Despite progress, female soldiers still face obstacles
Female soldiers endure training but barred from combat
Ban on front-line combat still in effect.
The news that two female soldiers will graduate from the Army’s physically demanding Ranger School this week is a dramatic breakthrough for expanding the role of women in the military, but it won’t lift the ban on women in front-line combat.
Nor will it end a debate about women in the infantry and other “ground combat” occupations that remain closed to them.
The military services have until the end of the year to submit plans for opening all jobs to women. The services can request waivers but would need to extensively document why women should not serve in specific fields.
Officers pledged standards will not decline as a result of integrating women. “It is about can they meet the standard or not, and if they can, we lean toward the fact it would probably be good if we allowed them to serve,” Gen. Ray Odierno, Army chief of staff, said before he retired last week.
The two women who will graduate Friday at Fort Benning in Georgia will get to wear the coveted Ranger tab, a mark of distinction throughout the Army, but they will not be able to serve in the Ranger regiment because of the ground combat ban.
The completion of Ranger School, a grueling two-month course that involves hours of patrolling over mountains and through swamps with heavy packs and little sleep or food, will help prove that at least some women are up to the task.
“There’s never been doubt that women can do the job,” said Nancy Duff Campbell, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center. “The question is what do we have to do to show that.”
The two women who finished the Ranger course were among 19 female soldiers who enrolled in it this year, when the program first opened to women. A third women is further back in the training but remains in the course.
The Army has not released the names of the two women or the 165 men who will graduate in the class.
Women have regularly been exposed to combat over the past decade. More than 280,000 women were deployed in support of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon.
The Pentagon has also opened more jobs to women in recent years. About 220,000 positions remain closed to women out of 2 million jobs in active duty, reserve and the guard, according to the Pentagon.
The main controversy about the role of women is centered on fields such as infantry and special operations — jobs that require strength, endurance and the ability to withstand primitive field conditions for weeks or months at a time.
Many worry that allowing women into their ranks will lead to a lowering of standards and combat effectiveness, despite promises from the top ranks.
“We know that it is coming, and nobody is very happy about it,” said Marine Staff Sgt. Cliff Wooldridge, 27, who earned a Navy Cross, the second-highest medal for bravery, in a hand-tohand encounter with a Taliban militant in 2010.
He said women could be a distraction if integrated into infantry units in the field. “We know what it is going to do to us in terms of combat power and distraction,” he said.
The completion of Ranger School, a grueling two-month course that involves hours of patrolling over mountains and through swamps with heavy packs and little sleep or food, will help prove that at least some women are up to the task.