Officer candidates must complete education and military training programs, some of which take up to 4 years, before they are commissioned into the officer corps. The three federal accession programs that produce the most officer commissions are (1) military service academies; (2) ROTC; and (3) Officer Candidate School for the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard or Officer Training School for the Air Force. Military service academies: The U.S. Military Academy, the U.S. Naval Academy, the U.S. Air Force Academy, and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy operate 4-year programs that provide successful candidates with bachelor’s degrees and commissions as military officers. ROTC: The services’ respective ROTC units are located at civilian colleges and universities throughout the United States, with some academic institutions offering ROTC for more than one service. Officer candidates enrolled in ROTC programs must meet all graduation requirements of their academic institutions and complete required education and military training to receive commissions as officers, usually after 4 years. The Coast Guard does not have an ROTC program. Officer Candidate Schools/Officer Training School: These officer commissioning programs are designed to augment the services’ other commissioning programs. Because these programs focus only on military training, they are short, ranging from 6 weeks (Marine Corps candidates participate in the Naval Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) to 17 weeks (Coast Guard). Various offices within each military service, including the Coast Guard, are responsible for recruiting for these commissioning programs. In general, the military service academies recruit their own candidates and the service recruiting commands recruit for the other accession sources. Table 1 lists the office that primarily conducts recruiting for each major accession source. According to the 2011 Military Leadership Diversity Commission report, the military can recruit from a pool of individuals using specific eligibility requirements that can potentially present a barrier to service. According to the report, those who wish to serve in the military must first meet standards related to age, citizenship, number of dependents, financial status, education level, aptitude, substance abuse, language skills, moral conduct, height and weight, physical fitness, and medical qualifications. Furthermore, commissioned officers must have a bachelor’s degree. Together, these requirements define the eligible population from which the services can recruit. According to the Military Leadership Diversity Commission report and DOD officials, large portions of young people do not meet these requirements and are not eligible to join the military. In addition, according to a DOD Joint Advertising, Market Research and Studies survey, fewer women than men have an interest in military service and that may be due in part to women’s greater interests in education and professional careers, which women often see as incompatible with military service. The general approach used by the services to meet their accession needs has been to start with their service academies and ROTC programs. When these programs are unable to meet a service’s needs for newly commissioned officers, the service uses the Officer Candidate Schools/Officer Training School to bridge the gap. Conversely, during periods of downsizing, all of the commissioning sources may reduce their numbers of officer candidates, but the Officer Candidate Schools/Officer Training School provide the immediate means for achieving the downsizing. Unlike the military service academies and ROTC programs that require up to 4 years to produce an officer, the Officer Candidate Schools/Officer Training School can quickly expand or diminish the size of their candidate pools. To various extents, these accession sources commission officers for both the active and the reserve components, including the National Guard. For example, the ROTC programs commission higher rates of officers for the reserves and the National Guard than do the military service academies. Additionally, the Air National Guard Academy of Military Science commissions the majority of the Air National Guard’s officers. The Air National Guard Academy of Military Science is similar to the Air Force Officer Training School program and is a 6-week military training course. In contrast, state level officer candidate school programs, which are not included in this review, recruit and produce a significant portion of Army National Guard officers. Other accession sources for the federal components of the National Guard include ROTC, federal Officer Candidate School, and direct commissioning programs. Additionally, each service directly commissions officers with particular professional skills—such as physicians, dentists, nurses, lawyers, and chaplains—who do not in all cases attend the major commissioning programs. The Coast Guard also has direct commissioning programs for certain professions, such as aviators, engineers, lawyers, and physician assistants. Each military service, including the Coast Guard, also offers enlisted-to-officer commissioning programs that provide the enlisted population with opportunities to earn commissions as officers. Figure 1 shows the overall distribution of DOD military officers by accession source as of fiscal year 2012. DOD and Coast Guard data from fiscal year 2010 through fiscal year 2014 show