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DACOWITS

Summary of August 22-23, 2006 DACOWITS Meeting

The Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS) held its first meeting of 2006 on August 22 and 23. The current committee has just five members whose appointment was announced last March. The committee is led by returning member Dr. Mary Nelson. Dr. Nelson was formerly a Director of a high school equivalency program for soldiers in Germany, and now serves as a professor of applied mathematics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The other members of DACOWITS include: Mrs. Margaret Hoffman, the Honorable Diane Dennman, Mrs. Margaret M. White, and Mrs. Denise W. Balzano. 

The majority of the meeting was focused on what issue to address during the short time remaining in this calendar year. Dr. David S. C. Chu, Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel Readiness had indicated three possible issues for DACOWITS review:

· How do we attract and retain more women in the legal, medical and clergy occupations and promote a higher rate of promotion to general officer/flag officer grades for women in these fields.

· How do we better understand the stress on families during deployment and establish priorities to mitigate that stress?

· Retention rates among women officers and their work/life Balance issues.

 

The Committee chose the first issue; however, it appears that they were following the wishes of Dr. Chu since Caliber Associates had already collected data on the issue and presented it to the members. The Committee plans three installation visits this year (as compared to twelve last year) to collect information on their issue. The Committee is to finalize their findings, recommendations and vote in December 2006 with the report being released in January/February 2007.

 Assistance Secretary of Defense for Force Management Policy Michael L. Dominguez presented the new members with their pins. In his remarks, he noted that DACOWITS should move towards a longer term view since there were so many entities focused on the problems of today. He referred to an “Oprah” show which dealt with sexual assault. Mrs. Balzano asked if it was “a PR issue”. This is a troubling conclusion as the number/type of sexual assaults in the Armed Forces today indicates a continuing problem impacting readiness. 
 
During the “Public Forum”, a issue concerning the impact of the Uniformed Services Former Spouse Protection Act was raised. A number of individuals provided written testimony of how they were harmed by the Act. This Act was designed to protect former spouses of military service members from receiving no support when the service member retired. Today it is causing some service members to retire as soon as they are eligible as they must pay their former spouse even though the service member has not yet retired. The Alliance will look into the issue and report back to our members. 

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