SOCOM is committing itself to attracting more women and people of color
As the special operations community takes a deep look at itself after 20 years of relentless counterterrorism missions, it’s seeking solutions for how it can adapt to the much-discussed “era of great power competition” — and that is going to include more women and people of color, according to a recent report obtained by Military Times.
Special Operations Command's Gen. Richard Clarke speaks to an aide during a hearing March 25, 2021, in Washington. SOCOM's diversity and inclusion plan seeks to recruit and maintain more women and people of color into special operations forces. (Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times via AP)
There are no hard-and-fast targets laid out in Special Operations Command’s diversity and inclusion plan, but at 20 pages long, it’s more of a treatise on where the special operations community would like to go.
“All of us understand diversity and inclusion are operational imperatives,” the plan opens. “This Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan provides a roadmap for sustained and direct action toward increasing the diversity of our formation and ensuring all our environments, from the team room to the executive conference room, are inclusive.”
A push to promote more women and people of color into leadership, as well as rank-and-file, positions held overwhelmingly by white, male troops ― decades after racial and gender integration ― is part of a long game.
In response to a request for information, SOCOM told members of Congress in writing on March 1 that not only have the vast majority of special operations forces leadership positions been historically filled by white, non-Hispanic men, they have also been largely special operators, despite the other career fields under SOCOM.
The special operations community also includes Army civil affairs and psychological operations organizations ― military occupational specialties with many more women than, for example, Special Forces or the 75th Ranger Regiment.
Both SOCOM’s operations (J3) and force structure (J8) director “positions have never been filled by a CA or PSYOP MOS,” according to the written response. “Both positions have been filled by Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Operators or Pilots. The gender and ethnicity of the fills have been white, non-hispanic [sic], males over the last 10-years [sic] with the exception of the J3 which was recently filled by a Marine Corps General Officer of Korean, [retired Maj. Gen. Daniel Yoo] non-hispanic [sic], descent.”
Elsewhere at headquarters, women have held other high-level positions: As recently, as 2019, Army Brig. Gen. Michelle A. Schmidt served as SOCOM’s director of intelligence.