Let Women Fight
Ending the U.S. Military’s Female Combat Ban
Megan H. MacKenzieMEGAN H. MACKENZIE is Lecturer in Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney and the author of Female Soldiers in Sierra Leone: Sex, Security, and Post-Conflict Development.
UPDATE: January 23, 2013
On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that it would lift the ban on women in combat. This landmark decision reverses the 1994 "direct ground combat rule," which held that "women shall be excluded from assignment to units below the brigade level whose primary mission is to engage in direct combat on the ground."
The policy change is long overdue. The last few decades had made the ban largely irrelevant; increasing counterinsurgency warfare virtually erased the concept of combat front lines and female soldiers' contributions to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were undeniable. The policy had nevertheless continued to officially exclude women from 7.3 percent of army positions, largely in Infantry, Armor, and Special Forces. More importantly, it