the statistical significance of the gender, racial, and ethnic differences in selection rates was not calculated. Statistical 

significance is a criterion that rules out differences that are easily attributable to random variation. Larger samples 

yield more-precise estimates, so the bigger the sample, the less likely a given difference is attributable to chance. 

This means that very small differences can be statistically significant if the sample size is large enough. In contrast, 

relatively large differences in rates are normal for small samples, even if the underlying probabilities are similar. 

Thus, apparently large differences can be statistically insignificant if the sample size is small enough.
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

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Thus, the main findings concerning O-5 and O-6 command selection and demographic diversity 

are that:

• Differences in O-5 and O-6 command selection rates by race, ethnicity, and gender are 

not the result of a clear bias for or against any particular group.

• However, a vast majority of officers (i.e., at least 80 percent) selected for O-5 or O-6 

command during the period under review were men and nonminorities.

Taken together, these findings suggest that minority and female representation in recent cohorts 

of command selectees is indeed low because minorities and women are not highly represented in the 

candidate pools for command assignments. The lower representation of minorities and women in 

candidate pools for command assignments may be due to race, ethnicity, and gender differences in 

accessions, branching, continuation, previous key assignments, and previous promotion rates prior to 

command. Indeed, command opportunities are more plentiful in tactical/operational career fields, 

which we have shown are more highly populated by white men. Thus, it is what happens before the 

command selection point that has an impact on the representation of minorities and women in O-5 

and O-6 command assignments.
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

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BARRIERS HINDERING THE ADVANCEMENT OF WOMEN AND 

MINORITIES

The previous section of this decision paper showed that tactical/operational occupations and 

command assignments are important factors that increase opportunities for promotion to the higher 

officer ranks, but women and minorities are underrepresented in tactical/operational career fields and 

in candidate pools for command assignment. This section of the decision paper explains the latter 

finding in terms of barriers that inhibit women and minorities from entering tactical/operational 

career fields and from serving in key assignments.16

Following Kirby et al. (2000), the subcommittee considered two types of barriers: structural and 

perceptual. Kirby et al. (2000) define structural and perceptual barriers in the following ways. 

Structural barriers are “prerequisites or requirements that exclude minorities to a relatively greater 

extent than non-Hispanic whites” and are “inherent in the policies and procedures of the institution” 

(Kirby et al., 2000, p. 525). An example of structural barriers is academic requirements or test scores 

necessary for entry into a career field. Another example of a structural barrier is the policies 

concerning combat restrictions for women. In contrast, perceptual barriers are “those perceptions, 

attitudes, or beliefs that lead minorities [and women] to think they cannot or should not pursue . . . a 

job or career option” (Kirby et al., 2000, p. 525). Factors that create perceptual barriers include a lack 

of role models in certain occupations or assignments; a lack of community support or knowledge 

about the occupation or assignment; and perceptions of racial, ethnic, or gender discrimination 

among members in certain occupations or assignments. Kirby et al. (2000) did not define either 

structural or perceptual barriers as being inherently positive or negative, but simply as factors that 

disproportionately affect minority (and female) groups.

Barriers Keeping Minorities and Women from Entering Tactical/Operational

Career Fields

Past research has identified structural and perceptual barriers that inhibit women and minorities from 

entering tactical/operational career fields in the military. This subsection summarizes this research 

and presents relevant facts related to the Commission’s deliberations. This discussion was written 

primarily with officers in mind because of the relationship between career field and advancement for 

officers. However, the barriers identified below also apply to career field choice, assignment, or both 

for enlisted personnel.

Perceptual Barriers to Entering Tactical/Operational Career Fields

Although perceptual barriers for women to enter tactical/operational career fields may exist, most of 

the evidence for perceptual barriers focuses on minority men. Evidence suggests that more white men 

than minority men prefer tactical/operational career fields in the Army (Lim et al., 2009) and the Air 

Force (Haygood & Morris, 2009) and that more white men than minority men enter SOF in the 

 16 The Commission also addressed the idea of changing the billet structure itself. See the discussion of 

Recommendation 10 in the Commission’s forthcoming final report.
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

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Army, the Navy, and the Air Force (Kirby et al., 2000). These findings persist even after controlling 

for such factors as rankings on merit-based lists for initial branching.17

Four perceptual barriers that may explain why minority men do not choose to enter 

tactical/operational career fields or specialties are described below. However, it is important to clarify 

that these barriers may not apply to all Services and may have changed since the time the research 

was conducted. Nonetheless, the list of barriers presented below offers the Services some guidance on 

where to focus their efforts when trying to understand and find solutions to the problem of female 

and minority servicemembers not choosing to enter tactical/operational career fields and specialties.

• Skill development preferences may differ among race and ethnicity groups. Specifically, 

minorities may be more likely than whites to prefer military career fields that they believe 

will provide skills (e.g., engineering skills) that will readily transfer to the civilian sector. 

Consistent with this hypothesis, Kirby et al. (2000) found that more minority men than 

white men indicated that transferability of skills was important to them.

• Minority communities and families may not have the same level of knowledge about or support 

for certain career fields as white communities and families. For example, Kirby et al. (2000) 

found that, compared with minorities, more of the white participants they interviewed in 

their study knew about SOF, such as the Navy SEALs, when they were children.

• Minorities may perceive that people in certain specialties hold racist attitudes. In particular, the 

minority military personnel who participated in Kirby et al.’s (2000) study generally 

indicated that the Army Green Berets and Rangers were believed by both minority 

civilian and minority military communities to be “white organizations with racist 

attitudes” (Kirby et al., 2000, p. 538).

• Minorities may not identify with certain career fields and their members because they contain 

few successful minority role models. Kirby et al. (2000, p. 537) found that minority role 

models may “actively discourage minority youth from considering an SOF career, either 

by actively selling their own military career choice, or by speaking negatively of SOF.” 

Indeed, in a report about blacks in combat arms, White (2009, p. 18) argued that the 

Army has not done enough to advocate for blacks in combat arms, and he recommends 

that “serving African American Combat Arms officers do all that they can to dissuade 

young Black men and women from accessing into the combat arms branches.” Thus, 

widespread perceptions that a Service does not provide support for minorities to succeed 

in tactical/operational career fields can have serious consequences for minority entry into 

those career fields.

Structural Barriers to Entering Tactical/Operational Career Fields

Structural barriers to minorities and women entering tactical/operational career fields can be found 

well before the initial branching point. For minorities, the main structural barrier concerns the 

relationships among officer commissioning source, race and ethnicity, and tactical/operational slot 

 17 Most of the Services’ officer commissioning sources have rankings of cadets and midshipmen in terms of “meritbased” factors in order to make initial branching and assignment decisions. For example, Army Reserve Officers’ 

Training Corps (ROTC) cadets are put on an Order of Merit List based on a weighted composite of academic grade 

point average, leadership performance and skills, and physical fitness qualifications (Lim et al., 2009). Although the 

Services use different strategies when using the merit-based rankings, cadets and midshipmen who rank higher on 

the list generally receive earlier consideration in terms of career field preferences than cadets and midshipmen who 

rank lower on the list.
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

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allocations. For women, the main structural barrier concerns the DoD and Service-specific combat 

exclusion policies.

Structural Barrier for Minorities

Two patterns, when combined, can constitute a structural barrier that keeps minorities from entering 

tactical/operational career fields. The first pattern concerns racial and ethnic differences in accessions 

by officer commissioning source. Except in the Marine Corps, blacks are less likely than members of 

other groups to access via a Service academy. This fact is illustrated in Table 3, which shows the 

share of each race and ethnicity group that was commissioned through a Service academy in FY 

2009, for each Service. For example, of all the black officers who were commissioned in the Navy in 

FY 2009, only about 10 percent graduated from the Naval Academy. In contrast, of all the white 

officers who were commissioned in the Navy in FY 2009, about 21 percent graduated from the Naval 

Academy.18

Table 3. Percentage of Each Race and Ethnicity Group Commissioned Through a Service Academy in FY 

2009, by Service

Race and Ethnicity Category Air Force Army Coast Guard Marine Corps Navy

White 30% 18% 55% 15% 21%

Black 18% 9% 19% 22% 10%

Hispanic 26% 19% 25% 16% 22%

Other* 38% 23% 39% 16% 17%

NOTES: The percentages in this table are percentages within race and ethnicity groups and thus do not sum to 100 percent across rows 

or down columns. The percentages for the Army are for active competitive category (ACC) accessions only. The data used to compute 

the percentages in these tables came from information provided to the Commission by the Services.

*This race/ethnicity category includes Asian, Pacific Islander/Hawaiian, Native American, and multiple races.

The second pattern concerns the tactical/operational slots allocated to different officer 

commissioning sources. At least for the Army and the Air Force, larger proportions of 

tactical/operational slots are allocated to the Service academies than to the other commissioning 

sources. According to information provided to the Commission by the Army, in FY 2009, about 77 

percent of West Point’s ACC slots were for combat arms branches (now called maneuver, fire, and 

effects). In comparison, only about 48 percent of Army ROTC’s ACC slots and only 47 percent of

Army OCS’s ACC slots were for combat arms branches. As a result, West Point graduates have a 

disproportionately greater likelihood of entering combat arms fields than do officers accessing 

through other commissioning programs.19

 18 The relatively large black percentage for the Marine Corps may be due to the small number of black officers who 

were accessed into the Marine Corps in FY 2009: Only 68 black officers were accessed in FY 2009, compared with 

1,488 white officers. Small changes in the number of black officers who are commissioned through a given source 

can have a sizeable impact on the percentages. If just six fewer black officers had been accessed into the Naval 

Academy in FY 2009, the percentage in Table 3 for Marine Corps black officers would have been smaller than the 

percentage for white officers. However, for the percentage of white officers to have been larger than the percentage 

of black officers accessed through the Naval Academy in FY 2009, 113 more white officers would have had to have 

been accessed through the Naval Academy in FY 2009. A similar argument about small sample sizes can be made 

for the Coast Guard, in which only 16 black officers were accessed in FY 2009, compared with 352 white officers.

