Is National Vet Girls RISE Day the same as Women Veterans Day?

No, they are two observances on two dates. National Vet Girls RISE Day is February 19, while Women Veterans Recognition Day falls on June 12 and marks the signing of the 1948 Women's Armed Services Integration Act.

What does RISE stand for?

Relevant, Innovative, Successful and Evolving. Active Veterans With Answers sets the four words out on its own site with the initial letters picked out.

Who created National Vet Girls RISE Day?

It grew out of Vet Girls ROCK, a women veterans network that Active Veterans With Answers started in 2017 and ran from Hampton Roads, Virginia. No government body or legislature created it.

National Vet Girls RISE Day

Next celebratedFriday, February 19, 2027

Women veterans, the fastest growing group in the US veteran population, gather every February 19 to trade resources and rebuild the camaraderie they miss after leaving the service.

See how to celebrate

Countdown to the day

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Last updated September 3, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEFebruary 19

OBSERVED INUnited States

CATEGORYCareers

SUBCATEGORYMilitary

ORIGIN

Institutional Initiative

FOUNDING ENTITY

Active Veterans With Answers

FIRST OBSERVED

2017

“The resource network came first, in 2017. The February gathering grew out of it.

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A small veterans charity built a national day around its own dinner.

Active Veterans With Answers, a veterans information charity whose federal tax exemption took effect in October 2016, began the Vet Girls ROCK initiative in 2017 as a resource network for women veterans. The initiative built the observance around an annual February 19 gathering, and later took the name Vet Girls RISE.

Read the Vet Girls RISE missionvia activeveteranswithanswers.org

INTRO

Women veterans built this day themselves and bought their own dinner

One February 19 gathering for National Vet Girls RISE Day left a public record behind, and it ran four hours at a Chili's on West Mercury Boulevard in Hampton, Virginia. The organizers' own listing set out the terms at the bottom, after the invitation. You must purchase your own food.

The charity behind it was not holding back a budget. Active Veterans With Answers reported revenue of $13,417 for the fiscal year ending August 2018, the one year on file with the IRS carrying financial figures. It closed that year with net assets of minus $15,672.

That is the shape of the thing. The women this day honors are the ones who built it, and they built it out of pocket.

ORIGINS

Vet Girls RISE Day history

INTRODUCTION

Until 1948, a woman in uniform had a return ticket built into her enlistment. Only nurses could serve in the regular and reserve forces in peacetime. Everyone else was sent home after each conflict ended.

The law that changed this changed it halfway. Truman signed the Women's Armed Services Integration Act on 12 June 1948, and it made women permanent members of the armed services for the first time.

CHAPTER 01

The two percent ceiling

The same act wrote a limit into the statute. The number of women who could serve was capped at 2 percent of all personnel, and their full participation in combat units and combat aircraft was barred outright.

Recruitment did not rush the ceiling. In June 1950, two years in, only 3,200 women were on active duty across the services.

CHAPTER 02

The list that outlasted the cap

The barred jobs outlasted the cap by decades. On 3 December 2015 Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that from January every military occupation would open to women without exception, closing a list that still held nearly 220,000 positions.

The receiving end moved slowly too. VA had only begun providing gender-specific care to eligible women veterans in 1992, under the Veterans Health Care Act.

CHAPTER 03

A post office box in China Grove

The day itself starts in that gap, and it starts small. A group of retired service members set up Active Veterans With Answers to help veterans work out which benefits they were eligible for, and the IRS made its tax exemption effective on 3 October 2016. One name sits on the paperwork: Pollyanna Neely, principal officer on a return filed from PO Box 43 in China Grove, North Carolina.

A year later the charity opened a second front. Vet Girls ROCK began in 2017 as a resource network for women veterans, describing itself then as based in Hampton Roads, Virginia, a different state from the address on its tax filings.

The February meet-up grew out of that network rather than the other way around. By the 2020 observance the day answered to Vet Girls RISE. The charity still runs the day, and still runs the benefits seminars it was set up for.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Women made permanent, then capped

President Truman signed the Women's Armed Services Integration Act on 12 June, granting women permanent status and limiting them to 2 percent of all personnel.

