Jessica Ruttenber

speaker

323 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 30 Jul

Jessica Ruttenber’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Truth in the Barrel with Amy McGrath · Women With More Military Experience Than Pete Hegseth | Devil's Cut · 30 Jul 2026 podcast

You're disqualified.

You cannot stay in service if you become pregnant.

And we had about five cases that women were challenged being removed from service due to pregnancy.

And eventually, one of them stuck.

And they were able to overturn the policy, which is why we can serve today.

But then they changed the policy to say something such as, women might find pregnancy and motherhood incompatible with service.

So we still could voluntarily separate.

And that kept on going until that's kind of where I got into the Pentagon.

And I didn't realize how much that impacted people's careers when they had biological children, especially on the parental part of the mother.

That pregnancy discrimination wasn't recognized in the military until 2020.

So you were, yes, we had protections for, you know, doing A, B or C per career field if you were pregnant.

But overall, if you were discriminated against for being pregnant, there was no protection for you like there was for gender and race and religion.

Well, three or four years ago was right after I got out of military service.

And I actually thought my advocacy wasn't needed anymore, that the women behind me, it was their turn to pick up the baton and just fine tune some small things that we needed to work on.

But I quickly saw in the last couple of years that wasn't the case and that these individuals were no longer allowed to advocate for themselves within the institution.

which is why a lot of veterans started speaking a little bit more vocally.

And I will say, having been in the Air Force, not the Navy and the Marines, that I got to see what it was like to be led by women who were allowed to fly in combat.

So if they were flying in

combat in 1993 like a Sharon Kressler for their first F-16 pilot and I saw people like General Van Ovos make all the way to four stars and she wasn't allowed to be she was like one of the last women that couldn't be a fighter pilot she made it to the Pentagon at three stars became an AMC commander basically the highest level the transcom commander so I got to see when you remove those barriers

women not being capped at the senior leader jobs because you had to have this A, B, and C background.

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