Still a Long Way to Go: Women in Combat

A woman on a bus showed me a roadmap of stitches going up and down her left thigh, calf and ankle. “I got shot in the leg.” She said it as if she had dropped a drinking glass or gotten a flat tire. The woman was a U.S. soldier being moved to a treatment center in the U.S. after being shot in Iraq.

Nearly everyone knows someone in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard or the Marine Corps. Every time there is a hometown news program discussing the war, anxious friends and relatives keep an eye open in case someone they know is listed as hurt, missing in action or killed.

The woman on the bus had family and friends back home worrying about her condition, but grateful that she survived. Her scars probably bewildered some; most everyone knows women are prohibited by federal law from being used in combat roles. A recent House Armed Services vote upheld this tradition, which many view as detrimental to women in general, and a major obstacle for women in the military.

I wore a military uniform for thirteen years; in all that time women
in uniform have made strides in an environment that, at one time, was stereotypically male to the point of absurdity. The effect of those advances on the military is profound. The average military member is now required to take sensitivity training on sexual harassment, discrimination, and interpersonal relations. All that training would have been scoffed at twenty years ago as a waste of time.

In spite of the improvements, much work still needs to be done before the military can truly claim to operate in the 21st century. At present, outdated values still hold sway over policymakers and
Department of Defense leadership. Women are unable to hold jobs
directly related with military service. Direct combat positions are
still male-only, but there are thousands of women who are willing to take these high-risk assignments.

Not everyone, as author Chuck Palahniuk once wrote, wants an easy, fun job; in a time where the Army is missing its recruiting goals by as much as forty percent, can the Department of Defense afford to turn any able-bodied volunteer away? Some Army commanders-many of them women- are frustrated by the current administration’s unwillingness to change the rules that essentially keep women relegated to their support missions left over from World War Two. In practice, women do much more, but the current prohibition on women in combat is a hangover from the mid 1940s.

When I volunteered to serve my country in uniform, I took an oath
requiring me to surrender my life for the United States Constitution. Every person who joins must take the oath, every woman, and every man. By doing so, we all basically told the government we were willing to die. Unfortunately, women have to be willing to die with the understanding that they won’t get the same chances to serve as their male counterparts.

I think back to the woman on the bus, her leg permanently scarred by an Iraqi bullet. As the medical troops loaded her stretcher onto a military plane, I began to understand the seriousness of the issue; she wasn’t in violation of the law when she was hit; by definition she had a support role in the combat zone. She lay strapped to the stretcher, a contradiction. She was forbidden to serve her country the same as the men in her unit, but required to share the danger.

More than fifty years after World War Two, we are still shamed by the military’s “Leave It To Beaver” era values when it comes to equal treatment for women. When U.S. soldiers helped overthrow the Taliban, it was hailed as a major step forward for the women of Afghanistan. It’s too bad we can’t lead by example with women in uniform. Instead, mixed message is sent.

Policymakers at the Department of Defense still cling to a narrow-
minded view of women in combat; ideals closer to the Taliban than
current thinking in American society. The most recent embarrassment comes by way of the House Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee, which upheld the ban by a 9-7 vote in May. The America they represent went out of vogue more than forty years ago. Since that time we have had tremendous strides in civil rights and equal opportunity. It’s a shame the military seems incapable of catching up to modern times. Untilit does, women can expect to be shortchanged through their entire military careers simply by virtue of not being allowed the same
choices as their male colleagues.