page_title: Women in the United States Air Force
section_title: Women in the Air Force since 1972
hierarchical_section_title: Women in the United States Air Force / History / Women in the Air Force since 1972
caption_attribution_description: USAF Pilot Kim Campbell looks at her damaged A-10 Warthog[1] which she landed at her base after a mission over Baghdad in 2003.
context_page_description: There have been women in the United States Air Force since 1948, and women continue to serve in it today.
context_section_description: Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677 (1973), was a landmark Supreme Court case which decided that benefits given by the military to the family of service members cannot be given out differently because of sex. Air Force Lieutenant Sharron Frontiero and her husband Joseph, a veteran and full-time student, were the plaintiffs.
  In 1976 the WAF was ended and women were allowed into the Air Force as equal members.
  Also in 1976, the Air Force Academy first admitted women; in 1986, the Air Force Academy’s top graduate was a woman for the first time (Terrie Ann McLaughlin).
  Also in 1986, six Air Force women served as pilots, copilots, and boom operators on the KC-135 and KC-10 tankers that refueled FB-111s during the raid on Libya.
  Women in the Air Force served in Operation Desert Shield (1990-1991) and Operation Desert Storm (1991).
  Before the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy was enacted in 1993, lesbians and bisexual women (and gay men and bisexual men) were banned from serving in the military. In 1993 the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy was enacted, which mandated that the military could not ask servicemembers about their sexual orientation. However, until the policy was ended in 2011 service members were still expelled from the military if they engaged in sexual conduct with a member of the same sex, stated that they were lesbian, gay, or bisexual, and/or married or attempted to marry someone of the same sex.
  On April 28, 1993, combat exclusion was lifted from aviation positions by Les Aspin, permitting women to serve in almost any aviation capacity.
  Also in 1993, Sheila Widnall became the first female Secretary of the Air Force, making her the first woman to lead a U.S. military branch in the Department of Defense.
  In 1994, the Pentagon declared:
  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. 
  That policy also excluded women being assigned to certain organizations based upon proximity to direct combat or "collocation" as the policy specifically referred to it. According to the Army, collocation occurs when, "the position or unit routinely physically locates and remains with a military unit assigned a doctrinal mission to routinely engage in direct combat."
  Kelly Flinn, sometimes referred to as Kelly Flynn, was the first female B-52 pilot in the Air Force, but was discharged from the Air Force in 1997 after an adulterous affair with the husband of an enlisted subordinate, for military offenses including disobeying a direct order from her commanding officer to break off the affair, and for lying to him about having done so. Flinn's trouble with the Air Force received widespread media attention at the time and was discussed in a Senate hearing on May 22, 1997.
  Women in the Air Force served in the Afghanistan War from 2001 until 2014, and in the Iraq War from 2003 until 2011.
  The Air Force Academy sexual assault scandal in 2003 involved allegations of sexual assault at the Air Force Academy, as well as allegations that the alleged incidents had been ignored by the Academy’s leadership.
  The United States Air Force Basic Training scandal involved 43 female trainees who alleged being victimized by their Military Training Instructors during and after basic military training starting from 2009. Seventeen male instructors were accused of offenses ranging from seeking improper relationships to rape  and 35 instructors were removed from their posts pending investigations. Nine of the accused instructors belonged to the 331st Training Squadron. The commander of the 331st Training Squadron, Lt. Col. Mike Paquette, was removed from command in June 2012 because of the problems in his unit. In August 2012 the commander of the 737th training group, Col. Glenn Palmer, was also relieved from his position due to the scandal.
  In 2012 Janet Wolfenbarger became the Air Force's first female four-star general. Before that, there had been women general officers 
caption: Captain Kim Campbell inspecting damage to her A-10 Thunderbolt II during the Iraq War in 2003
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2003:04:12 14:00:24", "Image ExifOffset": "156", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "984", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1500"}