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PETTY OFFICER 2nd Class Kareen Lacroix likes that she catches people off guard when she tells them about her career in the U.S. Navy. The Brooklyn native said that, in her civilian life, she dresses “very dolled up.” Her appearance doesn’t let on that she has served her country for 13 years — first as a hull-maintenance technician welding and fixing the plumbing in the gritty bowels of ships, and then as a member of a funeral honors team for veterans who die.
“Some people are totally taken aback when I tell them I am in the military,” said Lacroix, 36, who grew up in BedfordStuyvesant. “I may not look like what they have in mind for someone who serves in the armed forces.”
Lacroix (photo inset right) is now a naval recruiter — and she makes signing up women a priority. In her pitch to prospective enlistees, she tells them there is no difference between men and women who wear a uniform.
“If a woman has an issue with differentiation in pay, they will never have to worry about that in the armed services,” she said. “If they’re the same rank as a male counterpart, they will never have to worry about being paid less.”
Lacroix is among a proud tradition of women enlisting in the military for the past 100 years.
In 1917, during World War I, women were officially allowed to join the Naval Reserve Force. They mainly served in clerical positions.
Now there are more than 208,000 active female enlistees and officers currently serving in the Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force. They hold all positions, including combat roles.
Women make up 15% of all armed services, according to retired Navy Capt. Lory Manning, the director of government relations at the Service Women’s Action Network. There are also 2.2 million living female veterans — and that number is on the rise, Manning said.
Manning served for 25 years, from the Vietnam War era to the mid-’90s. She saw firsthand how women’s roles in the Navy have evolved.
When she started, only female nurses could be on naval ships. And when a woman became pregnant, she would have to leave the Navy. All those rules — and more — changed during the course of Manning’s service.
“When I first went into the Navy, women were not allowed to command authority over men,” she said. “I actually became a commander and had that authority over men and women who worked for me.”
Retired Marine Allison Jaslow, the executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said because the number of women in the military has increased dramatically, the government has a duty to meet their needs when they exit the armed services. Jaslow, 35, who lives Greenwich Village, was an Army captain who served two combat deployments in Iraq in the 2000s. Her organization is pushing Congress to pass the Deborah Sampson Act, which is named in honor of a woman who disguised herself as a man to serve in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. The act would help women veterans better access health care, including peer-support systems. Jaslow knew she wanted to join the Army since she went to Fort Myer in Virginia for career day in the eighth grade. “The Army swept me off my feet that day,” she said. “Service is something that still drives me to this day.”