HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah -- In an effort to continue to advocate for women serving in the Air Force, Hill is standing up a Women’s Initiative Team.
The base-level team’s aim will be to help remove barriers so it is easier for women to continue serving in the Air Force, and will be a direct link to the larger effort of getting after women’s issues at every level. The team will include military and civilian men and women from all ranks and grades.
“The Women’s Initiative Team’s mission is to be an advocate that influences a woman’s propensity to serve the Air Force,” said Col. Jenise Carroll, 75th Air Base Wing commander. “Its role is critical in helping shape the policies moving forward throughout the Department of Defense in diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.”
Carroll has experience advocating for women’s issues, as she has worked closely with the Air Force’s WIT, an official Department of the Air Force Barrier Analysis Working Group. Specifically, she was influential in the Air Force changing its hair standards for women to better address differences in hair texture and density.
“My time working with the Air Force WIT, getting the ball across the finish line for the new female hair policy, was incredibly rewarding, but is just one small step for women in removing barriers and getting after Air Force orders to ‘Accelerate Change or Lose.’”
Other major accomplishments of the Air Force WIT include securing convalescent leave for miscarriages and still births, standardized permissive TDY for fertility treatments, allowing parental caregiver leave to ensure male Airmen and Guardians are authorized primary caregiver leave, ensuring female security forces body armor fits properly, and designing a maternity flight suit.
Hill would become the second installation-level WIT working group in the Air Force. The first base-level WIT stood up at the U.S. Air Force Academy earlier this year.
The first WIT meeting will be Nov. 30. This virtual meeting will include barrier analysis training, which is required for the team to become an official Installation Barrier Analysis Working Group. If you are interested in being a member of the Hill WIT, contact 1st Lt. Robert Snarr at robert.snarr@us.af.mil.