19 United States Military Academy graduates actually account for a relatively small share of total Army 

accessions. In FY 2007 and FY 2008 combined, accessions from West Point accounted for just 14 percent of all 
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

22

The numbers for the Air Force are slightly more complicated: According to information provided 

to the Commission by the Air Force, about 43 percent of Air Force rated (tactical) allocations go to 

Air Force Academy graduates, 43 percent to Air Force ROTC graduates, 10 percent to Air Force 

Officer Training School (OTS) graduates, and 4 percent to others (e.g., directly commissioned 

officers). Although the allocation percentages for the Air Force Academy and ROTC do not differ, 

the percentage of officers selected for undergraduate pilot training (UPT) differed by commissioning 

source: About 45–55 percent of Air Force Academy graduates were selected for UPT, whereas only 

about 25 percent of ROTC and about 10 percent of OTS graduates were selected for UPT. This 

trend is not new: Carretta (2000) noted that the Air Force Academy has historically received a 

disproportionately high number of pilot training slots relative to ROTC and OTS. Thus, based on 

available numbers of per capita slots, officers have a better chance of getting a pilot training slot in 

the Air Force if they go through the Air Force Academy than if they go through other Air Force 

commissioning sources.20

Taking the two patterns together, minority officers—particularly black officers—have fewer 

opportunities to enter tactical/operational career fields in the Air Force and the Army because 

minority officers are less likely to access via the Service academies than via other commissioning 

sources.21

Structural Barrier for Women

The most important barrier keeping women from serving in tactical/operation career fields is the 

DoD and Service policies that prohibit women from serving in occupations involving direct offensive 

ground combat (Harrell & Miller, 1997; Segal & Segal, 2004). Although the laws that prohibited 

women from operating combat aircraft and serving on combatant ships were repealed in the early 

1990s, policies barring women from other combat-related activities remain in place. These policies 

will be discussed in greater detail in a later section; this section simply notes their impact on the share 

of total occupations available to women. As of 2003, the combat exclusion policies made the 

following percentages of occupations closed to women:

 

accessions, compared with 42 percent for ROTC and 26 percent for OCS. Using the FY 2007–FY 2008 data and 

focusing only on accessions from the Academy, ROTC, and OCS, the table below shows how the specified 

allocations give West Point graduates a disproportionate share of combat arms opportunities.

Accessions Share of Total Accessions

Combat Arms Slots Implied by 

Allocations Share of Total Slots

West Point 2,103 17.2% 1,619 25.1%

ROTC 6,296 51.4% 3,022 46.9%

OCS 3,848 31.4% 1,809 28.0%

Total 12,247 100.0% 6,450 100.0%

The data for this footnote come from Population Representation in the Military Services, also known as the 

Population Representation Report (found in Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, FY 2007–FY 2008).

20 For the Air Force, in FY 2007 and FY 2008 combined, the Academy, ROTC, and OTS accounted for 24.2, 40.4, 

and 12.7 percent of all accessions, respectively.

21 The tactical/operational slot allocation patterns for the Air Force and the Army may not extend to the Navy, the 

Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard because of how officers are initially assigned to career fields/specialties in these 

three Services. For a more-detailed discussion of how the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard differ, see 

Appendix A.
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

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• Army occupations—9 percent

• Marine Corps occupations—8 percent

• Navy occupations—6 percent22

• Air Force occupations—1 percent (Segal and Segal, 2004).

In contrast, all occupations in the Coast Guard have been open to women since 1978 (U.S. Coast 

Guard, n.d.).

Barriers Keeping Minorities and Women from Serving in Key Assignments

Perceptual and structural barriers not only keep women and minorities from serving in 

tactical/operational occupations but also keep them from serving in key assignments. The 

subcommittee identified one potential perceptual barrier—lack of effective career counseling and 

mentoring—and three structural barriers—namely, career field segregation, combat exclusion 

policies, and short windows of eligibility for serving in certain assignments—that likely keep women 

and minorities from serving in key assignments.

Potential Perceptual Barrier to Key Assignments

One potential perceptual barrier keeping minorities and women from obtaining key assignments, 

such as command, is a lack of sufficient knowledge about key assignment opportunities. That is, 

minorities and women may not receive the same career counseling or mentoring about key 

assignments that their white male counterparts receive. If this is the case, minorities and women 

would be more likely to miss career enhancing assignment opportunities.

As described in Issue Paper #25, a minority or female servicemember is more likely than a white 

man to have a mentor of a different race, ethnicity, or gender—i.e., to be in a mixed mentoring 

relationship. There is limited research on demographic differences between mentor and protégé23 and 

their effect on the quality of the relationship and the type of mentoring it provides. What research 

does exist, though, shows some differences in same-gender/same-race mentoring relationships versus 

female protégé/male mentor and minority protégé/white mentor relationships. For instance, female 

protégés with female mentors report receiving more psychosocial support (e.g., Koberg et al., 1998) 

and role modeling functions (Ragins & McFarlin, 1990) than do female protégés with male mentors. 

Likewise, racial and ethnic minority protégés with mentors of the same race and ethnicity report 

receiving more psychosocial support (Koberg et al., 1998; Thomas, 1990) and career development 

support (Ensher & Murphy, 1997). Therefore, female and racial and ethnic minority protégés may 

derive a different set of benefits from same-gender and same-race and ethnicity mentoring 

relationships than from mixed mentoring relationships.

Moreover, additional research shows that protégés who perceive greater similarities between 

themselves and their mentors report both receiving more psychosocial mentoring (Wanberg et al., 

2006) and having higher-quality relationships (Finkelstein et al., 2002) than protégés who perceive 

fewer similarities between themselves and their mentors.

Together, this body of research indicates that it is likely that mixed mentoring relationships may 

not only be different than nonmixed pairs but may also be less effective. To the extent that protégés 

 22 This percentage is likely to have increased since the Secretary of Defense lifted the ban barring women from 

serving on submarines in 2010 (Peck, 2010).

23 A protégé can also be called a mentee. We use the term protégé here to keep the terminology consistent with the 

Commission’s recommendation on mentoring.
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

24

in mixed mentoring relationships receive, or perceive that they receive, lower-quality information 

about key assignments or less encouragement to take on key assignments than do protégés in 

nonmixed mentoring relationships, minorities and women may face a perceptual barrier to obtaining 

key assignments. The subcommittee notes, however, that the available research cited here was 

conducted in civilian settings. It is possible that institutional differences between civilian and military 

work settings may mean that these results are not generalizable to mentoring relationships in the 

military. This highlights the need for evaluation of military mentoring programs.24

Structural Barriers to Key Assignments

There are three structural barriers that limit female and minority access to key assignments. First,

career field segregation is a major structural barrier to obtaining key assignments, especially 

command assignments. That is, most command assignments go to servicemembers in 

tactical/operational career fields. Thus, the lower representation of minorities and women in 

tactical/operational career fields means that a lower proportion of minorities and women have access 

to command assignments and perhaps other key assignments. Because the barriers to entering 

tactical/operational career fields have already been described, they will not be further described here.

Second, the structural barrier for women to enter key career fields is also a structural barrier for 

women once they are in their career fields: In addition to keeping women from entering occupations 

that involve direct ground combat, DoD and Service policies prohibit women from taking 

assignments that involve direct ground combat, even within those career fields that are open to 

them.25 As a result of these policies, in 2003, only 70 percent of positions in the Army and 62 percent 

of positions in the Marine Corps were open to women. At the other end of the spectrum, however, 

99 percent of Air Force positions and 91 percent of Navy positions were open to women (Segal & 

Segal, 2004).26 Finally, although all Coast Guard occupations are open to women, the subcommittee 

received no information regarding whether all positions are open to women. To the degree that such 

combat-related assignments are considered “key” for advancement, women will face a structural 

barrier to key assignments. Again, these policies will be discussed in more detail in a later section.

A third type of structural barrier is best explained using an example from the Navy. According to 

information provided to the Commission by the Navy, the Navy’s Surface Warfare community 

discovered that some key assignments had short windows of time for officers to be considered eligible 

for the assignments. That is, potential candidates for those assignments had only a short period of 

time (e.g., a month) to apply. The Surface Warfare community noticed that the candidate pools for 

the assignments with shorter windows were less demographically diverse than the candidate pools for 

assignments with wider windows. When the community widened the eligibility windows for the key 

assignments with short windows, the eligibility pool became more demographically diverse. This 

example highlights how some structural factors that appear to be demographically neutral can 

effectively create barriers for minorities and women to have the opportunity to compete for key 

assignments.

 24 Additional information (summarized from Issue Paper #25) can be found in Appendix B.

25 For more on the distinction between position and occupation/career field, see Issue Paper #56.

26 Again, the percentage of Navy positions open to women is likely to have increased since the Navy’s recent 

decision to allow women to serve on submarines (Peck, 2010).
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

25

Combat Exclusion Policies in More Detail

This subsection discusses the DoD and Service combat exclusion policies in more detail. The 

subcommittee believed that this topic merited particular attention because of the importance of the 

policies as a barrier to female entry to career-enhancing occupations and assignments and because of 

the Commission’s recommendation to eliminate the policies. The material in this subsection is drawn 

primarily from Issue Paper #56.

27

The Current Policies

It is important to note from the outset that the current policies are, indeed, policies, not laws. The

only law currently in place regarding women’s roles in combat is a provision from the National 

Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006 that requires the Secretary of Defense to give 

Congress 60 days’ notice before changing the assignment policies for women or opening or closing 

new positions to women and to report whether DoD is currently complying with the 1994 policy 

(Harrell et al., 2007).

There are, however, multiple assignment policies because the DoD policy allows each Service to 

impose additional restrictions, so long as they are within its guidelines. The DoD and Service policies 

are described below. Particular attention is given to the Army policy because almost all Air Force and 

Navy roles are open to women and because of the relatively small percentage of women in the Marine 

Corps.28 It is also the Army’s policy that has been under scrutiny because of concerns about whether 

the Army’s actual use of women in Iraq has been consistent with the existing policies (Harrell et al., 

2007).

The DoD Policy: An Assignment Policy, Not an Employment Policy

The current DoD policy is known as the Direct Ground Combat Assignment Policy (DGCAP). 

The DGCAP states,

Service members are eligible to be assigned to all positions for which they 

are qualified, except that women shall be excluded from assignment to 

units below the brigade level whose primary mission is to engage in 

direct combat on the ground. . . . (Aspin, 1994)

As an assignment policy, DGCAP restricts how female servicemembers are assigned in theater, 

rather than how they are utilized or employed. To facilitate implementation of the policy, units and 

positions are coded to identify them as direct ground combat or not direct ground combat (Defense 

Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, 2009).

Thus, given that a female servicemember is trained in an occupation, the assignment policy 

determines to which unit she can be assigned to perform her job. As already noted, there are also 

entire occupational specialties, such as infantry, closed to women. The interaction between 

occupational specialties open or closed to women and the units open or closed to women is illustrated 

in Table 4. The columns indicate whether the occupation is open or closed to women, and the rows 

indicate whether the unit is open or closed to female assignments. For example, there are 

 27 Some of the material from Issue Paper #56 was, in turn, excerpted and revised from Harrell and Miller, 1997. For 

a more complete history of women in the military, see Holm, 1992, and National Defense Research Institute, 2010. 28 Additionally, the Marine Corps guidance on roles for women does not have the same complicating factors as will 

be discussed for the Army guidance.
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

26

traditionally female jobs that are open to women in traditionally female units, such as nurses working 

in military hospitals. But there are also women serving in slightly less-traditional occupations, such as 

supply. A female supply sergeant could be assigned to a supply unit, such as an Army combat 

sustainment support battalion. But that same female servicemember could not be assigned to an 

infantry battalion. Finally, all positions requiring occupational specialties from which women are 

barred from serving are also closed to women, regardless of the unit.

