The Navy is rolling out new teams that will hear female sailors’ concerns, advocate on their behalf, and focus on recruiting and retaining more women in the fleet.
In an administrative message released Tuesday, the service announced the creation of Navy “Women’s Initiatives Teams” that will try to “broaden awareness and influence policy changes to increase recruitment and retention of service women throughout the Navy.”
The service has had groups similar to the women’s initiative network aimed at tackling issues women were having in the Navy. But the ways those groups collected concerns or issues was more informal and often relied on either strong advocacy on behalf of sailors or groundswells of support on social media platforms.
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Now, women will have “a formalized process for review of sailor suggestions and feedback on women’s initiatives,” according to Lt. Lewis Aldridge, a spokesman for the Navy’s chief of naval personnel. The Navy Office of Women’s Policy will meet, at a minimum, quarterly to hear from the newly created teams “on barriers and challenges faced by women throughout the fleet.”
At its heart, the new policy orders 27 commands — including the four main Navy fleets and all 17 community leaders — to designate an officer and senior enlisted leader to head up individual teams at those locations to begin hearing input and feedback…
