“I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.”
That’s what a Fox News commentator named Pete Hegseth said in a podcast in November 2024. Less than two months later, that commentator would be sworn in as the United States secretary of defense. Though Hegseth condoned women serving in the military, he noted that the military would have to lower their standards to include women in combat.
In 2023, women made up 17.7% of active-duty military personnel, or just under 230,000 people. The Marine Corps was 9.7% female, the Army 15.7%, the Navy 20.9% and the Air Force 21.5%.
More than two million women have put their lives on the line over the course of American history to fight for what they believed in. In return for their service, these women have been underpaid, overlooked, discriminated against, harassed, sexually abused and assaulted, murdered and forgotten. In fact, about 1 in 3 female veterans say they experienced sexual assault or harassment while serving.
While women have protected and served the U.S. military, the U.S. military does not protect and serve women.
In 1948, women were first allowed to join the military, but only in noncombatant roles with a cap of 2% total military force. 1994 was the first year women were allowed to fly planes for the military, insultingly late considering women tested planes and trained pilots as far back as World War II. Finally, in January 2013, women were allowed to enter combat roles. Though none did until 2015. Only ten women have ever achieved the status of 4-star general. There has never been a female navy seal, joint chief of staff, secretary of defense, or deputy secretary of defense.
The history of female exclusion in the U.S. military has erased women’s true service from the public view. Women were legally barred from joining the military until the late ‘40s — this does not mean they were not in the military, but rather that they served without recognition, financial compensation or protection and did so while fighting against prejudice.
20,000 women served the Union during the Civil War. 15,000 women worked as telegraph operators, deployed nurses and clerical professionals during WWI. Over 400,000 women served during WWII, from nurses to engineers to flight instructors. 120,000 women served in the Korean War, 11,000 in Vietnam, 40,000 in the Gulf War, and 300,000 in Iran and Afghanistan since the year 2001. Women have always served and have never been adequately recognized.
Aside from being a noble calling, the military offers lucrative benefits for those who enlist. Full tuition, free health care, affordable home ownership and a steady salary are just some of the benefits soldiers can reap with their enlistment. Like men, women in the armed forces face disproportionately heightened risks of suicide. Though, the benefits offered exclusively to women include forced loss of wages to buy things like mandatory uniform purses, high rates of UTIs and PTSD, and, according to a study by Brown University, a one in four chance of rape.
That study found that 24% of all women deployed to Afghanistan were raped or sexually assaulted. Rates of sexual assault at all military academies rose 18% between 2021 and 2022. In 2021, 35,900 active duty personnel reported sexual assault, the vast majority of them women; it was a 25% increase from 2018. 29,000 sexual assaults were reported in 2023, and the Brown Studyestimates a more accurate number would be around 73,000 sexual assaults.
Couple this with the universal physical risk of being in the military and leadership like that of Hegseth, who actively insults his employees, and it’s plain to see that women and the Department of Defense are in a parasitic relationship where the military leeches off the talent of brave, intelligent women and leaves them with pain, stress and a whole host of other symptoms.
Only 50% of active duty women report being in good health. A 2015 study that interviewed 142 female active members during United Nations peace talks found that 87% had to work to show they were as capable as men and 134 experienced sexual harassment. The study found that women were not told about opportunities for promotions and that their bosses discouraged them from applying for leadership positions, and the majority had experienced bullying and extreme isolation.
It is not women’s fault that they are being assaulted, harassed and mistreated. The military hasn’t made significant strides to solve issues that uniquely relate to women. Women have to report loss time for pregnancy but men don’t have to report loss time for injury or addiction. Since women’s toilets aren’t prioritized, uniforms don’t allow women to easily use the bathroom, and the isolation needed to use the bathroom increases a risk of sexual assault, women are very likely to get urinary tract infections, which can lead to kidney and bladder infections.
Women’s uniforms are not designed for women’s bodies, but simply sized-down men’s uniforms. As women and men have different centers of gravity, fat distribution and muscle mass, sizing down men’s clothing does not work. According to the Army Times, 44% of women have problems with fit that are “consequently creating adverse effects on overall lethality and survivability.” This is about more than just clothing — it tells women that they don’t fit in the military, and that their physical health and comfort aren’t important even when it affects safety.
Couple the risks of assault and other female-specific dangers with the universal physical risk of being in the military and leadership like that of Hegseth, who actively insulted his female employees before taking the secretary job, and it’s plain to see that women and the Department of Defense are in a parasitic relationship; the military leeches off the talent of brave, intelligent women and leaves them with pain, stress and a whole host of other symptoms.
Even outside of Hegseth’s comments about female service members, there’s a huge stigma against women in the military. Women are seen as less capable than their male counterparts and make up only 20% of officer positions, a percentage even smaller than the percent of women in the military overall.
It’s a widely accepted stereotype that women are better at being nice, thankful and considerate. Women don’t have a biological difference that makes them better at conflict resolution, emotional intelligence or even laundry. Women are valued in society for “soft skills,” which allow them to excel in certain fields but keep them in a small bubble of acceptable behavior. It’s foolish to assume that men are biologically more suited to the military, and more than that, it’s wrong.
A 2019 Harvard study found that female leaders outscore men in every single leadership competency, from strategic perspective to building relationships. The same study also revealed that countries and states with female leaders had lower fatality rates during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specific to military skills, a study from the 2020 Olympics found that women and men were equally good at shooting rifles stationary targets and that women were better at shooting moving targets. Women are significantly better at listening, have better memories, are better in crises and are better at learning new information compared to male counterparts.
Women are an incredible asset to the military, but the truth is that it’s not safe for them to serve. The danger lies not in heavy boxes or confusing math problems, but in their friends, coworkers and bosses.
When women report crimes, they are ostracised, mistreated and punished in their careers. Military leadership recently came up with a plan to stop sexual assault that involved hiring 2,000 psychologists and training them to do things like workshops about the importance of self-control. But a workshop about self-control means nothing when the heads of the military insult women on national television, when poorly designed uniforms cause infections, and when the richest branch of the richest country in the world allows hundreds of thousands of rapes to occur.
Women in the military save lives. The military takes women’s lives. Until these issues are fixed, the military does not deserve women — and women do not deserve its abuse.