a slight percentage increase for female officer accessions. Specifically, the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard increased the rate of female officer accessions every year from fiscal year 2010 through 2014. In contrast, female officer accession rates for the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force fluctuated from fiscal year 2010 through fiscal year 2014, but were higher in fiscal year 2014 than in fiscal year 2010. Additionally, DOD and the Coast Guard have not determined resources and funding to increase the recruitment and accessions of female officers. Female officer accession rates have increased from fiscal year 2010 through fiscal year 2014 for all of the Armed Forces, including the Coast Guard. For example, the Marine Corps increased female officer accessions by 4.2 percent from fiscal year 2010 through fiscal year 2014, and the Coast Guard increased female officer accessions by a total of 6.4 percent. The Army increased female officer accessions by about 0.8 percent, the Air Force increased female officer accessions by about 0.4 percent, and the Navy increased female officer accessions by about 0.2 percent from fiscal year 2010 through fiscal year 2014. Collectively, DOD increased female officer accessions by 1.0 percent from fiscal year 2010 through fiscal year 2014. Figure 2 shows female officer accession rates for DOD and the Coast Guard for fiscal years 2010 through fiscal year 2014. Although collectively the services slightly increased female officer accession rates during this time period, female officer accessions for the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force individually fluctuated from fiscal year 2010 through fiscal year 2014. For example, the highest rates for female officer accessions during this time frame for the Army and the Air Force occurred in fiscal year 2012, and fiscal year 2014 rates were lower in comparison. However, both the Army and the Air Force fiscal year 2014 female officer accessions occurred at a slightly higher rate than they did in fiscal year 2010. In fiscal year 2014, female officer accession rates were 30.4 percent for the Coast Guard, 27.4 percent for the Air Force, 22.7 percent for the Navy, 21.4 percent for the Army, and 11.8 percent for the Marine Corps. Figure 3 shows a comparison of accession rates for female and male officers in DOD and the Coast Guard from fiscal year 2010 through fiscal year 2014. Similar to the increases in female officer accession rates, the representation of women in general in the officer corps for DOD and the Coast Guard has also increased. Appendix II provides a comparison of female and male representation in the officer corps in DOD and the Coast Guard from fiscal year 2010 through fiscal year 2014. DOD and the Coast Guard have not determined the resources and funding to increase the recruitment and, ultimately the accessions, of women into the officer corps. DOD has budget line items in its operation and maintenance budget for recruiting and advertising totaling over $1 billion for fiscal year 2016 (see table 2). Additionally, the Coast Guard has a budget line item for recruiting and training, which was about $202.9 million in fiscal year 2014, about $197.8 million in fiscal year 2015, and the Coast Guard requested $205.8 million in fiscal year 2016. According to Coast Guard officials, the Coast Guard budget line item does not include advertising. There is not a requirement for DOD or the Coast Guard to report budget line items on the recruitment and accessions of women officers. We asked 11 offices that recruit or advertise for DOD and the Coast Guard if they could identify how much was spent specifically on recruiting and advertising for women officers. Of the 11 DOD and Coast Guard offices, 3 DOD offices identified expenditures specifically for recruiting and advertising for women accessions into the officer corps, 6 DOD and Coast Guard offices could not identify how much was spent specifically for recruiting and advertising for women accessions because their budgeting was not reported by gender, and 2 offices did not respond to the question. Given that there is not a requirement to report budget information on recruitment and accessions of women into the officer corps, we asked DOD and Coast Guard offices in our questionnaire whether they could identify resources and funding for their specific initiatives, if any, directed at increasing women officer accessions. We sent questionnaires to 19 DOD and Coast Guard offices regarding initiatives directed at the recruitment and accessions of women officers. Of the 18 offices that responded to the questionnaire, 12 offices reported initiatives. Of those 12 offices, 2 identified resources and funding for all of their reported initiatives. The other 10 offices identified resources and funding for some, but not all, of their reported initiatives. The military service academies have identified several types of both monetary and non-monetary resources required to increase the number of women candidates they enroll through their recruitment initiatives. According to academy officials, these initiatives are funded in part through the military service academies’ direct budgets. The following four examples illustrate both monetary and non-monetary resources directed at initiatives for female officer candidates. U.S. Military Academy officials stated they implemented a direct mailing campaign directed at increasing overall awareness among potential applicants.