[Politico] Three decades ago, when I graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, just 10 percent of the students in my class were women.Since then, women have made gains in many areas of American society‐from Congress to corporate boardrooms. But at West Point the numbers have barely budged: By the time I retired from the Army, in 2014, just 16 percent of students were women.
In 2018, the number bumped up to 20 percent, but that is still low. The situation isn’t much better at the other service academies. The Air Force Academy’s 2018 graduating class was just shy of 22 percent women, and the Naval Academy came in only a bit better, at 25 percent.
How can it be that America’s military academies are still admitting and graduating so few women‐especially when these schools are free and prestigious, and across the country women earn 57 percent of all undergraduate degrees? This low percentage persists even now that all military occupations and units are open to women. The small percentage of women who do gain admission often perform better than their male classmates. Despite women making up just under 20 percent of the 2018 West Point class, eight of the top 10 graduates were women, and women made up 44 percent of honor roll students.
It turns out Congress might be limiting qualified women’s ability to access this elite educational opportunity.
By law, and with a few exceptions, West Point only considers applicants who have been nominated by a member of Congress from their state. (Lawmakers make their nominations based on an application and in-person interview.) A report released over the summer by the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center revealed that since 1994 women have never made up more than 27 percent of all congressional nominations made in any year for admission to the three military academies. According to the report, Democrats have, on average, given 22 percent of their nominations to women, while Republicans have given 20 percent of their nominations to women. (The CVLC made multiple Freedom of Information Act requests to get the data from the military for its report.)