Talk:List of female United States military generals and flag officers/Archive 1

Article title and including Navy Admirals or Flag Officers

Grace Hopper was not a general; she was an admiral. Perhaps "Notable Women Flag Officers" would be more appropriate. Mhjohns (talk) 20:23, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

When I created the template I thought about Notable women Generals and Admirals in the U.S. Military as the title but Admiral did not seem equivalent to General officer. I looked into this and flag officer is a good fit. How about renaming or retitling the template/navbox to Notable woman Generals and Flag Officers in the U.S. Military?

• Google for site:.mil "flag officer" "general" admiral rank shows that pattern seems consistent with the proposed rename.
• USC Title 10 Chapter 1 is definitions related to the armed forces, general military law, organization and general military powers. This says
  • (4) The term “general officer” means an officer of the Army, Air Force, or Marine Corps serving in or having the grade of general, lieutenant general, major general, or brigadier general.
  • (5) The term “flag officer” means an officer of the Navy or Coast Guard serving in or having the grade of admiral, vice admiral, rear admiral, or rear admiral (lower half).

and later the same PDF uses "Duty performed as a general or flag officer." As the template is about U.S. Military officers I believe using the U.S. Code is an appropriate source/reference for definitions. --Marc Kupper|talk 22:06, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Good point. General officer corresponds to flag officer. General corresponds to Admiral. Either Notable woman General and Flag Officers in the U.S. Military or Notable woman Generals and Admirals in the U.S. Military would be appropriate. Mhjohns (talk) 22:35, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I just ran across Women in the United States Navy which seems to cover the flag officers and could easily overwhelm the navbox if all of the women listed were included. I'm not sure what to do at this point though am thinking a category would be the best fit. I would not want to try to define Notable to be a subset of the women that qualify for Wikipedia articles as I believe people wrestle often enough with Wikipedia's standards much less one we could invent for this template. --Marc Kupper|talk 05:52, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

We are talking on two fronts (here and on the template deletion discussion), so speak up if there is one best place to discuss this. I spent a lot of energy putting together the admirals' list for Women in the United States Navy, and am fairly certain it is complete to this point based on promotion lists as well as published books, but was surprised at one point to find another woman admiral who had served as White House physician, so I won't rule out additional entries. You can see that the page is little more than an outline with a giant table, but I hope the rest will be fleshed out in time. I attempted to point to other existing pages rather than composing new and competing sections for the various topics. There are also existing categories for Admirals in the United States Navy and Women in the United States Navy, but I don't think there is currently a category for women flag officers. At some point, I think the table will have to be truncated as, perhaps, the first 100 female admirals in the US Navy, or something like that, since the rate of promotion is increasing and it will soon outgrow its usefulness, so I agree that a category may be the best fit. Mhjohns (talk) 14:18, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Ideally this page would be used for discussion about the attached template itself, the deletion page is about if or if not the template should be deleted. It's a little intertwined at the moment. I have no idea what the final outcome of the deletion discussion will be. It seems an admin shows up, decides, and will delete on the spot if that's his or her choice. I'm waiting for that decision to happen. If the template is deleted then what I'll do is to restore the lists that were on the articles that I added the template too. If I had the time I'd love to research/create an article on the history women general officers in the U.S. Military. There are sources for women (see below) and I assume with some work we'd be able to figure out the general officers as comprehensively as you have for the Navy.

• Women in the U.S. Army
• U.S. Army Women's Museum
• Women's History

--Marc Kupper|talk 23:35, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I have removed Grace Hopper from the list but am thinking we should go ahead with creating Category:Woman General and Flag officers in the U.S. Military or Category:Woman Generals and Admirals in the U.S. Military. I'm undecided which version is "better" but would want to read the USC to see which they tend to use. The Wikipedia public is likely more familiar with the terms General and Admiral meaning I'm leaning in that direction. At present, most of the women included in the category would be Admirals / flag officers as there's been more research/effort put into articles about them on Wikipedia. The category page can also reference the Women in U.S. Military article(s). --Marc Kupper|talk 00:18, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Follow-up thought - I just realized that we need to use the word Notable or something similar in the category title. There are two reasons for this.

