Women in the Military

Lucy Brewer dressed as a man and served aboard the frigate Constitution during the War of 1812. Today there are 221,000 women in the U.S. armed forces, about 10% of the total, and under a Defense Department directive just announced they have more jobs open to them than ever before. But they can’t hold jobs likely to involve combat, even though the concept of wartime front lines is far more nebulous than it was in Lucy Brewer’s day.

The department says that women may now fly some Navy and Air Force reconnaissance planes, work in Air Force engineer and airfield units, and join the Navy construction battalions--the Seabees. Over objections by the Marine commandant, the department also ordered that women serve as Marine guards at embassies. The new orders open to women about 4,000 jobs that previously only men could fill. In December the Navy had opened 9,000 more jobs aboard logistics ships.

In addition to job discrimination, surveys at bases in Europe and the Pacific have found that military women consider sexual harassment a major problem. Last week the Defense Department reiterated its strong policy against such harassment.

Base commanders must make clear to junior officers and enlisted personnel that such behavior will not be tolerated. As David Armor, the senior Pentagon official who chaired the task force that recommended the tougher policy, said last fall, “You’ve got to work on leadership.” It can’t be done overnight, Armor added, but the military can establish criteria for leadership and for promotion that take into account “the proper respect and treatment of human beings.”

Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci’s decision to study again how close to a combat area women can serve may prove as significant as the number of jobs newly opened to women. Under 1948 law, women are barred from military positions that would bring them into direct combat with an enemy. As the number of women in the services has increased, so has their restiveness with this restriction, because it closes off some key jobs on which promotion and higher pay are based.

When the law was passed, the front lines of combat could be drawn in the jungles of the Pacific or between ships at sea. Today technology and terrorism allow no easy distinctions. The result is a crazy quilt of openings and restrictions on jobs for women. When the USS Stark needed repair and logistics support in the Persian Gulf last spring, it got that support from the USS Acadia, whose crew of 1,336 included 240 women. As of last November there were 13 women on cruise missile firing crews, and women also help maintain these missiles; 74 women serve on Minuteman missile firing crews. And missile sites undoubtedly would be primary targets in a conflict.

Congress already had before it proposed legislation that would require the Defense Department to conduct a test of assigning women to more combat support jobs. Rep. Beverly Byron (D-Md.), who introduced the legislation in December to prod the military into action and who chairs the House Armed Services subcommittee on personnel, said at hearings Thursday that she viewed the changes as merely “a beginning, not the end of the process.” Clarifying the political question of the role of women in combat situations is a debate whose time is coming--if not now, soon.