Table 4. Examples of Occupational Specialties and Units Open or Closed to Women in the Army

Occupation Open to Women Occupation Closed to Women

Unit open to women Nurse in hospital; supply sergeant in combat

sustainment support battalion Infantry instructor at schoolhouse at Ft. Benning 

Unit closed to women Supply sergeant in infantry battalion Infantry soldier in infantry battalion 

Once a female servicemember has been validly assigned to a unit, the assignment policy does not 

prescribe what duties she can perform. The local commander has the authority to use personnel to 

fulfill the unit mission.29 For example, Harrell et al.’s study (2007) found examples of female 

servicemembers trained as cooks having received the Combat Action Badge in Iraq, likely because 

contractor cooks obviated the need for U.S. soldiers to perform that role. Instead, these women, 

along with their male colleagues trained as cooks, were performing other duties, such as guard duty.

Finally, the DoD assignment policy does not limit the units with which female servicemembers 

can interact.30 There were instances in Iraq in which individuals or small units were attached to other 

units. This is different from assignment and is not prohibited by the assignment policy. The Army 

forward support company (FSC) provides an example of women serving in a unit that was attached 

to maneuver battalions. The FSCs were assigned to the brigade support battalion (BSB), but the 

BSB was often hours away and only infrequently in contact with the FSC. However, the practice of 

attaching these units was likely part of the motivation for a congressionally mandated assessment of 

Army assignment policies in Iraq (Harrell et al., 2007).

The Services’ Policies

In addition to its main restriction on women’s engagement in direct ground combat, the DGCAP 

allows the Services to include additional restrictions in their own policies according to the following 

criteria:

Where the Service Secretary attests that the costs of appropriate berthing 

and privacy arrangements are prohibitive;

Where units and positions are doctrinally required to physically collocate 

and remain with direct ground combat units that are closed to women;

Where units are engaged in long range reconnaissance operations and 

Special Operations Forces missions; and

 29 For example, the Army assignment policy states, “[o]nce properly assigned, female solders are subject to the same 

utilization policies as their male counterparts. In event of hostilities, female solders will remain with their assigned 

units and continue to perform their assigned duties” (U.S. Department of the Army, 1992, p. 2).

30 As discussed below, the Army policy prohibits collocation, which is a type of interaction.
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Where job related physical requirements would necessarily exclude the 

vast majority of women service members. (Aspin 1994)

Thus, according to McSally (2007), DoD ultimately “translates into the exclusion of women from 

infantry, tank (armor), and artillery units below the brigade level in the Army and Marine Corps, 

Navy submarines and other ships with close quarters, and Special Forces units in all the service 

branches.”

Based on information that was current in 2003, Segal and Segal (2004) summarized the combatrelated occupational and assignment restrictions for each of the DoD Services as follows:

• Army: Women “are prohibited from serving in units of battalion size or smaller whose 

primary mission is ground combat, or with units that are routinely located with combat 

units. Women are excluded from the occupational fields of infantry, armor, and Special 

Forces. Also closed to women are units at the battalion level or below in cannon field 

artillery and multiple launch rocket artillery. Women are also excluded from ranger units 

at the regiment level and below, ground surveillance radar platoons, combat engineer line 

companies, and short-range air defense artillery units.”

• Navy: Women “are excluded from submarines, special forces (SEALS), coastal patrol 

boats, special boat unit crews, and support positions with Marine Corps ground combat 

units. Women also may not work as fire control technicians, missile technicians, and 

sonar technicians (submarine) because these occupations require submarine service.”

• Air Force: “Women are excluded from positions that are physically located with ground 

combat units, such as combat control, tactical air command and control, and pararescue. 

Restricted assignments include special operations force (SOF) rotary aircraft 

(helicopters); combat liaison officer assignments with infantry battalions; and radio 

communications positions that collocate with ground combat units.”

• Marine Corps: The Marine Corps policy excludes women from “occupations in infantry, 

armor, and artillery, as well as from serving as security force guard, close-quarter battle 

team member, and 15 other occupations that routinely collocate with ground combat 

units. As with the Army, positions in [some type of] units below the battalion level are 

closed. Additionally, eight specialties that are open to women have restricted assignment 

to certain units. Some Marine Corps positions are closed because they are on Navy ships 

that may not yet accommodate women.”

Because the Services’ policies are subject to change, these summaries are intended to illustrate the 

general nature of the other Services’ policies. For example, in 2005, the Navy changed its policy to 

allow women to serve on coastal patrol boats (U.S. Department of the Navy, 2009), and in 2010, the 

Navy lifted the restriction banning women from serving on submarines (Peck, 2010).

The Army Policy: How It Relates to the DoD Policy

The Army policy has been in place since 1992 and, thus, predates the 1994 DoD policy. The combat 

environments in Iraq and Afghanistan have highlighted key differences between the two policies.31

Describing these differences helps to better explain each policy individually.

 31 Harrell et al. (2007) provide a more detailed discussion of the differences between the policies and an assessment 

of whether the Army followed the policy during the conflict in Iraq.
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One difference between the Army and DoD policies pertains to their definitions of combat. The 

DoD policy defines “direct ground combat” as “[e]ngaging an enemy on the ground with individual 

or crew served weapons, while being exposed to hostile fire and to a high probability of direct 

physical contact with the hostile force’s personnel” (Aspin, 1994). The DoD policy states further, 

“[d]irect ground combat takes place well forward on the battlefield while locating and closing with 

the enemy to defeat them by fire, maneuver, or shock effect” (Aspin, 1994). The Army policy defines 

“direct combat” as “[e]ngaging an enemy with individual or crew served weapons, while being 

exposed to direct enemy fire, a high probability of direct physical contact with the enemy’s personnel 

and a substantial risk of capture. Direct combat takes place while closing with the enemy by fire, 

maneuver, and shock effect in order to destroy or capture the enemy, or while repelling the enemy’s 

assault by fire, close combat, or counterattack” (U.S. Department of the Army, 1992, p. 5). Thus, the 

Army policy adds the requirement for “substantial risk of capture” to the definition. The other key 

difference is that the Army definition includes the aspect of repelling assault. This becomes especially 

important because another key difference between the two policies is that the DoD policy prohibits 

“assignment to units below the brigade level whose primary mission” is direct ground combat (Aspin, 

1994). The Army policy, however, prohibits assignment to units of that size whose “routine mission 

[is] to engage in direct combat” (U.S. Department of the Army, 1992, p. 1). The operations in Iraq 

highlight the differences between these policies, as there have been military units that have routinely 

participated in combat, although combat was not their primary mission. This is, for example, the 

experience of supply units whose passage along convoy routes was routinely subject to attack. If such 

a situation could be considered repelling the enemy, then those units routinely participated in direct 

combat, even though their primary mission was supply related.

Another difference between the DoD policy and the Army policy pertains to collocation. 

Specifically, the Army policy prohibits assignment of women to units “which collocate routinely with 

units assigned a direct combat mission” (U.S. Department of the Army, 1992, p. 5). While some 

experts have maintained that units must be interdependent on one another to be considered 

collocated, the Army policy defines collocation as occurring when a unit “physically locates and 

remains” with another. Although the DoD policy mentions collocation, it does not impose 

collocation restrictions.

The Combat Exclusion Policy and the Current Operational Environment

DoD and Service policies that bar women from entry to certain combat-related career fields, 

specialties, units, and assignments are based on standards of conventional warfare, with well-defined, 

linear battlefields. The current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have been anything but 

conventional. As discussed in Issue Paper #56, “[C]oncepts such as ‘enemy,’ ‘exposed to hostile fire,’ 

‘forward,’ and ‘well-forward’ are no longer useful when determining which units should be closed to 

women. The enemy is no longer clearly and consistently identifiable, and all units are essentially 

exposed to hostile fire. Additionally, the spatial concepts of forward and well-forward are 

inappropriate and lacking to convey the complexity of operations such as those in Iraq and 

Afghanistan.” The current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan render interpretations of the combat 

exclusion policies more difficult than ever before.

As a result of the changes in warfare in recent years, some of the military women deployed to Iraq 

and Afghanistan have been engaged in activities that could be considered combat related. Examples 

abound of women being exposed to combat in theater while deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The 

Marine Corps Lioness program in Iraq attaches female servicemembers to all-male combat units in 

order for female servicemembers to facilitate the units’ interactions with local Iraqi women. Similarly, 
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

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the Marine Corps’ Female Engagement Teams (FETs) are used in Afghanistan to speak with local 

women and gather intelligence (Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, 2009). As 

cited previously, collocation is an aspect of the Army’s combat exclusion policy (Harrell et al., 2007) 

and is used by all four DoD Services to bar women from certain specialties or assignments (U.S. 

Government Accountability Office, 1998).32 The role that women play in forward support companies 

is another example of the difficulty of applying current policies to operational environments. Harrell 

et al. (2007) found that women who served in forward support companies for maneuver (i.e., direct 

combat) units can and do use weapons in self-defense and provide security to other support units. 

Furthermore, personnel in these support units did not report perceiving themselves as being part of a 

separate entity from the maneuver units they supported. This example shows that women, while not 

being formally assigned to combat units, may be directly engaged in combat-related activities.

This disconnect between the combat exclusion policies and what is happening in the operational

theater makes for unclear and counterproductive policies. Harrell et al. (2007) interviewed soldiers 

who had recently returned from serving in Iraq or Afghanistan and found that many of the soldiers 

did not understand the Army’s assignment policy concerning women. Once the policy was explained 

to them, many felt that it was inappropriate, given how well women have performed in combatrelated roles while serving in Iraq.

Ultimately, the current policies do not accommodate the reality in the ground, which can result 

in policies that are unclear at best and, at worst, are ineffective (McSally, 2007).

Women in Combat and Mission Accomplishment

A common argument in favor of the current combat exclusion policies is that having women serving 

in direct combat will lower unit morale and unit cohesion and, consequently, will hamper mission 

effectiveness (McSally, 2007). These arguments were also made with respect to racial integration 

and, more recently, to the integration of gay servicemembers in the military. However, as noted in 

Issue Paper #56, this argument has not been borne out by either research or practical experience.

To date, there has been little evidence that the integration of women into previously closed units 

or occupations has had a negative impact on important mission-related performance factors, such as 

unit cohesion. Following the policy change in the early 1990s, Harrell and Miller (1997) studied the 

impact of gender integration on unit cohesion, morale, and readiness in recently integrated units or

units that had recently opened more assignments to women in the Army, Marine Corps, and Navy. 

The authors found that gender integration was perceived by study participants—both men and 

women—to have a “relatively small effect” on the unit cohesion, morale, and readiness of the units 

they studied (p. xvii). When gender was mentioned as a factor by study participants, it did not feature 

as prominently as such factors as rank and leadership issues.

Similar findings about unit morale and cohesion were found in more-recent studies. In a study 

reported by DACOWITS in 2009, a majority of servicemembers who were part of the study’s focus 

groups said that women serving in combat roles, such as “on convoys, as drivers, or otherwise 

traveling between camps—and participating in female search teams, including the Lioness program,” 

in Iraq and Afghanistan did not have a negative impact on unit morale. Likewise, McSally (2007) 

reported that, based on her experiences, women have been successfully integrated into fighter pilot 

teams and have not reduced cohesion, as had been feared prior to the 1994 integration effort. These 

two reports, combined with the study by Harrell and Miller (1997), suggest that fears that women 

would hurt unit morale or cohesion have not been borne out in practice.