1. A title such as "Woman Generals and Admirals in the U.S. Military" implies it includes all women and not the subset that qualify as "notable" for Wikipedia purposes.
2. There are no reliable sources that provide a list of Woman Generals and/or Admirals in the U.S. Military. Thus we'd either need to do original research to create the list.

A title that avoids the word "Notable" is Category:Articles on woman Generals and Admirals in the U.S. Military where it's clear the category is a subset of all woman Generals and Admirals in the U.S. Military. Notability would be implied otherwise they would not have a Wikipedia article. --Marc Kupper|talk 00:53, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Current USN admirals (of both genders) are listed on the navy.mil website and have associated biographies. Their names and pictures in order of seniority are also published annually in various magazines. I assume the same is true for the Army. Some older biographies have been captured at http://www.militarybios.com/. Each nomination to general officer or flag rank is announced via a press release archived on the defense.mil website. The initial advancements of women as generals are well documented in published sources such as Jeanne Holm's book, Women in the Military: An Unfinished Revolution, or by the Women in Military Service for America historians in case the Army is not helpful in providing a list and timeline on their public website. There are a large number of published books and articles on the topic, so original research should not be required, but there are also many existing wikipedia articles, so linking them to the category should give it a good start.

• I would go with a category such as "United States military women generals and admirals" because it is the most direct and equates well with existing categories such as "United States Navy admirals." Only articles and images will be linked, so it isn't necessary to use the word "Article" in the title. In order to have an article, the woman would have to be notable, so I don't think that is necessary either.Mhjohns (talk) 03:51, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
• I did some research to confirm General and Flag officer being analogous. Both in our written information, and the nature of the military history involved with those ranks, we have a bit of a problem. Flag Officer *may* apply to Army/Air Force/Marine General Officers; however General Officers of those services seldom fly flags, therefore although they may have the implicit right to be styled as Flag Officers, this may not in fact be the case. Conversely there is no relationship of Flag Officers to General Officers. Not all General Officers are Flag Officers, and no Flag Officers are General Officers. And so... "Flag and General Officers" seems to make the most sense. The alternative of a template of "Notable Women Flag Officers in the U.S. Military" would contain both Admirals and some Generals (pending research). This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, however it does introduce the issue of clutter. Alvincura 01:26, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

re: "I assume the same is true for the Army" - Sadly, that does not seem to be the case for the Army and Air Force. In reading the U.S. code I got the impression that Flag and General officers were distinct. I know the Flag Officer article says "However, the term can apply to general officers..." but that's not supported with citations.

I was looking at another article entirely related to this one and a thought popped to mind of capping the list off at a specific date. For example "... officers appointed before the year 2000." We are getting to the point that women in the military, and its senior ranks, is a non-notable event. The pioneers did get noted in the general press meaning the odds are high they can be discovered.

I'd like to propose converting this to a category named (crud - I just remembered someone posted somewhere about some other U.S. Military related lists/categories - I want the proposed name to be consistent with them but don't have time at the moment to hunt around.) The category name will be something like "Women Flag and General officers in the U.S. Military". A list/navbox/article carries an implicit notability standard where a category does not other than in this case

1. There is a Wikipedia article about a woman.
2. She has been appointed or served as a Flag and/or General officer in the U.S. Military. This allows for people receiving posthumous appointments and for male flag or general officers that transgender to be included. --Marc Kupper|talk 18:29, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Norma Elaine Brown

First woman to command a wing? Gbawden (talk) 12:33, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

U.S. Navy Admirals

I added the full table of admirals that is available at Women in the United States Navy#Admirals. As WP:NSOLDIER includes "Held a rank considered to be a flag" I decided to wikilink everyone though that results in a large number of red links. Nearly everyone that's red-linked has a Navy bio that we likely could copy/paste from to fill out a cookie cutter page.

For source material the Navy has two lists of people:

• Active officers
• Retired officers

When someone retires the URL of their biography page changes and the Navy is not adding a redirect. If you get a 404 error then see if the URL is of the form http://www.navy.mil/navydata/bios/navybio.asp?bioID=626 where the 626 varies. If so, look for the officer on the Retired officers list. The URLs for retired officers are of the form http://www.navy.mil/navydata/bios/navybio_ret.asp?bioID=54

I have not scanned the above lists for names we could add to this article. --Marc Kupper|talk 06:26, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

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