Combat positions in the U.S military are officially open to women now, but combat within the military with women being assaulted by men has been going on for decades.  One in three women in the military are sexually assaulted while they are in the US military. Military programs to prevent sexual assault have not been effective with those charged with educating soldiers on sexual assault are frequently the perpetrators.

 

Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel.  She also served 16 years as a U.S. diplomat in U.S. Embassies in Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Nicaragua, Grenada, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, and Mongolia.  She was on the first US State Department team to go to Afghanistan and helped reopen the American Embassy there in December 2001. Ann resigned from the U.S. government in March 2003 in opposition to President Bush's war on Iraq.  Since then she has challenged many policies of the U.S. government including its war, extraordinary rendition, torture, illegal imprisonment and assassin drone policies.  She has travelled to Gaza 6 times and was on the 2010, 2011 and 2015 Gaza Freedom Flotillas and is an organizer for the 2016 Women's Boat to Gaza.  She is also working on peace for the Korean peninsula with Women Cross the DMZ and was in Pyongyang and Seoul in May 2015 with the 30 woman international delegation.

 

Event contact: Kerrie Hogan (kerrie.hogan@anu.edu.au)