Every military job opened

Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced on 3 December that all military occupations would open to women from January, without exception.

A charity gets its exemption

Active Veterans With Answers received federal tax exemption effective 3 October, filing from a post office box in China Grove, North Carolina.

Vet Girls ROCK begins

The charity started Vet Girls ROCK as a resource network for women veterans, run out of Hampton Roads, Virginia.

A second annual February meet-up

On 19 February the group held what it billed as its second annual meet and greet, at a restaurant in Hampton, Virginia.

The day answers to RISE

By the February observance the name had changed from Vet Girls ROCK to Vet Girls RISE.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Vet Girls RISE Day by the Numbers

2.1M: Living US women veterans, 2023
11.3%: Women's share of US veterans, FY2023
17.7%: Women in the active-duty force, 2023
52: Median age, US women veterans, 2023

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Vet Girls RISE Day

One battalion cleared two years of mail in three months, twice

The Six Triple Eight, formally the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, worked under the motto No Mail, Low Morale and got through the backlog twice over. Congress awarded it the Congressional Gold Medal in March 2022.

A women's flying unit passed 60 million miles

The Women's Airforce Service Pilots formed in August 1943 out of two earlier flying units, and flew more than 60 million miles in two years.

More than 400 women fought in the Civil War armies

VA counts more than 400 women in the Union and Confederate ranks, and about 35,000 serving officially in the First World War.

The charity's slogan is a demand, not a thank-you

Active Veterans With Answers puts one line across its site: Because I Served Without Question, I am Entitled to Answers to Questions Now.

The old name never fully went away

A Cincinnati television newsroom published its story on National Vet Girls Rock Day in February 2023 and updated it again in February 2024, four years after the observance had taken the RISE name.

We left our homes to serve, proud as can be. From the blue yonder, to the desert and even the sea. We stood tall, we crawled low, we transformed to fit our Country's need.

N. KingVet Girls ROCK

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why National Vet Girls RISE Day Matters

RECOGNITION

The fix was not a campaign. It was rewriting the question.

Women veterans so often say they are not veterans that the Center for Women Veterans changed how it asks. It now puts the question a different way: did you serve?

VISIBILITY

A campaign built to make women veterans visible

The I Am Not Invisible campaign began in February 2017 in Portland, Oregon, started by then Oregon Woman Veterans Coordinator and Army veteran Elizabeth Estabrooks. It reached 50 states, 75 cities and 27 Native American and Alaska Native nations, capturing more than 3,053 portraits.

ACCESS

Congress built an office for this in 1994

Public Law 103-446 set up the VA Center for Women Veterans in November 1994 to push for better access to benefits, services and opportunities. Three decades on, 45.0% of women veterans are enrolled in VA health care, against 50.5% of men.

GET INVOLVED

How to Observe National Vet Girls RISE Day

Host a table and split the check

The gathering that anchors this day is a table at a restaurant, nothing more elaborate than that. Book one, invite the women you served with, and let everyone pay for their own.

SAVE

Save the Women Veterans Call Center number

VA staffs a line at 1-855-829-6636 with trained women representatives who provide information on eligibility, enrollment and local referrals. It runs Monday to Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Eastern, and Saturdays until 6:30 p.m.

READ

Read what the Center for Women Veterans publishes

The Center for Women Veterans is the office Congress created to advocate for this group inside VA. Its own pages set out what benefits a woman veteran can claim and how to start.

LOOK

Look up a veterans charity before you give

Many tax-exempt groups file annual returns that anyone can read, searchable by name on ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer. Reading a group's revenue and expenses takes a minute and tells you what your money is joining.

Follow the organizers for this year's meet-ups

Active Veterans With Answers still runs the day and posts where the gatherings are happening. Its Vet Girls RISE page carries the initiative's mission and current activity.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Vet Girls RISE?

1 / 8

The 1948 Women's Armed Services Integration Act let women serve permanently, but capped them at what share of all personnel?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance rather than a federal or state holiday, so offices, schools and banks all stay open. The Federal Register carries no document naming it, and no official status was found elsewhere.