VOA常速英语:从个人故事看美国军队中女性地位的提升

Libby Haynes is 92.
Planes have been her passion for over 75 years.
When her mother gave her $10 as a birthday gift for her 17th birthday, Haynes knew what to do.
I had a flying lesson.
I spent six dollars to rent a Piper Cub for an hour, three dollars for the instructor for an hour, and a dollar for the log book.
In 1945, young Libby had already finished a training course of the Civil Air Patrol Cadet program and became a nurse,
but after the Second World War she decided to head back into the sky.
Then I just had a very, very strong calling.
It’s the only name I can put to it that I was meant to join the Air Force.
I don’t know whether you say divine guidance or what but it was a best decision I ever made in my life.
The US Army did not enlist women until 1970s and Haynes became an aerographer.
At the same time she flew with the Civil Air Patrol
and managed to buy her own tiny plane that she used to fly home for the weekend.
And I, we still had student license when I bought this PG 23 surplus for $500 which was two months’ salary.
Her job brought Haynes more than just professional satisfaction.
It is there that she met her husband a pilot, but when she got pregnant one of her colleagues reported to the senior officers.

Haynes got discharged.
But it wasn’t anything personal, explains Marilla Cushman from The Women in Military Service for American Memorial.
There was a time where if you know, if you had children, if you became pregnant, whether you were married or not, you had to get out of the military.
Cushmen joined the military in the 70s, but it was also unable to do what she really wanted to.
I was disappointed that I couldn’t do more, that I couldn’t do some of those other things that my…the guys were doing.
In mid 1970s, the rules changed, and women were allowed to pilot non-combat planes.
After the Gulf War of 1990-1991, that limitation was gone too.
Cushman believes the US Army simply realized it needed women.
Particularly during the global war on terror, we started bringing women,
attaching them to infantry units and Special Forces units
because as these units went into…as we were in Afghanistan and Iraq because of the cultural issues,
it just became clear that we couldn’t manage without women across the board.
Today, women in the US military make up 14% of the personnel, but it took years of fighting to get to that point.
Let the generations know, that women in uniform also guaranteed their freedom,
that our resolve was just as great as the brave men who stood among us.
Both women say they’re happy to see the position women in the US military enjoy today,
though Haynes confesses she never really took any limitations seriously.