In 1981, the Navy began qualifying women as surface warfare officers (SWOs)—a traditionally male-dominated community. Today, women continue to join the Navy as SWOs. According to a 2021 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, female representation in the SWO community is approximately three times that of any other Navy warfare community and is projected to continue growing because of increased opportunities.1 However, that same report noted that, overall, SWOs separate from the Navy earlier and a higher rates than members of other warfare communities, and female SWOs separate at an even higher rate than their male contemporaries.
High Rate of Separation
To fill SWO department head, executive officer, and commanding officer billets, the Navy must retain more women. As the retention gap between men and women continues to grow as SWOs progress in their careers, so does the imbalance and the loss of talent within the community.
Figure 1 shows the annual retention rate of SWOs by gender and years of commissioned service. After commissioning, there is a gradual decline in the likelihood of retention within the male and female populations, with retention for women declining at a quicker rate. After seven years of service, which marks the end of the division officer tours and start of the first career milestone for Navy officers, retention for women is approximately 66 percent compared to 82 percent for men. Results are mixed for department heads. This mixed trend continues into the next career milestone of command at sea. After 20 years of service, there is another significant decline in retention of women, which reaches a low of 66 percent compared with 86 percent for men.
In their March 2022 Proceedings article, Ensign Jatin G. Khona, Michael A. Insler, and Roger D. Little identified the top five reasons active-duty naval officers terminate their military careers before retirement at 20 years (Figure 2).2 Their data shows the reasons for departing are vastly different for men and women. The leading reasons women end their military careers before retirement—51 percent of those sampled—are family issues and dissatisfaction with the military lifestyle. The leading reason for men choosing to separate, however, is job opportunities within the civilian sector. Women have expressed the desire to continue their careers as SWOs, but, many are not able to do so while simultaneously maintaining a good quality of life for themselves and their families.
Retention Initiatives
Currently, the Navy does not have initiatives to target retention based on gender.3 For SWOs, active retention initiatives include bonuses, Talent Management Task Force (TMTF) initiatives, the Sailor 2025 program, and the Career Intermission Program (CIP). Each incentive targets both men and women.
SWO bonuses were implemented to improve retention rates within the community. SWOs receive the bonus after committing to a department head tour, which requires the officer to serve a minimum of two additional sea tours. Survey results from Naval Postgraduate School studies indicate that bonuses alone are only a temporary fix to retention problems within the community.4 On a larger scale, Navy-wide initiatives such as CIP, TMTF, and Sailor 2025 are intended to allow service members to take advantage of sabbatical opportunities, improve career development, and address other challenges. Unfortunately, these programs have not had a significant effect on SWO retention rates, likely because of minimal awareness and familiarity among junior officers.
Despite Navy-wide and SWO-specific efforts to improve retention, there have been no unequivocal successes. Thus, it is crucial for the Navy to continue to develop, evaluate, and refine robust retention initiatives that comprehensively address the unique challenges and aspirations of female SWOs.
The seventh year of service for most SWOs corresponds with approaching the age of 30. This also generally is when concerns regarding the challenges of career advancement and family planning come to the fore. Some assert there is a scarcity of mentorship and sponsorship programs within the SWO community to address these challenges.
Creating customized mentorship and sponsorship programs to address the issues female SWOs face could provide invaluable guidance, support, and career advice from seasoned officers. If these programs were available at the start of a member’s Navy career, they could provide the opportunity to address concerns about career advancement, facilitate networking opportunities, and foster a strong sense of community among female SWOs, all of which could play a role in improving the retention of younger women in the surface warfare community. A good example of effective mentorship is provided by the Navy’s engineering duty officer (EDO) community.
The EDO community uses mentor groups to support personal and professional development. After lateral transfer into the EDO community, every EDO is assigned to a primary and secondary mentor group based on their preferred career path. Within the identified primary and secondary mentor groups, a mentor is assigned. Annual mentoring sessions, which can be used to discuss professional and/or personal matters, must occur and be documented in a database for tracking. Furthermore, EDO junior officers are encouraged to reach out to commanders, captains, and flag officers for additional mentoring opportunities. In the SWO community, such a program could pair female junior officers with more senior female SWOs for mentoring, so they could see firsthand how women in the community progress and manage work-life balance.
To improve retention rates among department heads, it is crucial to prioritize family support programs. This could be achieved through a combination of initiatives that address childcare, permanent change of station (PCS) moves, and employment opportunities for military spouses. Expanding affordable and high-quality childcare options near military installations would empower SWOs of all genders to concentrate on their professional duties while knowing their children are receiving excellent care.
In addition to providing high quality childcare, reducing the frequency of PCS moves to once every six to eight years could improve overall career satisfaction and retention rates among all SWOs—women and men-—by providing location stability. The Navy could explore options such as longer duration assignments or location stability during critical career stages.
Policies and programs that provide employment opportunities for civilian spouses collocated with their families would help alleviate some family-related challenges. These programs could collaborate with government agencies, private-sector organizations, and local communities to help create and identify job opportunities at the spouse’s next duty station. Implementing these initiatives also could lead to increased job satisfaction among female SWOs and improve their retention rate during the executive/commanding officer time frame.
By providing resources explicitly tailored to meet the unique needs of female SWOs and their families, such as childcare benefits, longer periods in one location, and employment opportunities for spouses, the Navy has the potential to make substantial strides in enhancing overall job satisfaction and retention among female SWOs.
Defining Success
By addressing these challenges and implementing comprehensive strategies to support and retain female SWOs, the Navy can pave the way to a stronger and more inclusive future. To assess the success of retention initiatives, the service should continue to track the retention rates of female SWOs over time to provide a quantitative measure of progress. In addition, the Navy should conduct surveys of active-duty female SWOs and use that information to identify areas that require further improvement and refine its retention strategies. The Navy also should solicit feedback from those who have chosen to leave the service and use this information to enhance retention efforts.
Addressing the challenges female SWOs face and improving their retention rates requires a multifaceted approach. Female SWOs need tailored mentorship and sponsorship programs specifically designed to provide guidance, support, and career advice. Prioritizing family support programs to help them balance their military service and family responsibilities could lead to better quality of life and improved retention.
Retaining female SWOs requires different types of programs than for their male peers. The Navy has made laudable progress in opening the SWO career path for women and steadily increasing the number of female junior officers on board surface ships. The service’s next big challenge is determining how to retain more of them to ensure there are enough high-quality officers—male and female—to screen for department head, executive officer, and commanding officer billets in the fleet.
1. U.S. Government Accountability Office, Navy Readiness: Actions Needed to Evaluate and Improve Surface Warfare Officer Career Path (Washington, DC: Government Accountability Office, June 2021).
2. ENS Jatin G. Khona, USN, Michael A. Insler, and Roger D. Little, “Retention of Women in the Naval Officer Corps,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 148, no. 3 (March 2022).
3. GAO, Navy Readiness.
4. Elizabeth A. Clifton, “Factors Affecting the Retention Decisions of Female Surface Warfare Officers,” master’s thesis (Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, 2023).