 32 As mentioned earlier, there are different definitions of collocation. See Harrell et. al., 2007, for more information.
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

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Moreover, there is some evidence that women actually have a positive impact on mission 

accomplishment in combat environments. In the DACOWITS (2009) study, a majority of focus 

group participants felt that women serving in combat environments in Iraq and Afghanistan actually 

had a positive impact on mission accomplishment. Focus group members cited that these women had 

“greater sensitivity to cultural considerations” and were “helping to maintain personnel strength” and 

“providing a unique perspective on the mission” (p. 73). These explanations of how women serving in 

Iraq and Afghanistan had positive impacts on mission accomplishment highlight the potential for 

gender diversity to enhance mission accomplishment, if it is properly managed by good leadership 

and training.

Another argument against changing the current policies concerns women’s physical and 

emotional resilience. Specifically, some proponents of the combat exclusion policies have argued that, 

even if men are not distracted by the presence of women in direct ground combat units, women 

would impede mission effectiveness because they are either physically weaker than men, less 

emotionally resilient than men, or both. However, as discussed in Issue Paper #56, there is not much 

direct evidence to support claims that all women lack the physical ability to perform in combat roles. 

In fact, women and men have overlapping physical capabilities. Therefore, current policies in which 

men are assumed to qualify to serve in combat and allowed to enter tactical career fields without 

having to prove themselves physically capable and all women are assumed to be unqualified overinclude men and under-include women (McSally, 2007).33 Likewise, research does not indicate that 

women are necessarily less able than men to deal with the emotional ramifications of combat. Rather, 

the limited published studies on gender differences in mental health impacts of combat exposure 

suggest that the evidence is mixed; some research shows slightly more negative impacts for women,

but other research finds no gender differences (Street et al., 2009). Furthermore, DoD officials noted 

that initial studies of veterans with similar time outside secure bases in Iraq revealed increased mental 

health issues for men and women in nearly the same proportion (Cave, 2009).

Taken together, the research evidence and practical experience of members serving with women 

in combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan do not support arguments that women’s capabilities and 

mere presence in formerly closed units will reduce unit morale, cohesion, and, ultimately, mission 

accomplishment. On the contrary, the majority of focus group participants in the DACOWITS 

focus groups indicated that “that having females in combat not only does not erode morale but can be 

a positive influence” (Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, 2009).

The Effect of Combat Exclusion Policies on Career Opportunities for Women

As described in previous sections of this paper, as of December 2008, a substantial majority (over 65 

percent) of general/flag officers in the four DoD Services came from tactical/operational career fields. 

Thus, all else being equal, the greatest opportunities to reach senior leadership ranks in the officer 

corps are through tactical/operational career fields. However, female officers are less likely than male 

officers to serve in tactical/operational occupations: In December 2008, just 11 percent of Active 

 33 Research does show, however, that when otherwise-similar male and female servicemembers are compared, male 

servicemembers are on average physically stronger and have higher cardiovascular abilities (Presidential Commission 

on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces, 1992). Therefore, any likely gender-neutral physical standard 

for combat or entry into tactical fields, as is recommended by the Commission, would disqualify a higher percentage 

of women than men.
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Component female officers were in tactical/operational occupations, compared with about 41 percent 

of Active Component male officers.34

Even when women are allowed to enter tactical/operational career fields, their opportunities to 

obtain certain assignments in the four DoD Services are limited by the combat exclusion policies that 

restrict the types of positions women can occupy in the U.S. military. According to a 1998 GAO 

report, the effects of the different policies can be broken out as follows: Services reported that about 

46 percent of positions were closed because these positions were classified as involving direct ground 

combat, 41 percent because of their interpretations of the collocation rule, 12 percent because of 

living arrangement restrictions,35 and 2 percent because of special operations.36 To the extent that 

these assignments are considered to be key to advancement, female officers have fewer chances to 

develop competitive assignment histories.

The interaction of occupation and assignment restrictions compounds the problem. Issue Paper 

#56 presents several cases in which women are allowed to serve in particular occupations but are 

barred from positions in those occupations. For example, a female supply sergeant in the Army could 

be assigned to a supply unit, such as an Army combat sustainment support battalion, but she could 

not be assigned to an infantry battalion. Thus, depending on the type of assignment, this supply 

sergeant may not be able to serve in a position for which she is trained.

To summarize, women face a two-level structural barrier to advancement caused by the combat 

exclusion policies. The first level bars women from entering certain tactical/occupational career fields, 

which are linked to senior leadership in the U.S. military. The second level bars women from serving 

in certain positions within the tactical/operational career fields that they can enter. Consequently, as 

long as women are barred from certain tactical/operational career fields, specialties, and assignments, 

they will face a structural barrier to reaching the highest levels of leadership in their Services.37

 34 These statistics were based on December 2008 personnel data provided by the DMDC to the Commission. These 

are the same personnel data used in Issue Paper #23. 

35 The Government Accountability Office (1998) describes these positions as “exclusive to the Navy and . . . on 

submarines and small surface vessels like mine sweepers, mine hunters, and coastal patrol ships.” As discussed 

earlier, the Navy now allows women to serve on submarines, so the 12 percent figure has likely decreased since the 

GAO paper was published.

36 These percentages sum to greater than 100 due to rounding.

37 Enlisted men are also more concentrated in tactical/operational occupational categories than enlisted women. As 

of December 2008, about 22 percent of Active Component enlisted men were in tactical/operational occupations 

(i.e., infantry, gun crews, and seamanship) compared with just 5 percent of active-duty enlisted women (Issue Paper

#15). Evidence linking occupational area to enlisted advancement is, however, lacking.
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CAREER FACILITATORS: MENTORING PROGRAMS AND OTHER 

CAREER DEVELOPMENT RESOURCES

The Branching and Assignments Subcommittee’s final area of investigation was career facilitators. 

Specifically, the subcommittee looked at the role that mentoring programs and other career 

development resources play in helping servicemembers manage their own career progressions. This 

focus is consistent with the 2009 Diversity Management Policy, which states that the DoD Diversity 

Management program will “establish training, mentoring, and development approaches that ensure 

all DoD personnel have the skills to navigate career progression successfully” (U.S. Department of 

Defense, 2009).38 This discussion applies to both officers and enlisted personnel.

Mentoring Programs

One of the ways organizations address issues of career advancement and racial, ethnic, and gender

diversity is through mentoring programs. Although the Services’ mentoring programs vary in terms 

of their level of development and degree of formality, they are all intended to educate and guide 

servicemembers about career options and ways to develop their potential. However, and perhaps 

most importantly, there is no strong evidence as to whether and how the Services’ mentoring 

programs are meeting either their goal of supplying servicemembers with equal access to mentors or 

their ultimate goal of improving Servicemembers’ abilities to guide their own careers and advance as 

far as possible given their abilities.

Effective Mentoring Practices Identified by Research

In general, research finds that mentored individuals have higher compensation, more promotions, 

greater career satisfaction, greater expectations for advancement, more career commitment, and 

higher job satisfaction than nonmentored individuals (Allen et al., 2004). Some mentoring practices 

have, however, been shown to be particularly effective (Finkelstein & Poteet, 2007). Specifically, 

research on mentoring has shown that effective mentoring relationships and programs are 

characterized by the following practices:

39

• the establishment of clear objectives for the mentoring program so that all participants 

know why the program was developed and what is expected of them. This includes 

leaders making it clear that they support the program.

• allowing protégés and mentors to establish multiple mentoring relationships to give 

mentors and protégés the chance to learn from multiple viewpoints

• providing high-quality training for both mentors and protégés at key points to allow the 

mentoring relationships to develop and be successfully maintained40

 38 See Issue Paper #50 for more on DoD Directive 1020.02.

39 These and other effective practices are described in the appendix for Issue Paper #33. 40 According to Allen et al. (2006, p. 570), mentoring training should help protégés to “develop appropriate 

expectations for the relationship” and to understand the objectives for the program and the program’s purpose. One 

can make a similar argument for mentoring training for mentors. 
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

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• if relevant to the mentoring program, matching mentors and protégés based on multiple 

criteria that align with the goals of the mentoring program. This includes the following:

– accounting for the organization’s culture and individual differences, such as 

personality, when matching protégés and mentors. As explained in Issue Paper 

#25, perceived similarity between the mentor and the protégé is an important 

factor in perceived relationship quality.

– allowing mentors and protégés to provide input into the matching process.

• continuously evaluating the effectiveness of mentoring programs against predetermined 

goals and criteria.

Taken together, effective mentoring practices highlight the importance of program design, flexibility, 

and evaluation.

The Services’ Mentoring Programs

Many of the Services current mentoring programs are described in Issue Paper #33. During the 

November 2009 MLDC meeting, Service representatives presented briefings that addressed the role 

that their Services’ mentoring programs play in increasing the racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of 

future leadership.

41 Issue Paper #33 provides an overview of the briefings and of supplemental, 

publicly available information about the Services’ mentoring programs in terms of the programs’ 

goals and assumptions, features (i.e., tools and activities), and measures of effectiveness.42

Table 5 summarizes the findings from Issue Paper #33. A check mark means that there is

evidence that at least one mentoring program in that Service has that goal/assumption, feature, or 

measure of effectiveness. Conversely, the lack of a check mark means that the Service did not provide

evidence of that goal/assumption, feature, or measure of effectiveness in its mentoring programs.

As seen in Table 5, all of the Services indicated that mentoring should provide benefits to 

protégés, mentors, and the Service as a whole. Among other benefits, the Services assume that 

protégés’ career potential should be improved by being in mentoring relationships. Assumed benefits 

for mentors include gaining a sense of satisfaction and pride from helping to develop the careers of 

more-junior individuals and exposure to new ideas that will help the mentors themselves perform 

better as leaders. Finally, benefits for the Service as a whole include providing the Service with a pool 

of competent and adaptive leaders and providing the Service with more-committed servicemembers.

In terms of diversity-related goals, only the Coast Guard and the Navy explicitly stated that 

mentoring is part of an official diversity strategy. For example, one of the Coast Guard’s objectives 

provided as part of its diversity plan is to “establish an effective mentoring and counseling network so 

all members (active duty, reserve and civilian) have guidance while navigating their careers” (U.S. 

Coast Guard, 2009, p. 14). However, all of the Services had goals that had an equal opportunity 

flavor: Everyone who wants a mentor should be able to access a mentor, or, for the Air Force and the 

 41 Prior to the November 2009 MLDC meeting, the Commission sent a letter to the Service chiefs asking them to 

send representatives to brief the Commission on issues of career advancement at the November meeting. One of the 

questions that the Services were asked was how their mentoring programs functioned to improve the diversity of 

future leadership.

42 Note that the purpose of Issue Paper #33 was to provide straightforward descriptions of the Services’ mentoring 

efforts and to underline similarities and differences among them. The issue paper was not meant to be a 

comprehensive review of all of the Services’ current efforts to develop and maintain mentoring programs. 

