Women’s Equality Day: Female security force assessor overcomes obstacles and inspires through leadership

Blackburn entered the Navy as a cryptologic technician when no slots were available for master-at-arms. But after two years at Lackland Air Force Base, her first duty station, she had the opportunity to attend master-at-arms training, her true passion.

Blackburn is one of the many exceptional women at Commander, Navy Region Hawaii who did not let gender stand in the way of pursuing their career goals. We spoke to Blackburn in the days before National Women’s Equality Day, which commemorates the ratification of the 19th amendment on Aug. 26, 1920, giving millions of women across the country the right to vote.

Blackburn reflected on the women who inspired her, why gender equality is important, and how she hopes to inspire other women.

Name one female figure who inspires you and why?

My mom because she did a lot of jobs that were not that female centric. She worked at a brick plant [doing] manual labor. I have a picture: she’s got a hard hat on, she’s got gloves on – out there looking like a construction worker.

She retired from UPS. She was a delivery driver.

She was very hard working and very vocal about how the younger generation needs to understand where they were then and why they fought so hard to get where they are now. She still reflects on some of the things growing up, how she was restricted and in what her parents were restricted in like voting, the simple stuff, the things they could and couldn’t do and it was a big fight. I know that she’s one person who really doesn’t want us to forget about that.

Is there a military person who inspires you?

At my second command, there was a senior chief, a MACS. Her name was Knight. She was one of the few in our rating and probably the first senior chief that I’ve met in our job field. She knew what she was talking about. She went in every day and fought hard to do what was right. She didn’t back down. It was very much a male-dominated command, especially among the chief’s mess then, so it was very admirable to see her in that office leading the department … when we needed to do our training, our operations, everything. She was behind it, she was supporting us. It was admirable because I hadn’t seen that before.

What is a challenge you faced when you started your career?

There was a stigma around females only doing office work. I struggled with some of it as a master-at-arms. I grew up in Oklahoma, so we shot guns, but I didn’t have to know the weapon to the same extent I have to know now, like taking it apart piece by piece and racking the 240 machine gun. It was a brand new 240 machine gun and they were like, you don’t have to muscles to be able to do that because it’s hard. It’s stiff and takes muscles. I actually ripped the skin off my hand practicing on this brand new 240 because I refused to let them say that they were right because I couldn’t do it because I was female.

How do you hope to inspire or empower other women?

I'm a mother now and my family means everything to me. It's really hard sometimes to balance that work and family life. The pendulum can swing either way too far sometimes. At one point in time, I was one of those people saying, I can't do this, how am I supposed to do my job? How am I supposed to be in the military and raise a child, especially if you're single, but you can. There's a lot of people out there who proved it.

The way I would like to inspire people is with leadership. If you provide people the support that they need to also be a mother, to have a family, they will come back and reward you tenfold. They will try that much harder at work because of the support you give. The inspiration I would want to give is to support them and their family's needs.

What does Women’s Equality Day Mean to you?

It’s another day towards not having any more firsts. No more of the first female to be an astronaut, no more of the first female to be president. Every Women’s Equality Day is just another reminder that we should be running out of firsts for us. There should be no more. That it’s just this person did this because they’re the best fit for that job or they worked the hardest.