In case you forgot that in 2015, we still don't even necessarily have legal gender equality let alone social, United States Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter has announced that all U.S. military combat positions will finally open to women.

Read More

Apparently, being in prison isn't enough of a punishment. Nor is the threat of solitary confinement. Now, the military has denied Chelsea Manning's request to follow feminine grooming standards in military prison in what seems to be another attempt to humiliate Manning and disregard her transgender identity.

Read More

Following close on the heels of the announcement that two women just passed US Army Ranger training, the US NAVY Seal program announced that they'll now allow women a shot at making the grade as well.

Read More

An estimated 15,000 transgender people are currently serving in the military. There's no current information on how many transgender personnel have been discharged for being trans.

Read More

In my grandmother's assisted living home stands a very wonky statue which was recently decapitated by a nurse. Her head has been duct taped back together, and there she stands; a statue of a World War II WAC. After all, my grandmother held tightly to those memories of her time serving in the Women’s Army Corp.

Read More

Want a carved pumpkin that will only get scarier as it decomposes? Villafane Studios crafted this one for the Field Station: Dinosaurs park in New Jersey. (via That's Nerdalicious)

Read More

[Trigger Warning] Brian Adam Jones is the editor-in-chief of Task & Purpose. He also happens to be a veteran of the United States Marine Corps.

Read More

Women have long had a tough time in the military, and that's putting it extremely lightly. That' hasn't stopped the U.S. Navy's Michelle Howard, who was the first African-American woman to earn the rank of admiral, and now she's been promoted to four-star admiral—the Navy's highest rank.

Read More

One of silversmith Austin Moore's many geeky rings. BioShock, Doctor Who, and The Legend of Zelda are all well represented in his online shop. (via Neatorama)

Read More

Poodle? Pah. Robot dog. Created by Redditor Trammel for their daughter’s sock hop. (io9)

Read More

If we talk about the Women Airforce Service Pilots a lot, it's only because they were awesome. Classified as civilians working for the Air Force as they performed the same job as (and even trained) enlisted men, unceremoniously dismissed at the end of the war, with their actions unnecessarily classified for thirty years and subsequently omitted from history textbooks. It's been a struggle for the aging members of the WASP to find their proper due, but one such effort went off without a hitch this very week.

Read More

This Friday President Obama nominated Vice Admiral Michelle Howard for her fourth star, meaning that, pending Senate approval, she will become the first female full admiral in US Navy history.

Read More

Christine Fox, mathematician, weapons specialist, and analyst, was just appointed acting Deputy Secretary of Defense, and while she's only set to fill the post until a permanent successor is named, it still makes her the highest ranking female Department of Defense employee in history.

Read More

Yesterday we told you about the first four women to graduate from marine infantry training following the decision earlier this year that female members of the U.S. military should be able to serve in combat. Yay! Gender equality! Progress! Col. Lynette Arnhart is the leader of a team studying how to best integrate women into these combat positions. And she has a beef with the way women are portrayed in the army’s PR materials. Namely: The soldiers used aren’t “average-looking” enough.

Read More

This isn't a big shock, but it is a big achievement. Ten months after the US Secretary of Defense ordered our armed forces to prepare facilities and training so that women could be integrated into combat and infantry positions, four women will graduate from Camp Geiger, home to the eastern Marine Corps School of Infantry. They will be the first women in history to do so.

Read More

How well do you know your female coworkers? Friends? Could some of them be spies? Well, no, that's not very likely. Unless you work in a different sort of business than most of us. And of course the CIA, like any intelligence agency, has a complicated history (and present), but it's still pretty cool that the CIA has recovered from being the sort of government agency with numerous workplace allegations levied at it to nearly gender equal in less than two decades.

Read More

The Wingtip-to-Wingtip Association is a non-profit that's looking for a new way to bring attention to a group of pioneering women whose accomplishments were hidden from the public for thirty years after they were released from service. But their attempt to bring a parade float honoring World War II's WASPs to a nationally televised event is turning up short of funds a mere days before their deadline.

Read More