“Each and every one of you demonstrated the ability to meet the baseline standards and competencies for admission to our regiment,” said Lt. Gen. Francis M. Beaudette, the commander of the Army’s Special Operations Command, who presided over the graduation ceremony held in a hangar at Pope Army Airfield on Fort Bragg, N.C., according to a statement.
“From here, you will go forward and join the storied formation of the Green Berets, where you will do what you are trained to do: challenge assumptions, break down barriers, smash through stereotypes, innovate, and achieve the impossible,” General Beaudette said. “Thankfully, after today, our Green Beret men and women will forever stand in the hearts of free people everywhere.”
The Army, along with the Marines, has slowly filled previously restricted roles with women in recent years. Though more than 700 women in the Army are in previously restricted jobs, a position in the Special Operations forces, with its crushingly high physical standards, had long been considered by some as unattainable for women.
Roughly 70,000 of the approximately 470,000 troops in the Army are women.
In 2017, a woman was accepted into the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment, an elite light infantry unit under the Joint Special Operations Command. More than a dozen women have graduated from the Army’s grueling Ranger school in Georgia.
In 1981, before all combat jobs were open to women, Capt. Kate Wilder, graduated from Special Forces training. She was forced out by her superiors in the final days of her course, even though she had passed it in its entirety. The Army investigated the incident in the following months and subsequently sent her a graduation certificate dated for Aug. 21, 1980.