Are Female Navy Commanders Fired For Behaviors That Male Commanders Practice All The Time?

Cmdr. Tammy Sue Royal, the skipper of the USS Harpers Ferry, was removed for “poor performance jeopardizing ship readiness and is not tied to one specific event,” according to a Navy spokesperson. But Carl Prine notes that San Diego amphibious commanders have been purged heavily in the last year.

This firing made me wonder if anyone has studied Navy reliefs by gender. Do female skippers get fired for “poor leadership” more often than male skippers? I wonder because, in journalism, I know of three women— one at the Washington Post, two at the New York Times —who were fired for being hardasses. Yes, they were. But would males have been fired for the same behaviors? In my experiences, no.

In other relief news:

• The Navy SEAL officer in charge of Special Operations Command Forward—East Africa (which I think basically does Somalia) was removed for alleged sexual misconduct, along with his senior enlisted guy. They have been yanked back to the United States while an investigation gets underway.
• An Air Force colonel in Colorado Springs was charged with raping and hitting people.
• The commander of a wing of C-130s at Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, got booted for high toxicity levels.
• The Navy fired the CO of State University of New York (SUNY) Maritime College's NROTC unit, for “personal misconduct.”
• The Marines gave the big bounce to the commander of the 2nd Battalion of the 6th Marines, T&P;’s intrepid Jeff Schogol reported.

And finally, in an unusually sickening instance, a civilian psychiatrist hired by the Air Force to help female service members who had been sexually assaulted was charged with three felony sexual assault cases against his patients, including rape. I’m against capital punishment, but . . . .

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