Until the Late 1970's Women Were Openly Discriminated in the National Park Service

Women did not have the right to "look like a ranger" until or even wear a badge until 1978. Before this women wore a unique polyester knit uniform that Engle and Janney-Lucas comment looks like "fast food worker's" uniforms. It took sixty-two years, an Act of Congress, a ruling by the U.S. Attorney General, and much quiet internal protest for women to gain the right to be perceived by the public as National Park Service rangers.

Changes began iwhen the Committee on Interpretive Standards (composed of white male park historians and interpreters) was established. A strong program of recruiting young women for some types of interpretive work. The Report saw women as competent to be interpreters in historical parks, but not in the military or traditional "natural" parks where the prevailing ethic still saw a uniformed ranger as a white male. Women hired for these positions, however, would not wear a standard Service Class "A" uniform, but one of polyester knit with a pillbox hat based on that worn by airline stewardesses (unofficially known as a "buffalo chip").

In 1962 a ruling forbade federal agencies to limit job offerings by sex. Although the ruling forbid "male only" job announcements, as did Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Service continued to do so on ranger positions. In 1967 a discrimination complaint by a woman wanting to apply for a ranger position was met with Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall's reponse which echoed the prevailing feeling in the Service that women were better at public interpretation of "touchy-feely" sites that dealt with culture, society, or sensitivity, but that men were better at interpreting nature and war, and certainly with law enforcement.

In 1964 the first two Service women were admitted to the Albright Training Center ranger training. They ended up in ranger-naturalist or ranger-historian, hyphenated positions, unlike the men's. It was not until 1969 that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued new standards for the ranger series that allowed a woman to hold a ranger position without a hyphen. It was not until 1971 that the first woman was allowed to take law enforcement training and commissioned to carry a gun. And it was not until 1978 that women in the Service gained the right to wear the "man's" uniform, the Service badge, and the "man's" Smokey Bear hat.

SOURCE: The Way We Were:Women and the National Park Service by Reed L. Engle and Carrie Janney-Lucas