Hey! Its March….and we all know what that means…….
Yes, its that oh so special time of the year when we get to celebrate the history that women want us to know about, while white washing the details they would rather just not see printed in the paper.
So, as is my custom in March, I make it my mission to report on women’s history-the stories you won’t hear at a convention like this one.
Now when I read this story and saw this picture I was a just a tad bit miffed. Imagine, in a gender neutral Navy, that women would actually be paid to go to a convention where the aim was, to get women aviators together for purpose of “build{ing} the right networks, help develop our people professionally, and establish effective mentoring opportunities between our Senior Leaders and our young folks. ”
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Captioned as follows: Rear Adm. Wendi Carpenter, Commander, Navy Warfare Development Command, is surrounded by Naval aviators and air crewman attending the 22nd Women in Aviation Conference in Reno, Nev. The conference hosts over 3,000 people involved in the aviation industry and provides a great opportunity for networking, mentoring and recruiting.
Now if, as a man, you are not more than a little offended by that-go back and ask this question, ” When is the Men in Aviation convention in Reno, for the purpose of building the right networks”?
Oops-I forgot. When you go to those, you don’t follow up by sorting your business cards-but by saying hello to your [not so] friendly NCIS agent.
And exactly how many men are in that picture anyway? I’ll bet there are few that would like to network with some of the “talent” in that crowd. What’s up with that?
Now before everyone heads on out to send this link to the Navy IG. ( Please feel free to do so-I will be happy to write about them too), I’ve got a serious point to make. There is a Woman Officers Professional Organization (WOPA), where is the MOPA? There are associations for Hispanic Officers, African American Officers-even groups that align Asian American officers. Where is the WASP Officers Professional association?
There is isn’t one-and even suggesting that there should be is considered a non career enhancing move. Some readers might remember when I quoted a guy named Chistopher Caldwell back in 2007:
Racism and certain other forms of exclusion corrode a society morally. But diversity, as an ideology, is not a matter of avoiding those occasions of sin. It is an active, ruthless and crusading belief system. Its effects resemble those of “meritocracy” on the community life of London’s Bethnal Green, as described in Dench, Gavron and Young’sThe New East End. It involves identifying, discrediting and breaking up close-knit communities in the interest of mixing them more easily into some new ideal of the nation.
If the Navy were true to its rhetoric-it would not give aid and comfort to associations like this. It would encourage all of its female aviators to join ANA, Tailhook and the NHA and show up there. As I have pointed out in many different ways under this yearly ritual of posts, by being so hell bent for “diversity”, companies and the US military are turning their back on the thing that makes mission driven organizations succeed-namely a unity of identity.
And people wonder why we have JO’s who don’t understand how the food chain works when we read about these exchanges between an O-8 and an O-2:
One milestone with which I was involved, and which gives me great sense of satisfaction, is the newly formed WAI Chapter in Iraq. This has materialized over the past year since the last WAI Conference where I met a young Air Force C-130 pilot, 1st Lt. Chrystina Short. Chrystina has just returned from a deployment to Iraq a month ago. While she was overseas, we were “Facebooking” one another (which is an easy and effective way for me to mentor). The thought occurred to me after having just spoken at the WAI Conference in Johannesburg, Africa and posting the pictures on Facebook… “Why not start an Iraq-chapter of WAI?” So when Chrystina commented on the posts for South Africa, I responded that she should start such a chapter. AND so she did! The rest is now being written in the pages of history, and joining us at the WAI Conference this year are two young women from Iraq – Shahad & Zahrau. They have just this week graduated Air Traffic Control School in Miami. These young ladies are exceptional women, motivated and passionate about aviation. They both hold other degrees to include Laser Physics and Computer Science.
Funny, and here I thought she was just over there to make the flight schedule.
There is so much that is so wrong about this. Lets start with WAI-its a 501(C)(3) organization . These groups are not supposed to engage in any political activities, though some voter registration activities are permitted. Women’s advocacy groups don’t exactly meet that definition. For the Navy to actively support it-borders on dangerous ground that brushes up against the Hatch Act. The group admits men to be sure-but go back and look at the picture, not a lot of swinging body parts on that stairway.
And when did it become Wendi Carpenter’s job to mentor officers outside her chain of command? Somewhere I don’t think that is the billet description of the Commander Naval Warfare Development command.
You cannot have it both ways- claim to be gender neutral and then have actions that turn women into preferred customers within the system. Now that DADT has been repealed, what’s next? A GAI convention?