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Should Women Go to War?
| Article
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20621 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1992 |
2,589 Words |
| Author
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Chris Warden
Chris Warden is a Washington-based writer and an editor for
the National Journalism Center. Rebecca Garrison, a graduate
of Miami University and the NJC, also contributed to this
article. |
In the year following the Persian Gulf War, several incidents propelled the issue of women in the military back onto the front pages.
·U.S. Army Flight Surgeon Maj. Rhonda Cornum, one of two female POWs, told a presidential commission that she was "violated manually, vaginally and rectally" by her Iraqi captors.
·According to U.S Army documents obtain by the Army Times, 24 female soldiers were sexually assaulted by U.S. military men during Desert Shield/Storm.
·Some 26 Navy women, about half of them officers, were sexually assaulted by their male comrades at the now-infamous Tailhook Association convention of Navy and Marine Corps aviators in September 1991.
And while the commission's final report on the advisability of assigning women to combat positions is due in September, the federal government has already, in part, weighed in. last year Congress enacted legislation allowing women to fly in combat, if the services so wish it, marking the first time Congress has supported putting women in combat roles.
But should women serve in combat? And if they do, what will that mean to the nation's military capability?
To answer those questions, it is necessary to look at where women stand in the military, how they got there, and the impact of an expanded female contingent on military readiness.
Women Under Fire
The picture for women in the military has changed drastically in the last two decades. After 1975, women could enter the nation's military academies. And in the 1980s, many more military jobs opened up to women, so that by the end of the decade women made up about 11 percent of the two million or so individuals in uniform. They began serving as military police, air traffic controllers, mechanics, firefighters, and so on. In fact, until last year women could serve in all but the 3 percent of military occupations designated as combat positions.
This expansion of women's roles in the military, however, blurred the line between combat and support roles. Many of these support roles. Many of these support positions are deployed, according to battle plans, right up near the fighting. In such positions, women could expect to come under
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