Three women in Congress introduced a bill on Wednesday aimed at ensuring women in the military receive equal pay and bear the same cost for uniforms as male service members.
The Equal Pay for Servicewomen Act directs the Department of Defense to ensure gender equity in the cost of military uniforms, following a Government Accountability Office report released in February that showed women troops can pay at least twice as much for their uniforms as men, and in some cases can pay nearly 10 times what men pay out of pocket for their uniforms.
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Reps. Julia Brownley, D-California, Jackie Speier, D-California, and Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., introduced the legislation.
"I’d heard repeatedly what the Government Accountability Office report found: women servicemembers pay far more than their male counterparts on uniforms," said Brownley, chair of the House Women Veterans Task Force. "hese gender-based inequities are antiquated, and we have a duty to ensure that all servicemembers are treated fairly and do not incur disproportionate out-of-pocket costs for uniforms."
Speier, chair of the House Armed Services military personnel subcommittee, said the Defense Department requiring women service members to pay more for uniforms than men "is blatant gender discrimination, pure and simple."
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"The military requires servicewomen to buy swimsuits, dress pumps and other items that are either not required for servicemen or that have less-expensive equivalents for men, and GAO found that servicewomen have been more affected by mandatory uniform changes that must be covered out of pocket by the servicewoman," Speier said, adding that the legislation would end the "unfair and sexist 'pink' tax ... on America's brave servicewomen."
The bill includes four recommendations from the GAO report on inequality of military uniform costs, including:
- Developing criteria to decide which uniform items are "uniquely military" to reduce differences in out-of-pocket costs across services by gender;
- Periodically reviewing items included in the branches' calculation of clothing replacement allowances for enlisted troops to ensure consistency and address any differences by gender;
- Forward plans related to uniforms to the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness for review;
- Review military service plans for changing uniform items to decide if any potential out-of-pocket cost differences exist among the branches or among genders within a service and make needed adjustments to ensure equity.
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Over a 20-year career, an enlisted woman Marine is likely to pay nearly 10 times what a male Marine may pay out of pocket for his uniforms. In the Navy, enlisted women sailors can pay up to three times what their male counterparts pay. In the Army, women enlisted soldiers are likely to pay nearly double. In the Air Force, men may have thousands of dollars in surplus after being reimbursed for their uniforms over 20 years, while women owe, the Government Accountability Office report found.
The total initial value of military uniform elements for newly enlisted troops varies from about $1,600 to $2,400. While the branches provide annual clothing allowances to replace or obtain required items, across all the service branches, women were reimbursed on average about 8 percentage points lower than men. Some items are also specifically excluded from the clothing allowance, which means they're not reimbursed, increasing out-of-pocket costs for women and men.
But, on average, the total value of those excluded items was more than double for women than men, putting the burden on purchasing non-reimbursable items on women in the military to the tune of hundreds or thousands of dollars.
The Department of Defense has made about 18 changes to uniforms over the past 10 years, generally making uniform items more expensive. Many of those changes disproportionately increased out-of-pocket costs for women in the services, particularly women officers.
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Reach Abbie Bennett: abbie@connectingvets.com or @AbbieRBennett.
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