Equality--Not Equivocation : Aspin’s initiatives need to open up military for women

The continuing debate over whether women should be allowed to volunteer for military combat jobs is a case study in the perils of incrementalism. Far from defusing the issue of combat service, the military’s policy of slowly loosening the restrictions that historically have hamstrung women has served instead to generate ever more heat on the services to move faster toward complete integration of men and women.

Defense Secretary Les Aspin is caught smack in the middle of this revolution of rising expectations, having inherited several controversies.

Last fall then-President George Bush’s Commission on the Assignment of Women in Combat recommended allowing women to serve on most surface combat ships but keeping them off the crews of combat aircraft and out of ground combat units. Yet Bush left office without acting on the commission’s recommendations.

The Tailhook sexual harassment scandal is also unresolved; release of a report on the 1991 aviators convention, expected to be highly damaging to the Navy, is held up pending the naming of a new secretary of the Navy.

The Navy, which wants to improve its tarnished image, recently proposed putting women aboard some of its men-only warships, a move that falls short of the commission’s more sweeping recommendation. But at the same time the Air Force announced that it will permit only pilots from combat units to become fighter pilot instructors, a move that will, in effect, foreclose a key class of jobs to women.

That’s why Aspin’s announcement last week that he is preparing a package of initiatives that will open new combat positions to women throughout the armed forces is another step, but only a step, in the right direction. Rather than let the Navy move on its own and let the Air Force implement a policy that would in effect restrict jobs for women, Aspin said, the combat issue must be reviewed as a single package applying to all the services. “Consistency--that’s got to happen,” he said. He’s right, but along with consistency Aspin and the services need to demonstrate clear, continuing progress toward full equality, not more equivocation.