This post was written by Hatchet reporter Sadie Ruben.
The first openly gay officer to come out while serving in the U.S. military since the repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” spoke with students in the Women’s Leadership Program on the Mount Vernon Campus on Thursday.
Brig. Gen. Tammy Smith talked about the nearly 30 years she has spent in the military. She was promoted to brigadier general in 2012, becoming the first gay general to openly serve. That year, she married longtime partner Tracey Hepner.
Before speaking to students, Smith talked to The Hatchet about her experiences.
This interview has been edited for length.
What lessons do you hope to convey to GW students tonight?
I want to tell my personal story so that people have an understanding that it really doesn’t matter where you came from. There are opportunities out there that wherever it is that you want to end up, it’s really possible. I also want to convey that you shouldn’t hold yourself back by other people’s stereotypes.
What obstacles have you faced being a woman in the military?
When I came in, one of the first obstacles that I faced was that not all the career fields were open to me. At the time I came in, you could be in logistics or administration, that sort of thing, and so there were just career fields that were unavailable that would limit your promotion potential. Now that is changing for women, so you see some of the things in the news and what we want to do is that we want to make all of our occupations gender-neutral where everyone can meet that standard. At the time, I was just happy to have an ROTC scholarship to pay for my tuition and to know that I would be going into some type of appointment when I graduated.
How do you think these obstacles relate to women in other fields?
I think that sometimes there are barriers for women to advance in an organization. But the ones I described in the military, those were set in policy, so everybody was aware that women could not be in the infantry at that particular time. I think that in corporate America, some of the barriers are sometimes more cultural and it is sometimes dependent on the organization that you work for. It’s more that the people who are in leadership roles can’t picture women doing particular types of jobs. I think it is all about the skills you bring to the workplace and what we should be focusing on is the talent that you have and not the stereotype we’ve overlaid on you.
What do you think have been the most defining moments of your career so far?
Probably one of the most defining moments early on was learning how to jump out of an airplane. When you do something that requires physical courage, it does a lot for your confidence and that confidence carries over to the many other things you do. So those people, whether it is jumping out of an airplane or if you are a rock climber, or anything that requires physical courage – there is confidence that comes with that. Another really defining moment in my personal career is that I served for 25 years and had to hide who I was because of the policy “Don’t ask, don’t tell” that prohibited gays and lesbians to be in the military. That was repealed in 2011 and for the first time I was able to be exactly who I was and to let the world know about Tracey.
What progress has been made in removing these barriers for women in the military?
There’s been culture changes of course in just the men who have come up now and who are in leadership positions. If you think about in 1980 was the first class of graduates from the military academy with women. So now the people who are generals and admirals, they’ve served their entire career with women. Unlike when I first entered in the early 1980s and the people who were in those positions of leadership had never served with women, so I think that helps culturally and then the effort to actually take the gender roles out of all of our jobs that’s being directed in part by Congress of course is going to be in compliance with opening up a lot of opportunities for women.
Do you think more has to be done regarding women in the military?
I think more has to be done not only for women in the military, but women in general. If you think about that we’re 50 percent of the population, we should be 50 percent of everything and at this point we’re not. I hope the new generation of young women joining the workforce, starting their own businesses, going into public service and joining non-governmental organizations carry with them the spirit of ‘I own 50 percent of this.’
How have you contributed to breaking down these barriers?
I try to be visible. I try to let people see me in my role as a leader. I also like to be visible in my life and the fact that I’m a woman married to a woman and I like to be able to see other people say that regardless of who you are, you can have a happy life.
How have you tried to break down prejudices against LGBT individuals in the military?
What you typically find out when prejudice exists is because they don’t actually know anybody who is LGBT and so they hold all of these assumptions about people. When they have a real conversation with someone who identifies in that way, it breaks down the stereotypes they had in their mind and the stereotypes get replaced with a real person, and so I think my visibility is important with breaking down some of those stereotypes.
How do you think you’re in a unique position to add diversity to the military?
I think people who end up in a senior role of course have more influence within their organization and so I think every senior leader has a responsibility to embrace not only diversity but also inclusion. They do that through enacting policy and also by being visible in inclusive-type events and they themselves creating that culture where everyone feels like they belong and can prosper.
