Making the West Point Woman: Women’s Integration, the Cadet Uniform, and Institutional Change at the United States Military Academy

This article examines the integration of women into the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1976, focusing on the intersection of femininity, institutional tradition, and military service. It argues that West Point’s leaders navigated a complex set of pressures to reconcile traditions with the female cadets’ presence. Central to this negotiation was the development and regulation of the women’s uniform, which both preserved institutional continuity and embodied army-imposed norms of femininity. The resulting policies institutionalized contradictory expectations and created social tensions that hindered women’s integration into the corps of cadets. Drawing on archival sources and interviews with early female cadets, this study highlights how West Point officials attempted to control both the physical and psychological expressions of femininity.