Peter Abbott 4 - Female Admirals are rare beings
In 1993 the WRNS was disbanded and females were integrated into the Navy. This meant that women no longer had their own promotion and rank structure, but joined the Navy's existing system alongside the men.
Here Sir Peter explains why there are still very few senior women in the Navy, and how the attrition rate (or rate of women leaving the service) affects this.
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Extract Text (Duration1.00)
There aren't enough senior officers yet who are female, you can count them on the fingers of one hand and they haven't got up to Admiral yet, but that's a question of time. There seems to be a higher attrition rate on women, both the ratings and the officers, they leave. It was always a problem with the males, they tended to leave. There's an exodus around the age of 30, 30 - 35, 40 that sort of time, and there are various financial inducements to try and get you to stay. But the female attrition rate between that age seems to be even higher, so female Warrant Officers and female Admirals are rare beings and whether that's always going to be a problem I'm not sure.
It all started to change around the early to mid 80s
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Bubbling up was a female desire to be on equal terms
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She joined the Navy not to go to sea
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Female Admirals are rare beings
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0.59 mins - mp3 File
