Female Navy Officers Worry About Their Futures

After Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cut nine Navy officers, including all the women, from a promotion list, several female officers see the unusual intervention as a sign that their careers now have a ceiling and worry for the future generation of female military leaders. The Navy had selected 31 sailors to promote from the rank of captain to one-star admiral, but Hegseth intervened to strike nine people from the list, including three women and two Black men, according to a defense official who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

As a result, the Navy is not promoting a single woman to the one-star admiral rank this year even though women make up about one-quarter of all Navy officers, according to military data from 2024. The AP spoke with eight female Navy officers of varying ranks after Hegseth’s cuts, which were reported earlier by the New York Times, became public. They spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution. The more junior officers said they saw the development as a sign that their careers would become politicized if they rose too far in the ranks, and some said they felt they now had a limit on how far they could be promoted. Some said it made them feel less valued within the military and wondered whether that wasn’t part of the intent.

Some of the more senior Navy officers who spoke with the AP also expressed concerns about the message it sends to the next generation of young sailors. The Pentagon has not offered any rationale on why the women, or any of the other six people, were removed from the promotion list. The Pentagon says promotions are based on merit. Read the full AP story.