The government and the military were the last bastions of male domination. Women joined the labor force in numbers when the men went off to war in the 1940s, and they had no intentions of going back to homemaking when the men returned home. Women’s groups struck up campaigns for suffrage, for equal pay, and not least for inclusion in the military. At first they were admitted as ground crew, but as times changed even the the government had to admit they could not keep women out of the cockpit.

On this day, July 31, in 1991, the U.S. Senate vote overwhelmingly in favor of overturning a 43-year-old law that barred women from flying warplanes in combat.

Some 30,000 women served in the first Gulf War, and although they did not fly over Baghdad, they did pilot helicopters bringing food and supplies to soldiers and transporting them around as needed. Their bravery had not gone unnoticed, and an amendment to the 1992 military budget gave the armed forces the option to include women in combat pilot roles.