MOODY AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. -- Members from Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, travelled to Joint Base Langley Eustis, Virginia, March 28, 2022, for the Air Combat Command’s third iteration of Sword Athena.
The Sword Athena program is designed to diminish barriers to readiness for women in service and improve the livelihood of military families.
“Our vision is to build current and future leaders armed for action,” said Maj. Katie Amerson, ACC Sword Athena 2022 lead. “We want to hear from the Airmen working the mission about what barriers they are facing and how we can work together to identify a solution.”
Each ACC base has representatives that collect and up-channel ideas to the ACC program office. They also work to recognize and solve problems as it relates to women and family-centric hurdles.
“The topics we have submitted include best practices for childcare, deployed pet-care, better fit for female uniforms and more,” said Tech. Sgt. Chelsea Mclemore, 93rd Air Ground Operations Wing Sword Athena representative. “Our goal is to improve the livelihood of women and families throughout Moody AFB by reducing as many obstacles as we can.”
To help identify these obstacles, Moody’s Sword Athena representatives needed to collect data about matters affecting Airmen here.
“We created a survey to gather information about barriers that affected Moody’s Airmen,” said Mclemore. “It became the foundation for the topics we submitted to ACC because it directly reflected the needs of the 93rd AGOW and 23rd Wing.”
Within this survey, better fitting uniforms for women was of high concern.
“One of our greatest barriers to readiness was improper fit of women’s uniforms,” said Mclemore. “Just recently, ACC invited female Airmen from Moody to participate in the Sword Athena Female Fitment Event in May of this year.”
ACC plans to showcase various flight duty uniforms, maternity uniforms, body armor and upcoming flight equipment updates at this fitment event.
“This is going to mean so much to the women who spoke to me,” said Mclemore. “Not only did ACC listen, but they’re going to spend money to send our members to help fix this (fitment) problem.”
The program needs more support in identifying problems and potential solutions to other issues across the service. If anyone is interested in learning more about how they can help, reach out to the 23rd Wing or 93rd AGOW Sword Athena team lead at 229-257-4303.