The Vice Chief of Naval Operations visited Naval Station Rota, Spain, March 8 and 9 as part of a visit to the U.S. 6th Fleet area of operation.

Adm. Michelle Howard's two-day visit included a tour of the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71), a visit to U.S. Naval Hospital Rota, as well as other commands aboard the installation, followed by two all-hands calls with Sailors and Marines assigned to Commander, U.S. Naval Activities Spain.

Aboard Ross, Howard toured the ship which included a visit to the bridge, a briefing with Ross Commanding Officer Cmdr. Tadd Gorman and a duty section all-hands calls on the fantail.

While touring U.S. Naval Hospital Rota, Howard had the opportunity to visit many of the service-oriented clinics including pharmacy, Medical Home Port, the Emergency Room, physical therapy, and laboratory services. While at the hospital she even had a chance to meet the newest member of the Rota community during a visit to the maternity ward.

Before leaving Spain, she held two all-hands calls where she discussed gender integration, cyber security, and the results of a Department of Defense (DoD) study.

Howard discussed what she thought was required to achieve a balanced Navy.

"We're at about 17 percent women across our force both officer and enlisted. When I came in, it was about 5 percent," said Howard. "I personally believe that we need to get to a place where we are about 25 percent women. We have enough women who are coming into recruiting, wanting to join that we should be able to get to about 25 percent women in the force."

Howard also spent some time explaining the importance of the cyber community with regards to Sailors. Speaking on cyber awareness and relation, Howard highlighted that many Sailors use social media and sometimes 'cross the line.'

"For many of you, you live this whole other life in another domain. When you are out there in that domain and you're on a social website, you tend to be very candid and then sometimes cross the line, so we've got to figure out what's going on in the social media domain and help get to good behavior in the virtual world just as we expect good behavior in the physical world," she said.

Howard also discussed some of the preliminary results of the Workplace Gender Relations Survey. The survey received 29,000 responses, which specifically covered unwanted sexual contact. According to the results, in the 12 months before the survey was taken, 5.1 percent of women in the Navy said they had unwanted sexual contact, while 1.2 percent of men reported the same thing.

Howard said that the results are better this year and that tells Navy leadership that behavior has changed.
"We had better behavior in the previous 12 months before the survey was taken than a couple of years before," she said. "What that tells me is the training we provided ... that had an effect."

She added "The really great news is that when any of you saw something happen, 9 out of 10 times - 90 percent of the time - you as an officer [or a] Sailor, stepped up and did something. You took action."

Another action Howard has taken is working to encourage men to report incidents of unwanted sexual contact. Across the Department of Defense, 1 in 4 people feel comfortable reporting an incident, Howard said. In the Navy, that number is 1 in 5. Of the men, however, that number is drastically different.

"For our service, if something happens to me and I'm a woman, about 1 in 3 women right now come forward ... if I'm a guy and something happens to me, it's only about 1 in 13. You guys, you men, do not feel comfortable telling someone. Over the next year, I've said we need to figure out why men feel more uncomfortable reporting, and help them when something happens, make a restricted or unrestricted report."

Howard rounded out her trip to a visit at Camp Mitchell where she met with Seabees deployed with Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 11, before holding her second all-hands call with Sailors and Marines assigned Commander, Naval Expeditionary Task Force Europe and Africa 68.

For more news from Naval Station Rota, Spain, visit www.navy.mil/.