Catherine Powell wrote a piece for the Council on Foreign Relations about the U.S. military opening all combat positions to women.
This past month, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter announced the end of the military’s combat ban for women, marking the end of the longstanding prohibition. Women will now “be allowed to drive tanks, fire mortars, and lead infantry soldiers into combat[,]” Carter explained. The Pentagon chief confirmed that he was not making any exceptions, and that women will “be able to serve as Army Rangers and Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Marine Corps infantry, Air Force parajumpers and everything else that was previously open only to men.” Each service of the military has until April 2016 to fully integrate women into combat roles.
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Women in the U.S. military have been, as a practical matter, in combat roles since September 11, 2001. In the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the traditional front lines of war faded and women were in combat roles despite the official ban. As CFR’s Gayle Tzemach Lemmon notes, for many women, the end of the ban just means that they can be officially recognized for the work they have already been doing.
But as Radhika Coomaraswamy suggested at a recent CFR roundtable I hosted, increasing the number of women in various military roles around the world should not simply be a way to expand the capacity of countries to fight war. Indeed, increasing the number of women in combat is intrinsically important as a matter of equality and can enhance the ability of militaries to respond to civilians (particularly the concerns of female civilians). Plus, some militaries have found that women soldiers are more effective at tasks, such as gathering intelligence from female civilians, which can help prevent attacks before they occur. At the same time, women have proven they can be as tough in fighting wars as men—and meet the standards defined by men. Historically, armed conflict involves a form of hyper masculinity and such masculinities continue to function in subsequent peace-building efforts. As women step into combat—and more broadly into positions of power—will this change the nature of peace and security or will access to these positions change women?