Furthermore, the focus of the issue paper was on mentoring programs offered by the Services themselves, not by 

organizations affiliated with the Services.
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Marine Corps, everyone should have a mentor because supervisors should be the primary mentors for 

all of their direct subordinates.

Table 5. Comparison of Goals and Assumptions, Features, and Measures of Effectiveness Across the 

Services’ Mentoring Programs

Air Force Army Coast Guard

Marine 

Corps Navy

Goals and assumptions

Mentoring improves career potential of protégés     

Mentors and Services benefit from mentoring     

Equal access to mentors/everyone should have a mentor     

Mentoring is part of an official diversity strategy  

Features

Development plans include mentoring tools   

Mentoring handbook/guide     

Mentoring websites     

Web-enabled mentoring tools    

Supervisor directed to mentor all subordinates  

Formal guidance for mentoring relationship (e.g., how 

often mentors and protégés should meet)

 

Mentors are screened and trained 

Mentor–protégé matching tool provided  

Contract has to be signed 

Measures of effectiveness

Survey questions about mentoring     

SOURCE: Issue Paper #33.

The Services’ mentoring programs feature a variety of tools and activities. Four features of 

mentoring programs are common across three or more of the Services. First, all of the Services 

provide mentoring handbooks or guides for protégés and mentors. These handbooks explain what it 

means to mentor or be mentored, the benefits of mentoring relationships, how to find mentors or 

protégés, and so forth. Second, all of the Services provide mentoring websites that offer both 

mentoring resources (e.g., articles on what it means to be a mentor) and ways for protégés to find and 

establish contact with mentors. In many cases, the Services use web-enabled mentoring programs to 

“reach the masses” in ways not possible through more-traditional mentoring programs. Third, all of 

the Services except the Marine Corps have web-enabled mentoring tools with interactive features, 

such as online mentor–protégé matching tools, that potential protégés and mentors can use to

establish and maintain relationships. Finally, the Air Force, the Army, and the Coast Guard offer 

servicemembers individual development plans, which are tools that allow servicemembers to share 

their records, career plans, and other relevant information with supervisors (i.e., primary mentors) 

and other mentors of their choosing.
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The similarities in features of mentoring programs across most of the Services generally end with 

mentoring websites, mentoring handbooks or guides, web-enabled mentoring tools, and individual 

development plans. For example, only the Air Force and the Marine Corps use formalized 

supervisory mentoring (i.e., supervisors are directed to mentor their immediate subordinates). The 

apparent benefits of this approach are that it provides a formalized link to leadership (i.e., to be a 

good leader you must be a mentor) and, if supervisors are compliant, it ensures that everyone has a 

mentor. The drawbacks of this approach are that supervisors can be overwhelmed by having to 

provide mentoring services to all of their subordinates and that supervisory mentoring creates 

concerns that supervisors will be better mentors to subordinates with whom they get along better 

(Keele et al., 1987). However, most research has not found supervisory mentoring to be problematic 

(e.g., Allen et al., 2006; McGuire, 2007; Ragins et al., 2000). Therefore, supervisory mentoring may 

be one way that the Army, Navy, and Coast Guard could expand mentorship offerings.

The rest of the features of the Services’ mentoring programs are unique to the Navy or to the 

Navy and one other Service. The Navy and the Marine Corps require mentors and protégés to agree 

to meet a minimum number of times in a given time interval (e.g., once a month). It is not clear how 

these Services monitor compliance with this requirement. The Navy and the Coast Guard have 

mentor–protégé matching tools that protégés can use to match their professional profiles to those of 

potential mentors. The Coast Guard’s matching tool uses an “alignment of competencies, areas of 

expertise and learning needs” to match protégés with potential mentors (Triple Creek, Inc., n.d.).

Only the Navy appears to have a mentor program—the Navy Aviation Enterprise Mentoring 

Program—that includes the screening and selection of would-be mentors, a full day of training for 

mentors, and follow-on training sessions for mentors to enable them to stay proficient in mentoring.

Unfortunately, the subcommittee was not provided with evidence regarding the effectiveness of the 

mentor training. Finally, some of the more-formal Navy mentoring programs require mentors and 

protégés to sign mentoring-relationship contracts. These contracts usually require the signees to state

the conditions under which they are choosing to enter the relationship, what they hope to achieve in 

the relationship, how often they agree to meet, and so forth.

Based on its investigation into mentoring programs across the Services, the subcommittee 

concluded the following:

• The main way in which the Services’ mentoring programs are intended to affect racial, 

ethnic, and gender diversity is by trying to ensure that all members—regardless of 

demographics—have the same access to mentors.

• Only the Navy and the Coast Guard explicitly tie their mentoring programs to their 

diversity strategies.

• Across the Services, mentoring programs vary in terms of their level of development and 

the formality of the mentoring relationships.

• The Services did not describe mentoring efforts prior to the initial career field decision 

point (i.e., precommissioning for officers or prior to the initial career field assignment 

point for enlisted personnel).

The Services’ Career Development Resources

In addition to mentoring programs, the Services provide a variety of other career development 

resources. The most common of these are websites that provide links to career development 

information, such as career guides, (optional) professional development forms, contact information 

for career counselors, and information about enlisted-to-officer programs. Some of these websites 
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offer interactive career development tools, such as the Air Force’s Enlisted Development Plan 

(MyEDP), which has an online journaling feature that airmen can use to directly communicate with 

mentors (Petcoff, 2010). The main features of these programs are described in Issue Paper #38 and 

summarized in Table 6.

Most of the Services also provide dedicated career counselors and have career “road shows,” 

which are events during which counseling personnel visit installations to describe assignment and 

promotion processes and deliver other career information. Some of the Services provide individual 

development plans (IDPs), which refer to all-in-one, standardized documents or online platforms 

that allow servicemembers to “share their records, career plans, and other relevant information with 

supervisors (i.e., primary mentors) and other mentors of their choosing” (Issue Paper #33, p. 2). The 

Coast Guard is the only Service that actually requires any of its members (i.e., first-term enlisted 

personnel and officers) to complete an IDP.

Table 6. Types of Career Development Resources, by Service

Career Development Resource Air Force Army Coast Guard Marine Corps Navy

Web-based information     

Individual development plans   u

Career path guides  o o e

Online information about enlisted-to-officer programs e e e e e

Dedicated career counselors  o  e

Raters encouraged to give career advice in counseling 

sessions during the performance review process



Career road shows e   u

NOTES: A check means that the Service offers the type of resource listed in that row. The superscripted letters next to the checks 

indicate whether the subcommittee has evidence that the resource is for enlisted personnel (e) or officers (o) or whether the 

subcommittee does not know for whom the resource is intended (u). The lack of a superscripted letter means that the resource is 

available to both enlisted and officer personnel.

Servicemembers’ Perceptions About Career Development Resources

In general, the Services provided the Commission only with indirect evidence of the effectiveness of 

their career development resources. Air Force representatives reported not having retention issues at 

present and speculated that this may be due in part to mandatory counseling briefings, which have 

received positive survey ratings. Army representatives reported conducting surveys on the quality of 

career counseling (e.g., the Sample Survey of Military Personnel) but did not report the results of these 

surveys. The Coast Guard’s diversity strategy provides a performance metric for evaluating mentoring 

and counseling networks, but it is unclear whether the Coast Guard has used this metric yet (Issue 

Paper #33). The Marine Corps has a climate survey, the 2007 Marine Corps Climate Assessment 

Survey (U.S. Department of the Navy, 2007), that contains a few items about professional 

development, but the Branching and Assignments Subcommittee did not obtain data related to these 

questions and does not know how the Marine Corps uses the survey results. Finally, the Navy 

reported heavy usage of Navy Knowledge Online (NKO): 96 percent of active-duty members and 90

percent of reservists were registered users in 2005 (Gagne, 2005). This may suggest that NKO is an 

effective career development tool.

To assess the effectiveness of the Services’ career development resources, the subcommittee’s 

research staff examined servicemembers’ perceptions about their Service’s career development 
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resources using data collected in March 2010 through the Defense Equal Opportunity Management 

Institute’s online survey instrument, the Defense Equal Opportunity Climate Survey. A total of 352 

servicemembers completed the survey, but 99 of these respondents did not provide complete 

responses to the relevant survey items and had to be removed from the analysis. The final sample of 

269 participants was mostly male (85 percent), white (63 percent), from the enlisted corps (78 

percent), and from either the Army (44 percent) or the Navy (36 percent).43

To examine overall career perceptions, we averaged responses across the survey items to create 

four representative factors. Using a composite factor provides a more reliable assessment of a group’s 

opinion by minimizing the influence of any wording bias contained in a single item. The following 

list shows the survey questions that belong to each factor:

• Factor 1: Person-Service Career Goal Congruency

– 1. My career goals match my Service’s goals.

– 2. My career timetable matches my Service’s timetable for me.

– 3. I can meet my career timetable in my Service.

– 4. My career strategy matches my Service’s military career strategy for my future.

– 5. I can use my career strategy in my Service.

• Factor 2: Satisfaction with Access to Career Planning Tools

– 1. My Service has formal career planning programs or services (e.g., “road shows”) 

that help servicemembers identify future assignment opportunities.

– 2. In my Service, raters/counselors are effective at identifying future assignments 

as part of servicemembers’ performance rating process (e.g., midterm counseling 

by rater).

– 3. My Service provides a method to easily identify or find out about openings for 

assignments.

• Factor 3: Perceptions of Career Education in Early Career

– 1. When I first entered the military, someone talked to me about the typical 

career paths of servicemembers who are in my military occupation.

– 2. When I first entered the military, I knew how the occupational branching and 

assignment process worked in my Service.

– 3. When I first entered the military, I met role models from the occupational area 

I was likely to enter.

• Factor 4: Satisfaction with the Assignment Process

– 1. How satisfied are you with the way servicemembers are first assigned to 

occupations/communities/branches in your Service?

– 2. How satisfied are you with the amount of input you are allowed to give in the 

job assignment process?

Table 7 shows the averages of these factors, broken out by gender, race, and ethnicity.

 43 Note that the sample from this survey is a convenience sample and is not necessarily representative of members of 

each Service. The sample size is fairly small and is strongly weighted toward enlisted personnel and Army and Navy 

members. As such, inferences from the survey results need to be made with caution.
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Table 7. Average Perceptions of Career Development Resources and Assignment Processes, by Gender, 

Race, and Ethnicity

Survey Factor

1 2 3 4

Gender

Female (N = 38) 3.11 3.10 2.92 3.05

Male (N = 215) 3.33 3.13 2.91 3.09

Race and ethnicity

Nonminority (N = 152) 3.25 3.12 2.87 3.07

Minority (N = 88) 3.45 3.22 3.04 3.13

Total

Overall average (N = 269)* 3.30 3.13 2.92 3.09

SOURCE: Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, Directorate of Research, 2008.

