In 1996, Skubic endured her most awkward hours as a woman in the military. Do you put armed guards outside your bathroom at home because there's a woman taking a shower in there? We're each other's shipmates, and you shouldn't have to defend your shipmates against other shipmates.'" Their intentions were good, Skubic said, but she was dumbfounded. One of her male counterparts questioned whether to put armed guards outside female quarters and bathrooms. "Of course, I was the only woman at the table - there were about a dozen of us - and I was the only person who'd been on an integrated auxiliary ship," she said. The Navy used Skubic's experience by putting her on the team that created policy for integrating women on aircraft carriers. "Sometimes they'd put us in the medical ward, or if the general officer wasn't on board we'd get the flag quarters." "They were always creative in where they put us," she said. Female bathrooms and sleeping quarters didn't even exist. By then, Skubic was one of two women on a supply inspection team that spent four-day stints aboard still-all-male aircraft carriers. "You can't say women can't be in combat when they already are."Ĭongress repealed the Combat Exclusion Policy in 1993, allowing women to serve on combatant ships. "But then the Acadia was the first ship to leave the West Coast for the Persian Gulf and Desert Shield, which evolved into Desert Storm," she said. Submarines and combatant ships remained off-limits. Women then were allowed to serve on oilers and other auxiliary ships. It was among the service's first integrated ships, and she was one of about 300 women on the 1,300-member crew. Her first assignment was aboard the USS Acadia, a destroyer tender that provided repair and maintenance to other vessels. "I didn't think of myself then as being a woman in a man's world because I'd already been a teenager in a 30s- and 40s-something world," she said. The California native was 27 when she joined the Navy, fearless at serving in a male-dominated environment after a decade of bouncing between jobs that included banking and managing a nightclub.
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