A Phone Call Helped Navy's First Four-Star Woman Embrace Her Path

Transcript

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

We're going to sit down now with an exceptional woman in the U.S. military. She is one of 200,000 women now serving.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

We have reported in the past as women have taken on combat roles and risen to high rank. What we hear in this conversation is just what it takes for a woman to reach one of the highest positions in all the military.

MARTIN: This year, Michelle Howard became both the first woman and the first African-American woman to be promoted to the rank of four-star admiral. Her story is part of our series on the changing lives of women.

INSKEEP: Throughout the past 20 years of promotion, she's been among the first in every step, doing things so rare she's been asked to give interviews and speeches on women's issues. Once, she even called her mother to complain.

ADMIRAL MICHELLE HOWARD: I was whining about it. And she said, you are where you are historically. As long as you stay in the Navy, this will not stop. Embrace it now, or leave the Navy.

MARTIN: She did embrace it and is now the second-in-command in the U.S. Navy. Her staff ushered us into her office in the Pentagon the other day, and she told us about her career. Being a woman was not her biggest barrier.

HOWARD: People focus on the barriers - what would've been gender barriers in my career. I grew up in a country where I was African-American. My first negative initiation to being black was in kindergarten when kids started to call me the N-word on the playground. I didn't know what it was about; I just knew it was bad. And I'm running home crying. And my father's like, you've got to toughen up. This is the country you live in. You have a series of things that happen to you growing up that people who are in the majority don't experience. They don't experience driving across country as a family and not being able to get a hotel and sleeping in the car.

MARTIN: That happened to your family?

HOWARD: This is the '60s. People are marching in the street, Martin Luther King. People are being water-hosed for the right to vote. And my dad making us sit at a table in a restaurant as we're driving across country because we can't get service, and we're going to sit there for hours to prove a point. We didn't get served, but we made our point. And it's interesting. It gives you an awareness of politics at a very young age.

MARTIN: She was only 12 when she decided she wanted to join the Navy. But at the time, women were legally barred from enrolling at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. If the ban was still in place in a few years' time, Howard's mom told her they'd fight it.

HOWARD: We'll sue the government. And it was a teaching moment. She said, look, if you believe it's right, you need to go after it, but you have to understand things like this are a long process. But you have to do things that are right - not just for you - that you might not benefit, but somebody else will benefit.

MARTIN: So you were prepared to be someone who would look around in a room at the Academy and feel like you were the only one.

HOWARD: Yes.

MARTIN: But just because you're prepared for something doesn't mean that you can always navigate that when it happens. Have there been moments when you have been unfairly singled out in your career because of your race or your gender?

HOWARD: I would say yes. And I would also acknowledge that there probably have been times and I probably would never have known. Everybody has critics in life, and when I talked to women, I talk a lot about this. I have found that women who choose to be stay-at-home moms deal with a set of critics. I've found women who go into the workplace and try to be a mom have a set of work critics. I think as women, we just seem to have a set of critics. And so you work your way through, but I've also found that a lot of times in an organization, the barrier gets down to an individual. There's not a grand conspiracy going on. It's really one person with a set of beliefs, and you just have to take a deep breath, think about it, but have the courage to figure out how to get the resolution with that one person. Otherwise, you end up being skeptical about mankind, untrusting of mankind, and you create this figure of the man in your head. And it really isn't that at all, so you have to let some of the emotions of previous experiences go as you make your way up, or are on the journey.

MARTIN: You have also talked about the need to stay close to people...

HOWARD: Oh, yes.

MARTIN: ...Who look like you who share...

HOWARD: Yes.

MARTIN: ...Some of your own experience.

HOWARD: Yes.

MARTIN: Why? Why is that so important, and what has that ended up looking like for you?

HOWARD: It's the transference of wisdom. You can either go figure it out on your own and stumble and have what you're trying to do not be successful, or you can talk to someone who has the same shared experiences as you, expand that group and bring them together and have a multitude of perspectives. You'll find some commonality.

MARTIN: How did you do that when there weren't people that you could look up to? The people who were above you who you could look to as mentors, they weren't women; they weren't African-American.

HOWARD: I don't believe mentors have to look like you to be good mentors or your protoge must look like you. The folks who work for me and work with me my whole career have not looked like me. And as a leader, I'm obligated to help them be successful. I'm responsible for them.

MARTIN: Admiral Howard is also responsible for helping the U.S. Navy combat an issue that has plagued all branches of the military - sexual assault. She cites a study by the Centers for Disease Control, showing that the rates of the sexual assault in the military are the same as they are in the civilian world. But she says the military needs to do better.

HOWARD: As a leader I go, ugh. I want my sailors and Marines to be the icon of citizenship, so I have to get after this because we have got to be the leaders in an area like this. Then, in terms of what we do at sea, women are in this society. Women are in war. The question is, what role? We have moved out in this country that the role we can have in war, in conflict, in combat is beyond the support role, so we're there.

MARTIN: Does that mean women have a role in special operations forces?

HOWARD: Yes, they do. We will see whether or not our government decides that they do have that role.

MARTIN: Are you pleased when you look around now at the new classes at the Naval Academy or the women who are in your ranks the military has changed?

HOWARD: I am pleased over all of our sailors. I am astounded that we have a generation that has been steadily volunteering into the armed forces since 9/11, volunteering into a two-campaign war, men and women, for the last 13 years. How could you not be anything but proud to serve with such patriots?

MARTIN: Admiral Michelle Howard, thank you so much for taking the time.

HOWARD: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.