NOTES: This is the response scale for Factors 1–3: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = agree, and 5 = 

strongly agree. This is the response scale for Factor 4: 1 = strongly dissatisfied, 2 = dissatisfied, 3 = neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, 4 = 

satisfied, and 5 = strongly satisfied. These are the survey factors: Factor 1: Personal-Service Career Goal Congruency, Factor 2: 

Satisfaction with Access to Career Planning Tools, Factor 3: Perceptions of Career Education in Early Career, and Factor 4: Satisfaction 

with the Assignment Process.

* The overall sample size (N = 269) is larger than the sum of the sample sizes for the female and male groups (overall gender N = 253) 

and the sum of the sample sizes for the nonminority and minority groups (overall race and ethnicity N = 240) because of missing data 

for the gender, race, and ethnicity variables. 

Overall, averages for each of the factors tended to cluster around 3.00 (i.e., a response of “neither 

agree nor disagree” or “neither satisfied nor dissatisfied”). There were no statistically significant 

differences by either gender or race and ethnicity for any of the survey factors. These results mean 

that, on average, servicemembers did not have very positive (or very negative) perceptions about 

career development resources and the assignment process. The only survey factor with averages of 

less than 3.00 was Factor 3: Perceptions of Career Education in Early Career. On average, 

servicemembers reported being somewhat less knowledgeable about career processes early in their 

careers.

Further examination of the data revealed that individuals who felt that their career goals generally 

matched their Service’s goals for their careers were more likely to be satisfied with their Service’s 

assignment process (and vice versa).44 The pattern of results generally suggests that servicemembers 

who felt that they knew more about the assignment process early in their careers and servicemembers 

who had career goals that matched those of their Service were more satisfied with their Service’s 

career development resources and assignment processes.45

 44 Specifically, all of the factors were positively correlated with each other, with correlations ranging from 0.40 to 

0.67. The largest correlation (0.67) was for the relationship between personal-service career goal congruency (Factor 

1) and satisfaction with the assignment process (Factor 4).

45 Note, however, that these are correlations and thus do not imply causality. As such, the direction of relationships 

between factors can go either way: Satisfied individuals are more likely to report knowing about the assignment 

process, or individuals who report knowing more about the assignment process are more likely to be satisfied with 

career development resources and their career options.
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Career Counseling During Formal Performance Reviews

An important type of career development resource that is missing from Table 5 and that most 

Services, thus, appear to lack is career counseling by raters as an additional part of the Services’ 

formal performance review process. Except in the Coast Guard, raters are required to provide 

counseling during the performance review cycle. For example, the Army requires that all officers be 

counseled by their raters within 30 days of the beginning of the rating period and that subsequent 

counseling sessions occur within a certain time frame (U.S. Department of the Army, 2007). 

However, these formal counseling sessions are focused on performance objectives and not necessarily 

on imparting career information. That is, Army raters are not explicitly encouraged to talk about 

future assignments as part of the formal counseling sessions. It appears that only the Air Force 

encourages raters to provide any sort of career advice (e.g., regarding potential future assignments) 

during the midterm counseling sessions. However, this does not mean that there is evidence that the 

career advice that is given greatly increases all servicemembers’ knowledge about their career choices.

Nevertheless, the most ready form of counseling for servicemembers comes from their raters. 

Thus, if the Services are not doing so already, the Commission suggests that they should make 

supplying career development guidance part of the formal performance review process. The Services 

would not only instruct raters to provide career advice but would also monitor whether the advice was 

being given and whether it was actually increasing servicemembers’ knowledge of their career 

options, including understanding the impact of their career choices on chances for future 

advancement.

Clearly, monitoring the information provided in midterm counseling sessions would be difficult

because of how many sessions occur every year. One way to measure the effectiveness of midterm 

counseling would be to randomly sample units within career fields and conduct audits of midterm 

counseling sessions. Another method would be to conduct surveys to evaluate whether

servicemembers know what they should about their career field at a given point. The Services would 

thus be able to identify knowledge gaps. Either of these methods of measurement would require the 

Services to first establish appropriate criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of their midterm career 

counseling and the personnel doing the evaluations to be trained on how to use the criteria, analyze 

the results, and make appropriate recommendations.

Summary

Based on information about career development resources provided by the Services and culled from 

publicly accessible information and survey data, the Commission’s Branching and Assignments 

Subcommittee concluded that:

• The Services are engaging in active efforts to ensure that servicemembers are aware of 

career opportunities and requirements.

• The Services provide a great deal of career information online, although the information 

is spread across many websites. The Services use these websites to provide career advice, 

information about promotion requirements, and resources for further counseling.

• Servicemembers are expected to be self-motivated to develop their careers.

• Servicemembers report moderate knowledge of and satisfaction with career development 

resources and processes.

• Servicemembers’ perceptions of their career goals, knowledge of the assignment process, 

and access to career development resources are related to their satisfaction with career 

development information and assignment processes.
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RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION

Recommendations

The previous sections of this paper detailed the information and evidence gathered by the Branching 

and Assignments Subcommittee to address the congressional charter tasks related to branching and 

assignments. The Commission’s congressional charter provided the Commission with two specific 

tasks related to branching and assignments:

• Assess the precommand billet assignments of ethnic-specific officers.

• Examine command selection for officers of particular ethnicities.

These two tasks guided the work of the Branching and Assignments Subcommittee, which in turn 

resulted in three recommendations.

The first of these recommendations indicates that the Secretary of Defense should conduct 

accountability reviews to address career racial, ethnic, and gender diversity patterns in the military. 

As pointed out in this decision paper, minorities and women are not highly represented in 

tactical/operational career fields, which are closely tied to senior leadership. Further evidence also 

shows that minority and female servicemembers are not highly represented in O-5 and O-6 

command assignments in at least three Services. Moreover, the subcommittee found that the Services 

cannot provide detailed information about racial, ethnic, and gender diversity patterns in key 

assignments. In general, given this evidence, the Commission offers this recommendation as a tool to 

help DoD and the Services identify existing and potential barriers to advancement at key career 

points, to identify the root causes of these barriers and propose appropriate actions, and to report on 

the progress being made in eliminating these barriers.

The second recommendation asks DoD and the Services to conduct a phased elimination of the 

combat exclusion policies for women. In general, evidence presented in this decision paper shows a 

disconnect between these policies and current combat realities. Moreover, the subcommittee could 

not find convincing evidence that eliminating these policies would be detrimental to mission 

readiness. Lastly, the subcommittee found strong evidence that shows that these policies hinder the 

advancement of women to the upper ranks of the military, at least in the officer corps.

The third recommendation asks the Services to ensure that servicemembers have the appropriate 

support to make informed career choices. Although the subcommittee could not find strong evidence 

to support the effectiveness of the programs currently implemented by the Services, research in the 

civilian sector supports mentoring as a tool to educate the workforce about career decisions.
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Accountability Reviews

Recommendation 1—

To assess demographic diversity patterns across the military lifecycle, the Secretary of 

Defense shall hold annual accountability reviews with the individual Service secretaries, 

Service chiefs, and Chief, National Guard Bureau. The Coast Guard should be subject to a 

similar review.

The Commission offers this recommendation as a way for the Office of the Secretary of Defense 

(OSD) and the Services to address career barriers that prevent minorities and women from entering 

key career fields and from being considered for key assignments. The steps in this process are as 

follows:

• Identify barriers at key career points.

• Identify the root causes and propose actions to address them.

• Report on progress made on previous actions.

• Include metrics to determine if actions have the desired impact.

The bulleted statements identify the general steps that the accountability reviews should follow. 

These steps were adapted from the Navy’s internal accountability review process.46 According to 

information provided to the Commission by the Navy, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) holds 

accountability reviews by community. In these reviews, each community’s vice admiral briefs the 

CNO about the demographic diversity health of his or her community, including demographic 

diversity in selection for key/nominative billets and how members of all demographic groups are 

progressing along the community’s notional career path. In addition, the community leader must also 

create diversity goals and evaluation metrics for which leadership can be held accountable. Thus, the 

senior leadership of each Navy community is responsible for ensuring that unnecessary barriers are 

removed, when possible.

The following example from the Navy’s Surface Warfare community illustrates how this process 

has worked for the Navy. First, the Navy Surface Warfare community identified a root cause for a 

barrier keeping minorities and women from obtaining certain key assignments: short eligibility 

windows. Second, they created a process for addressing the root cause: Widen the windows to see 

how it would impact the demographic diversity of the eligibility pools for the key assignments in 

question. Third, the Surface Warfare’s senior leadership was responsible for reporting on progress 

made on removing the barriers to the CNO. Finally, the Surface Warfare community used metrics, 

such as differences in the demographic diversity of the eligibility pools before and after the windows 

were widened, to show the impact of their efforts.

The Commission believes that the template for the Navy process can be extended to the OSD 

level, with each of the four steps being taken from the within-Service level up to the OSD level. 

More generally, the Commission considers accountability reviews to be a best practice that each 

Service can follow—either on its own or in support of OSD-level reviews.

 46 See Decision Paper #8 for a description of the barriers analysis process used by federal agencies.
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The Combat Exclusion Policies for Women

Recommendation 2—

DoD and the Services should eliminate the “combat exclusion policies” for women, 

including the removal of barriers and inconsistencies, to create a level playing field for all 

qualified servicemembers. The Commission recommends a time-phased approach.

The ground combat exclusion policies act as a structural barrier for women to enter certain 

tactical/operational career fields and specialties and to obtain certain assignments. Evidence for 

officers suggests that tactical/operational career fields are strongly linked to senior leadership in the 

military. This recommendation asks DoD and the Services to address this barrier for women to enter 

key career fields and to obtain key assignments. The Commission considered arguments related to 

four key issues associated with rescinding the policies:

• readiness and mission capability

• appropriateness given current combat environments

• discrimination and fairness

• unanticipated effects.

In this decision paper, the Branching and Assignments Subcommittee summarized evidence 

regarding the first two issues: There is little evidence that the integration of women into previously 

closed units or occupations has had a negative impact on mission capability, and there is some 

evidence that the female presence has had a positive impact in combat settings. In addition, military 

women deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have already been engaged in activities that would be 

considered combat related, including being collocated with combat units and engaging in direct 

combat for self-defense. Thus, the combat exclusion policies do not reflect the current operational 

environment.

The third and fourth issues were addressed during the Commission’s public deliberations on this 

issue. For many Commissioners, the policies are fundamentally discriminatory because they stipulate 

that assignment decisions should be based solely on gender, without regard to capability or 

qualifications. However, the Commission also considered whether there might be unanticipated 

effects from rescinding the combat exclusion policies, especially with regard to opening career fields. 

In particular, it is unknown what type of impact such a policy change would have on enlisted 

recruiting. If young women perceive the opening of combat career fields to mean that they will be 

required to enter these occupations, rather than being allowed to volunteer for them, female 

propensity to enlist may drop, and the Services may find it difficult to achieve their recruiting 

missions.

