Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in the Services

The U.S. Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS) was established in 1951 by Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall. Its members are civilian women and men appointed by the Secretary of Defense to provide advice and recommendations on matters and policies relating to the recruitment and retention, treatment, employment, integration, and well-being of women in the U.S. Armed Forces. Beginning in 2002, the Committee began providing advice and recommendations on family issues related to recruitment and retention. DACOWITS' recommendations have been instrumental in effecting changes to laws and policies pertaining to military women.

The 1948 Women's Armed Services Integration Act established defined roles for women in the peacetime armed forces of the United States. They had previously only been allowed to serve as nurses in peacetime and in wider variety of roles only in time of war.

The Committee with 49 women members was formed in August 1951. One of its original members was actress Irene Dunne. The Committee was tasked with making recommendation to the Assistant Secretary for Manpower. Meeting for three days at the Pentagon in September 1951, they heard presentations about recruiting and the possible need for a women's draft based on the failure of recruiting during World War II to meet the military services' requirements for women.

In October 1955, Margaret Divver, advertising manager of the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company, was named to head the Committee, replacing Oliver Crowther. The Committee was exploring ways to interest better qualified women in military careers and explaining the increasing variety of positions available to them.

In October 1971, Estelle M. Stacy was appointed to serve as chair for the calendar year 1972, replacing Helen K. Leslie.

After a November 1982 recommendation that 23 additional job categories be closed to women, increasing the number to 60 of 360 categories, the Committee's chair, Mary Huey of Texas Women's University, sought assurance from Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger that women's promotion would not suffer from these exclusions, and Weinberger did so.

In 1998 the Committee, then composed of 18 women and two men and chaired by Judith A. Youngman, an associate professor of political science at the Coast Guard Academy, and reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense, recommended increased integration of men and women during basic training after finding that "most service members from every service believed that more gender integration of training was needed than currently existed". It contradicted a late 1997 report of a committee headed by Senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker of Kansas, formed in response to reports of sexual harassment during training, that advocated the opposite.

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