(Thumbnail Image: The Washington Post)
"Young women who want to serve America and love travel can fulfill both yearnings by joining the WAVES. Basic training grooms the WAVES for jobs which relieve men for active sea duty."
Navy women have come a long way, baby. Since they were first commissioned to "free up" men for combat, women in the Navy haven't been allowed in submarines. But after a Defense Department announcement, they could soon be welcomed aboard.
We've got perspectives from WTKR, Navy Times, MSNBC and The Day.
On CBS' Norfolk, Virginia affiliate WTKR , a naval veteran shares her joy about the Pentagon's decision.
Anchor: "When Judith Perry joined the Navy in 1959, women held mostly clerical jobs and no one thought they'd ever be working on subs."
Perry: "Now they command ships, they fly aircrafts, land on those aircraft carriers, so it's just another step forward for women I think."
But Navy Times says the decision was just one step in a longer process.
"Congress can pass a law forbidding integration, requiring the Navy to wait or perform a study. If it does nothing, as expected, the ban will expire around the end of April... the payoff of a drawn-out internal bureaucratic process that began in October."
MSNBC Live raises questions about gender issues under seas.
"The biggest problem, of course, is the accommodations, because you have this crew that's tightly packed. They live, eat, sleep, shower together practically, for months at a time 24/7. So that's always been a problem in terms of putting women on submarines, but they're going to retrofit them to begin with and it's going to be a go-slow approach."
And in Connecticut's The Day, a retired naval officer shares his strong feelings.
"My feeling is, as long as the Navy can man them with men, you shouldn't go looking for women to man subs,' ... Why spend the money to make all the modifications to the submarines and create all the conversations and arguments?"
So will women on submarines be readily accepted? Or will the issues of co-ed service continue to make waves?
Writer: Elizabeth Eberlin
Producer: Newsy Staff
