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“During World War II, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) created the U.S.’s first spy network, and Adeline Hawkins (a mother of three) managed the agency’s message center in Washington, specializing in secret codes or ‘ciphers.'”
Source Reference: https://www.history.com/news/cia-women-spy-leaders
Some of earliest code crackers and ciphers are women. After the war, when the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was founded in September 1947, several female intelligence officers rose in ranks.
Women are unlikely spies which made them perfect for the role.
Among the more famous of America’s female intelligence officers are:
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[Profile 1]
Eloise Page who was born and grew up in Richmond, Virginia. She learned piano as a child and originally hoped to be a professional musician.
Page began her US intelligence work during World War II in May 1942, working under William J. Donovan, head of the CIA‘s predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services.
She subsequently became the first female Deputy Director of the Intelligence Community staff and chaired the Critical Collection Problems Committee. Within the CIA, she became a well-respected terrorism expert.
Source Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eloise_Page
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[Profile 2]
Virginia Hall was an American who worked with the United Kingdom’s clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in France during World War II.
Source Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Hall
Known as CIA’s “Limping Lady”, she posed as an elderly farmhand while she worked throughout Europe organizing spy networks and smuggling supplies to resistance fighters. Her efforts helped destroy the Third Reich, which called her “the most dangerous of all Allied spies.”
Source Reference: https://www.history.com/news/cia-women-spy-leaders
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Overtime, each generation of female officers break the glass ceilings tied to societal and gender bias of their time.
Creating new paths of opportunities for those after them.