Based on these considerations, the Commission recommends that DoD and the Services should 

eliminate their combat exclusion policies for women using a phased approach, so that all potential 

issues with how to best implement new policies can be thought through. This recommendation was 

approved by a majority, but not all, of the Commissioners. Because of concerns regarding the 

potential impact of the policies’ removal on unit effectiveness and potential issues of implementation, 

a small number of Commissioners did not approve recommending removal of the policies 

immediately but instead favored further study. On the other hand, a small number of other 

Commissioners believed that the above recommendation was not strong enough. They would have 

preferred a more forceful recommendation to immediately eliminate the policies.
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The Commission proposes three strategies for implementing this recommendation, as described 

below.

Recommendation 2a—

Women in career fields/specialties currently open to them should be able to be assigned to 

any unit that requires that career field/specialty, consistent with the current operational 

environment.

In previous sections of this decision paper, the subcommittee provided examples of the 

disconnect between the roles that women are formally assigned (policy) and the roles that they 

usually end up filling while deployed (practice). This suggests that the DoD and Service policies 

about the assignment of women to direct ground combat positions are inconsistent with the 

operational environment, in which women are serving in roles prohibited by current assignment 

practice. This may mean that women are not receiving full credit for their accomplishments because 

they did not achieve them in their formally assigned roles. It also means that women cannot achieve 

the fullest careers possible for their chosen career fields or specialties. Given the limitations already 

imposed on women’s ability to choose certain tactical/operational career fields, the Commission 

recommends that qualified women in career fields/specialties currently open to them should be able 

to be assigned to any unit that requires that career field or specialty. This should help to make the 

current assignment policies consistent with practice.

Recommendation 2b—

Additional steps should be taken to open all career fields and units to qualified women.

In this paper, the argument has been made repeatedly that tactical/operational career fields and 

assignments (namely command assignments) are linked to senior officer ranks in the Services. As 

long as the combat exclusion policies bar women from entering tactical/operational career fields and 

units, women will be at a disadvantage, compared with men, in reaching the highest levels of their 

Services. The Commission is not arguing that women cannot reach senior leadership levels without 

being in tactical/operational career fields or that a large number of women will choose or be qualified 

to enter tactical/operational career fields if given the opportunity. However, the Commission does 

argue that the existing policy prevents qualified women from having the opportunity that men 

have—to enter the career field of one’s choosing—and thus affects women’s chances of advancement 

to the higher ranks. Therefore, the Commission recommends that additional steps should be taken to 

open all career fields and units to qualified women.

Recommendation 2c—

DoD and the Services should report to Congress the process and timeline for achieving a 

gender-neutral policy based on recent combat experience.

In order for DoD and the Services to follow Recommendations 2a and 2b, they need to 

determine how they will go about following those recommendations. Furthermore, Congress requires 

the Secretary of Defense to report to Congress any changes to the ground combat exclusion policy 

(Harrell et al., 2007); the reporting requirements can be found in 10 U.S.C. 652 (2006). Therefore, 

the Commission recommends that DoD and the Services should report to Congress the process and 
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timeline for achieving a gender-neutral policy based on recent combat experience. To be clear, this 

recommendation means that DoD and the Services will have to determine how to achieve a genderneutral policy, not whether they can achieve a gender-neutral policy.

Mentoring and Career Development Resources

Recommendation 3—

The Services should ensure their career development programs and resources enhance 

servicemembers’ knowledge of career choices, including Reserve Component 

opportunities, to optimize the ability of servicemembers to make informed career choices 

from accession to retirement.

The Commission proposes this recommendation as a way to remove perceptual barriers that may 

hinder the career advancement of minorities and women. Although the Commission does not know 

to what degree particular barriers, such as lack of community support, influence the career decisions 

of minorities and women, there is enough evidence that some form of perceptual barrier is likely to 

exist because minority male officers are less likely than white male officers to choose 

tactical/operational career fields.

By adding career development programs that connect servicemembers with mentoring and career 

counseling before their initial career field selection, the Services can provide servicemembers 

information regarding what career fields are more likely to lead to senior leadership positions. 

Ongoing mentoring can also allow servicemembers to make more-informed choices about what 

assignments to pursue and how to make other career decisions.

Specifically, the subcommittee examined both the impact of mentoring and the current Service 

programs. The recommendations are based on a review of the literature on the benefits of mentoring 

and on what types of mentoring are the most effective, in addition to what was found about gaps in 

the Service’s programs. Based on evidence about the potential benefits of high-quality mentoring, the 

Commission assumes that servicemembers who have high-quality mentoring relationships from their 

Services will be able to make more-informed career decisions. This ability is particularly important 

for minority male servicemembers, who may not have been choosing tactical/operational career fields 

partly because of a lack of knowledge about the potential benefits of entering such career fields. The 

literature also identified effective mentoring practices, which include establishing clear program 

objectives, matching mentors and protégés based on program objectives, encouraging multiple 

mentor–protégé relationships, and evaluating mentorship programs against goals (Finkelstein & 

Poteet, 2007). The resulting recommendations concerning career development resources are based on 

these findings and our analysis of gaps in the Service’s programs.

Recommendation 3a—

Mentoring and career counseling efforts shall start prior to the initial career field decision 

point and continue throughout the servicemember’s career.

Like many organizations, the Services provide mentoring to inform servicemembers of their 

career options and to help them develop professionally and personally. However, the Services did not 

indicate a focus on mentoring prior to initial career path decisions, such as the selection of a career 

branch or community for officers or of a job specialty for enlisted servicemembers. Officers in 

tactical/operational career fields are more likely to be promoted into flag/general officer positions. 
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

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Newly commissioning officers should be able to make initial career branch decisions with full 

knowledge of these issues. Therefore, the Commission recommends that the Services ensure that 

their mentoring efforts start prior to the initial career decision point and continue throughout the 

career.

Recommendation 3b—

Mentoring programs shall follow effective practices and employ an active line of 

communication between protégé and mentor.

The findings from the subcommittee’s investigation of the military’s mentoring programs and 

practices (summarized in Issue Paper #33) indicate that the Services are making extensive efforts to 

assist their members in their career development. They also show, however, that there is very little 

information about the effectiveness of these efforts, either overall or for specific demographic groups.

In particular, all of the Services indicated that they have surveys that ask servicemembers about 

mentoring. The Air Force, the Coast Guard, and the Navy did not provide results from these types 

of surveys to the Commission. However, both the Army and the Marine Corps presented some of 

their survey results during their November 2009 briefings to the Commission. According to the 

Army briefing (Horne, 2009), a majority of Army officers (67 percent) and enlisted soldiers (56 

percent) reported having mentors. However, there has been unmet demand: About a quarter of both 

officers and enlisted soldiers reported that they had never had a mentor but would have liked to have 

had one. According to the Marine Corps briefing (U.S. Marine Corps, 2009), between 37 and 48 

percent of respondents across all race and ethnicity groups agreed with the survey statement “[m]y 

mentor has had a positive impact on my life in the Marine Corps.” The survey only asks respondents 

to answer yes or no, so it is unclear how strongly respondents disagreed with this statement. 

However, the rate of disagreement is a clear indication that the Marine Corps should examine its 

current supervisory-based mentor system in order to improve the quality of mentoring given to 

marines.

Based on the information that the Services provided regarding how they measure the 

effectiveness of their mentoring programs, the Commission was unable to determine whether, how, 

or to what extent any of the programs are meeting either the direct goal of supplying equal access to 

mentors or the ultimate goal of improving the career advancement of all servicemembers—women, 

minorities, and white men alike. Therefore, the Commission recommends that the Services’ 

mentoring programs should follow the effective practices listed in Decision Paper #33 and should be 

evaluated on an ongoing basis. Moreover, while a large amount of career information can be made 

available online, the Commissioners believe that a direct and personal line of communication 

between mentor and protégé is key in helping protégés receive pertinent information. This is 

especially true when mentors are well matched to protégés and therefore can provide effective advice 

based on firsthand experience to their protégés. Descriptions of methods for conducting ongoing 

evaluations of mentoring programs are described in the sections below.

Approaches to Evaluating Mentoring Programs

The Services should, on an ongoing basis, evaluate the outcomes of their mentoring programs against 

predetermined goals and criteria. The Services can do this by using surveys to measure mentor and 

protégé perceptions and gather self-reported experiences with mentoring—a practice they appear to 
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

46

be following already.47 However, the surveys should supply a definition of mentoring or ask 

servicemembers how they define mentoring to help avoid problems with determining who actually is 

or has been in mentoring relationships. Some of the mentoring-related constructs that the Services 

could examine include

• personality characteristics, professional background, or other factors that are theoretically 

related to mentor and protégé perceptions of similarity

• mentor and protégé attitudes about their mentoring relationships

• general mentor and protégé attitudes about work

• mentor and protégé–perceived barriers to initiating and maintaining mentoring 

relationships

• protégé reports of career functions provided by mentors

• protégé knowledge about career options and the assignment process

• satisfaction with specific features of a mentoring program (e.g., matching tool).

In addition to using surveys, the Services can conduct focus groups or interviews with 

servicemembers to get more detailed information about their mentoring experiences.48 An example of 

a multimethod approach to understanding mentoring already exists in the Services. Colonel Kolditz, 

now the head of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the U.S. Military 

Academy (West Point), wanted to understand how Army officers established and maintained 

mentoring relationships. His interviews with 53 Command and General Staff Officer Course 

(CGSOC) students revealed that those who were protégés generally initiated relationships with 

mentors, despite their initial claims that the mentors initiated the relationships (Kolditz, 2006). 

Kolditz also surveyed 233 CGSOC students as part of his research. He found that students who 

rated higher on a scale measuring feedback-seeking behavior were more likely to establish mentoring 

relationships than were peers who scored lower on the feedback-seeking scale.49 He also found that 

raters who scored higher on a scale measuring leader-empowering behavior were more likely than 

raters who scored lower on the scale to be mentors. Based on this line of research, a course taught at 

West Point requires cadets to initiate and maintain mentoring relationships during the course and 

then write reports about their experiences. The purpose of having cadets seek out mentors is to help 

them learn early in their careers how to initiate mentoring relationships and what to expect from 

them.

In addition to using multiple assessment methods, the Services should track the careers of 

individuals who use their mentoring programs and tools over time. At a minimum, one assessment 

should be done prior to use of the program and another after some critical point in the relationship 

has passed (or after the program has ended). If possible, the Services should also conduct experiments 

to determine whether the features of their mentoring programs, particularly mentoring training, work 

as intended. For example, would-be mentors could be randomly assigned to one of two groups, one 

that receives mentoring training as part of the program and one that does not. The Services could 

then assess (via surveys or other assessment methods) whether mentors who underwent training have 

 47 Surveys should be based on large, representative samples of the population of interest and should contain reliable 

and valid questions about the constructs of interest.

48 The focus groups and interviews should follow a set of protocols, have a standard set of questions and rating 

criteria, and be applied in standardized settings.

49 This finding fits with some research that suggests that individuals who are more proactive in searching for career 

development opportunities actually tend to receive more developmental opportunities (Riche et al., 2007, p. 20).
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

47

more knowledge about how to provide effective mentoring to their protégés than mentors who did 

not get the training. Other assessments could determine whether protégés with mentors in the two 

groups have different levels of satisfaction with mentors, how much protégés learned about their 

career development prospects, and so forth.

