Year Event 1908 The Navy Nurse Corps was established; it was all-female until 1965.[3][4] 1917 Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels announced that the Navy would enlist women on 17 March.[29] 1917 Loretta Perfectus Walsh became the first woman to enlist in the Navy on 17 March.[7] 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Public Law 689 creating the Navy’s women reserve program on 30 July 1942.[29] 1942 Lieutenant Commander Mildred H. McAfee, USNR, Director of the WAVES, became the Navy’s first female Line Officer.[29] 1944 Lieutenant Harriet Ida Pickens and Ensign Frances Wills were commissioned as the first African-American female Navy officers.[29] 1944 Sue Dauser, the Director of the Navy Nurse Corps, became the first female Captain in the Navy.[30] 1948 On 15 October 1948, the first eight women were commissioned in the regular Navy: Joy Bright Hancock, Winifred Quick Collins, Ann King, Frances Willoughby, Ellen Ford, Doris Cranmore, Doris Defenderfer, and Betty Rae Tennant took their oaths as naval officers.[31] 1959 Yeoman Anna Der-Vartanian was the first woman in the Navy promoted to Master Chief Petty Officer, and the first woman in the Armed Services promoted to E-9.[32] 1961 Lieutenant Charlene I. Suneson became the first line WAVES officer to be ordered to shipboard duty.[33] 1967 Public Law 90-130 was signed into law; it removed legal ceilings on women's promotions that had kept them out of the general and flag ranks, and dropped the two percent ceiling on officer and enlisted strengths for women in the armed forces.[34] 1972 Alene Duerk became the first female admiral in the Navy.[12][13] 1973 Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677 (1973), was a landmark Supreme Court case [18] which decided that benefits given by the military to the family of service members cannot be given out differently because of sex.[19] 1974 Lieutenant Junior Grade Barbara Ann (Allen) Rainey became the first Navy woman to earn her wings on 22 February 1974.[35] 1974 The first women were commissioned through NROTC.[36] 1976 Fran McKee became the Navy's first female unrestricted line flag officer.[37] 1978 Navy Nurse Joan C. Bynum became the first black woman promoted to the rank of Captain.[35] 1978 Judge John Sirica ruled the law banning Navy women from ships to be unconstitutional in the case Owens v. Brown.