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The 2016 U.S. Naval Ratings change was a partially rescinded decision by the United States Navy to change the enlisted classification structure of its forces. The changes were started as an effort by Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus to make the Navy more gender inclusive. As the initial review order by Mabus continued it was expanded by the Chief of Naval Personnel to include changes designed to make the system more efficient and applicable to civilian job titles. The changes to the naming conventions were ultimately overturned following widespread dissatisfaction from the public and enlisted personnel, with some classification changes being implemented.

History

On January 1 2016 Ray Mabus issued a memo to the Chief of Naval Operations calling for an "update of position titles and descriptions to demonstrate through this language that women are included in these positions" and to "Please review the position titles throughout the Navy and ensure that they are gender-integrated ... removing 'man' from their titles."^[1] In June, the Chief of Naval Personnel, Vice Admiral Robert P. Burke, announced the review was being expanded with further input and a larger working group to make changes intended to make naval rank structure more inclusive, bureaucratically efficient, and applicable to civilian job titles.^[2]

In September Burke announced in an administrative message that Navy sailors would be referred to by their rank instead of by their rating. E1 through E3 Sailors would be addressed as "Seaman", which effectively removed the distinction of E1 through E3 Sailors having community specific titles such as "Hospitalman", "Airman", "Fireman" or "Constructionman". E4 through E9 Sailors would no longer be referred to by their rating title such as "YN2" or "Yeoman Second Class" and would instead be referred to as "Second Class Petty Officer." Personnel would instead hold a Naval Occupational Speciality (NOS), and were able to qualify to hold more than one specialty allowing them to promote in more than one NOS based on vacancies available in the different NOS they hold.^[3]

Subsequently, a petition objecting to the changes on the Obama Administration's website topped the threshold of 100,000 signatures required to trigger an official response.^[4] In response Burke said that the Obama administration would support the Navy's decision to remove rating titles.^[5] The White House then affirmed its support the Navy's decision and stated "Organizational changes that require a cultural shift can cause friction during transition periods, but the President has confidence in the decisions made by U.S. Navy leaders and agrees that the benefits in future years will outweigh growing pains in the next several months."^[6]^[7]

In response to objections, Secretary Mabus told an audience at the National Press Club in October:^[8]

"It's to quit segregating women. We do it by uniforms; women wear different uniforms. Can you imagine if we ask another group to wear a different kind of uniform?".

"Ratings names change all the time, all the time. When I was in, 45 years ago, the people that were in my division were radiomen and signalmen. We don't have any of those anymore. Those ratings have changed. Corpsmen, our medics, that rating came in after World War II," Mabus said. "We change these things all the time, and I thought that it was important to be gender neutral."

Citing continued objections from enlisted personnel, the Navy announced in another administrative message that the old Ratings names would be restored saying, "effective immediately all rating titles would be restored and the effort to use only NOS identifiers would be abandoned temporarily.^[9]^[10]^[11]