Conclusion

The analysis described in this decision paper drew on multiple information sources, including past 

studies, information provided by the Services, and original data, to evaluate how branching and 

assignment processes affect racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in military leadership. Given the 

rapidly changing threat landscape, a more demographically diverse military leadership could bring 

different perspectives and skills together for the benefit of a more agile and adaptable workforce. 

However, reaping the benefits of a more demographically diverse leadership in the future requires 

today’s senior leaders to provide effective and accountable diversity management (Issue Paper #14). 

The aspect of diversity management on which the Branching and Assignments Subcommittee 

focused its attention was the removal of structural and perceptual barriers that keep women and 

minorities from advancing to the highest ranks in the U.S. military. The subcommittee identified 

four areas in which barriers exist, with the first of these deemed most critical:

• Key career fields. Women and minorities are underrepresented in senior leadership, at least 

in part because they are underrepresented in the tactical/operational career fields that lead 

to promotion to the top ranks.

• Command assignments. Although the data do not show that command selection rates for 

women and minorities are systematically lower than those of men and whites, women and 

minorities represent a small number of command selectees. One possible reason, other 

than low representation of women and minorities in tactical/operational career fields, is 

that women and minorities may not be getting career-enhancing (i.e., “key”) assignments 

prior to O-5 and O-6 command.

• Career barriers. The subcommittee found both perceptual and structural barriers for 

women and minorities. These barriers hinder advancement opportunities and prevent 

women and minorities from reaching the upper ranks of the military.

• Career facilitators. There is a need for continued development, provision, and evaluation 

of flexible and effective mentoring programs and career development across all the 

Services.

Ultimately, the Commission recommends that DoD and the Services identify and remove 

barriers to advancement, including combat exclusion policies for women, and ensure that all 

servicemembers have the knowledge to make informed career choices at all stages of their careers. 

The Commission believes that implementing these recommendations will pay large dividends for the 

Services in terms of increased racial, ethnic, and gender diversity among senior military leaders, as

well as the development and maintenance of a mission-ready future force.
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

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APPENDIX A: INITIAL OFFICER ASSIGNMENTS IN THE COAST 

GUARD, MARINE CORPS, AND NAVY

The tactical slot allocation patterns for the Air Force and the Army may not extend to the Navy, the 

Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard because of how officers are initially assigned to career 

fields/specialties in these three Services. 

In the Coast Guard, the first tour for most newly commissioned officers is an operational tour 

(i.e., operations either ashore or afloat). According to information provided to the Commission by 

the Coast Guard, about 90 percent of Coast Guard Academy graduates and about 80 percent of 

OCS graduates go either ashore or afloat on their first tour. The main difference between the two 

commissioning sources is that more afloat tour slots are filled by academy graduates than OCS 

graduates and more ashore tour slots are filled by OCS graduates than academy graduates. For both 

commissioning sources, about 10 percent of the graduating class goes to flight school. For OCS 

graduates, a final 10 percent goes to a staff position first before going on an operational tour. Coast 

Guard officers do not usually establish themselves in their career specialties until they have had a 

second tour in the same career field. With some exceptions, this second tour does not necessarily 

have to come directly after the first tour in the specialty, but it usually occurs within the first three 

tours of an officer’s career. Assignment to first tours is based on merit rankings within 

commissioning sources and on officers’ preferences. The Coast Guard does not have data to suggest 

that there are demographic diversity patterns in merit rankings and preferences for first-tour 

assignments. 

In the Marine Corps, officers go to The Basic School (TBS) after going through their 

commissioning sources. Therefore, Marine Corps officers are not branched and assigned to their 

military occupational specialties (MOSs) until they are all together in TBS.50 Thus, tactical slot 

allocations to commissioning sources do not apply to the Marine Corps.51

In the Navy, a majority of officers are slotted for URL fields (i.e., aviation, submarine, or surface 

warfare), regardless of commissioning source. Thus, only small differences exist in “tactical” slot 

allocations across commissioning sources. For example, according to information provided to the 

Commission by the Navy, about 52 percent of the URL slots given to the Naval Academy and Naval 

ROTC (NROTC) went to the Naval Academy and 48 percent went to NROTC. According to 

information provided to the Commission by the Navy, there are some but not many differences in 

the types of tactical slots allocated to the Navy’s two main commissioning sources, the Naval 

Academy and NROTC. Of the slots allocated to either of these two commissioning sources in FY 

2009, the Naval Academy received proportionately more submarine slots than NROTC (about 55 

 50 The two exceptions to this statement are for pilots and lawyers, who do know what MOSs they will enter prior to 

entering The Basic School. 

51 According to information provided to the Commission by the Marine Corps, a majority of officers who were 

previously commissioned through the Naval Academy were assigned to tactical MOSs in FY 2009 (about 67 

percent). However, the same statement could be made about officers previously commissioned through other 

sources: A majority of officers who were commissioned through Naval ROTC (about 55 percent), the Platoon 

Leaders Course (about 60 percent), or the Officer Candidate Course (about 54 percent) were assigned to tactical 

MOSs in FY 2009. These general trends were found for FY 2007 and FY 2008, with some of the percentages 

differing across these four major commissioning sources. 
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

49

percent versus 45 percent, respectively) and proportionately more special warfare or operations than 

NROTC (about 62 percent versus 38 percent, respectively).52

 52 The differences in surface warfare and aviation slot allocations across the two commissioning sources in FY 2009 

were much smaller. Specifically, the Naval Academy received about 51 percent of surface warfare slots and 53 

percent of aviation slots versus 49 percent of surface warfare and 47 percent of aviation slots received by NROTC.
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

50

APPENDIX B: BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON MENTORING 

RELATIONSHIPS AND DEMOGRAPHIC DIVERSITY 

Before investigating the Services’ mentoring programs and tools, the Branching and Assignments 

Subcommittee examined the extant research on the topic of mentoring relationships and 

demographic diversity. The end result was Issue Paper #25, which summarizes research on two 

important concerns related to mentoring relationships and demographic diversity: 

• Do women and racial/ethnic minorities generally have access to mentoring relationships 

in organizations?

• Do women and racial/ethnic minorities benefit from mentoring relationships in 

organizations?

The reason why the subcommittee focused on these two questions is because organizational 

leaders, policy makers, and researchers have generally been concerned that women and racial/ethnic 

minorities lack access to mentors and, as a result, many organizations have created special mentoring 

programs to aid in the career development of women and minorities who tend to face more barriers 

to advancement (Giscombe & Mattis, 2002).

Benefits of Formal Versus Informal Mentoring Relationships 

The mentoring programs that organizations develop and implement to aid women and minorities 

usually result in what are known as formal mentoring relationships, which are usually initiated 

through a mentor-protégé matching process and are often monitored by the organization. Formal 

mentoring relationships are often contrasted with informal mentoring relationships, which are 

relationships that occur spontaneously, with either the junior or senior individual (or both) initiating 

the relationship without organizational assistance. There has been concern that informal mentoring 

relationships are more beneficial than formal mentoring relationships. Indeed, some research studies 

have found that protégés in informal mentoring relationships experience more benefits (e.g., higher 

compensation) than protégés in formal mentoring relationships (Ragins & Cotton, 1999). However, 

Ragins et al. (2000) found that protégé satisfaction with the mentoring relationship was more 

strongly related to protégé work attitudes (e.g., job satisfaction) than with the formality of the 

mentoring relationship. These findings suggest that formal mentoring relationships are not uniformly 

less beneficial than informal mentoring relationships.

Women and Minorities’ Access to Mentoring Relationships 

In answer to the first question listed above, women and racial/ethnic minorities generally have access 

to mentors. Recent evidence suggests that women are as likely as men to have mentors (Hezlett, 

2003; Steinberg & Nourizadeh, 2001). For minority access to mentors, the evidence is more mixed 

but more studies suggest that minorities are generally as likely as whites to have mentors (Dreher & 

Cox, 1996; Steinberg & Foley, 1999; Thomas, 1990) than studies that suggest minorities have less 

access to mentors than whites (e.g., Viator, 2001). Despite the evidence that women and minorities 

may have equal access to mentors, women (Ragins & Cotton, 1991) and blacks (Viator, 2001) 

perceive more barriers to accessing mentors than white men.
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

51

What may be more important than the question of access is the question of what types of 

mentoring relationships women and minorities usually have. Specifically, the types of mentoring 

relationships women and racial/ethnic minorities have may be different in some important ways from 

the mentoring relationships white men have. Evidence from the civilian literature suggests that 

women and minorities are more likely than white men to be in mixed (i.e., cross-gender and/or 

cross-race/ethnicity) mentoring relationships. Specifically, compared with white men, women are 

more likely to be in cross-gender mentoring relationships, and racial/ethnic minorities are more likely 

to be in cross-race or cross-ethnicity mentoring relationships (Dreher & Cox, 1996; Ragins & 

Cotton, 1991; Thomas, 1990). This is likely because the pool of potential mentors contains more 

white males, since there are larger numbers of white men in senior positions in organizations. 

Quality of Women and Minorities’ Mentoring Relationships 

Given that women and racial/ethnic minorities are more likely to be in mixed mentoring 

relationships than white men, the concern then becomes whether women and minorities receive 

similar benefits from mentoring relationships as do white men. The evidence is mixed. On one hand, 

there is evidence that female and racial/ethnic minority protégés with white male mentors may earn 

more money than protégés with female or nonwhite mentors (e.g., Dreher & Cox, 1996), which 

suggests that female and racial/ethnic minority protégés get career benefits from being in mixed 

mentoring relationships. On the other hand, female protégés with female mentors report receiving 

more psychosocial support—role modeling, friendship, counseling, and providing acceptance and 

confirmation—than do female protégés with male mentors (Koberg et al., 1998; Ragins & McFarlin, 

1990). Likewise, racial/ethnic minority protégés with mentors of the same race/ethnicity report 

receiving more psychosocial support (Koberg et al., 1998; Thomas, 1990) and career development 

support (Ensher & Murphy, 1997). Therefore, female and racial/ethnic minority protégés may derive

a different set of benefits from same-gender and same-race/ethnicity mentoring relationships than 

from mixed mentoring relationships.

Women and Minorities Have Access to Mentors but the Quality of Their 

Mentoring Relationships Is open to Question

The key results from the existing research literature on mentoring relationships and demographic 

diversity can be summarized as follows:

• Research indicates that, overall, women and minorities do not lack access to mentors but 

that they do lack access to mentors of the same gender or race/ethnicity. As a result, they 

are more likely to be in mixed mentoring relationships.

• Research indicates that mixed mentoring relationships are more likely to provide career 

benefits, whereas mentoring relationships based on demographic similarity are more 

likely to provide psychosocial benefits.

Until more is known about the effects of both types of mentoring relationships, organizations 

cannot assume that creating mentoring programs that target members of historically disadvantaged 

groups will necessarily lead to better career progression for these people and, ultimately, to more 

diversity among senior leadership. As with any organizational intervention, a mentoring program 

requires careful design and evaluation to be effective.
Military Leadership Diversity Commission Decision Paper #2: Branching and Assignments

52

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