Tailhook Affair May Signal New Era for Navy Women : Defense: Ugly scandal is seen as accelerating changes for females in the military, including serving in combat.

WASHINGTON — For one Navy woman, the pain and humiliation of the Tailhook scandal began to lift a few weeks ago when a small office joke started making its way into the banter of her unit.

At the water fountain, in office doorways and en route to the cafeteria, Navy men and women would occasionally touch each other on the elbow patch of their standard-issue Navy sweaters and laughingly agree that this was “definitely a green zone”--the Navy’s newest term for an area on the body where a casual touch would convey no disrespect.

“This has almost gotten to be a very healthy joke,” the female officer said. “And we know it’s OK now.”

While such gestures may seem small, military women hope that they signal something far greater--an end to the tensions generated by the Tailhook scandal and the beginning of a new era in their treatment. Indeed, as ugly as the Tailhook affair became, it has apparently aided the cause of women in the Navy and may eventually do so for women in the rest of the armed services.

As the Navy begins legal proceedings against officers who allegedly groped and fondled 83 women during three days of alcohol-drenched partying at the 1991 Tailhook Assn. convention in Las Vegas, it also is laying the groundwork for more profound changes in the status of Navy women.

Long barred from serving on combat ships or flying warplanes into combat, women would be allowed to sign on aboard both by the turn of the century, if a long-term Navy plan is approved by Defense Secretary Les Aspin.

The Tailhook scandal has been a “watershed event,” Adm. Frank B. Kelso, chief of naval operations and the Navy’s top officer, said Friday. “I don’t think anybody will ever forget Tailhook for a long time, but I believe they recognize that we’re going to work very hard not to have any Tailhooks again.”

Last summer, while the Defense Department began investigating charges of sexual assault, Navy leaders called for sweeping cultural change to banish sexual harassment from the service’s ranks and instituted top-to-bottom training sessions to teach men and women to identify instances of harassment and discrimination and to create a working environment of mutual respect.

While they taught larger lessons about integrity, courage and teamwork as “core” naval values, those sessions were designed to teach specific skills as well, like how to distinguish between a co-worker’s “green zones” (OK to touch), “red zones” (off limits) and “yellow zones” (consider carefully).

“Initially, there was a hesitancy by a lot of males about what they should do and how to act,” said Lt. Taylor Kiland, a Navy spokeswoman in San Diego. “But with continued training, all of us have become more comfortable about confronting the issue together.”

Almost inevitably, the ferment in the Navy’s ranks generated debate over whether military women could ever command the respect of military men so long as they were barred from combat roles in the services.

The seeds of that change may have been planted during the Persian Gulf War, in which women served and were killed performing a wide range of military roles. But the Tailhook scandal did keep the issue of women’s second-class status “in the public eye, and that helped,” said Cmdr. Rosemary Mariner, one of the Navy’s most experienced female aviators. “The Navy leadership has always wanted to do the right thing. And Tailhook maybe helped focus them on what the right thing is.”

Kelso, asked on Friday whether Tailhook has prompted the Navy’s decision to open new paths for women, acknowledged that the scandal may have helped turn his own thinking on women’s assignments in the service. Only two years ago, Kelso had opposed the opening of combat ships and planes to women, but today he has become a quiet but powerful force behind the proposals.

“Oh, I don’t think there’s anything I’ve done in my life that Tailhook hasn’t affected in some way,” Kelso said.

Out in the fleet, the “culture change” mandated after Tailhook erupted appears to have prompted a similar shift in attitudes among many younger sailors, he said.

Kelso said that, for the first time in his career, he recently had a service member ask when women would be coming aboard his ship. “That tells me there’s a culture change in the way people are looking at” relations between men and women in the service.

A February, 1992, poll conducted by The Times suggests as much, showing that 66% of Navy enlistees approve of opening combat jobs to women--a figure exceeded only by Air Force enlistees, 69% of whom approved such a move.

At the same time, many--although certainly not all--Navy women believe that the backlash against them following the scandal has begun to ease. For months after accounts of sexual assault at the Tailhook convention became public, many Navy men resentfully avoided women, and female service members felt more than ever like interlopers in a male world.

“It has not had a positive effect on anyone’s morale,” Kelso said.

Ironically, Navy officials said that reports of sexual harassment filed by Navy women appear to be on the rise. While the reports clearly indicate a continuing problem, many Navy officials see a more positive explanation, citing similar phenomena in civilian settings.

Reports are increasing because Navy women, after years of suffering silently, now believe that the system will hear and act on their complaints.

Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.) said there has not been as much change as she would like, but that Tailhook “certainly has made people in the Navy take this issue of sexual harassment more seriously. And one of its effects is that women feel more empowered than they’ve ever felt before.”

But some Navy women say the most vocal holdouts against the Navy’s new attitude include Navy aviators, the group most directly involved in the Tailhook incident.

“Within naval aviation--they’re the slower learners,” said one Navy woman who declined to be identified. She said any post-Tailhook thaw has not yet come to her unit. “To make change, first you have to admit you made a mistake.”

Interviews with several male aviators last week exposed such continuing resentment, some of it aimed at women.

“When did we get appointed the paragons of morality in America?” demanded an aviator who said Friday that he remained “incensed” about the public focus on the Tailhook affair. “A bunch of sailors? What’s wrong with this picture?”

It also is not clear that the other military services have taken to heart some of Tailhook’s central lessons, several critics said. While other military branches have instituted sexual harassment measures, Schroeder said, “there’s that service rivalry among them, the feeling that, ‘Aren’t we glad it happened to the Navy and not us? We are not the problem.’ ”

Other services also are less interested in expanding the roles of women. The Air Force appears ready to close off several key flying jobs for women pilots, and the Army and Marine Corps are holding fast against opening further jobs to women.

In opening a mid-April meeting of civilian women advising Aspin on women’s military issues, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Merrill A. McPeak said, “I think it is a mistake to open up bombers and fighters to women,” and he wondered aloud about the impact on the morale of male pilots.

Asked Friday whether the Marine Corps, like the Navy, is exploring new military opportunities for women in the wake of Tailhook, Commandant Gen. Carl E. Mundy Jr. said: “The Marine Corps feels very good about the opportunities for women that we offer.”

Barbara Spyridon Pope, a former assistant secretary of the Navy, said, “It’s going to be up to civilian leadership and Aspin to direct and work with the services,” and make the connection between women’s roles in combat and their status in the workplace.

“The Navy was on point on this,” Pope said. “They had to be. But these attitudes that led to the incidents at Tailhook aren’t unique to the Navy, and that point should not be lost on the other services.”

Times staff writer H. G. Reza contributed to this story from San Diego.