SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, NOVEMBER 27, 2012—The combat fighters showed up in skirts and high heels and crisp colorful blazers. One wore an American flag pin in the left lapel of her dark blue suit. Each stepped up to the podium to explain her unique experiences on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Of all the statements made that day, Army Staff Sergeant Jennifer Hunt’s best captured the urgent need for the lawsuit the group had just filed against the Pentagon and was now gathered to announce. The way the Army views male wartime experiences, she explained, is inherently different from its judgment of her experiences and those of the other three women with her who also fought in war. When it comes to advancement, she said, men “still get looked at more favorably for having that combat arms experience. I would have absolutely no chance to make up that… bonus that he gets from having that position open to him.”
Hunt’s blond hair is straight and cascades down her back as she speaks. Her mouth and jaw pull slightly to one side with every syllable, perhaps a lingering effect of the injury she received during her time in Iraq. Her Humvee rolled over an IED, lodging shrapnel in her arms, face, and back.
For that she earned a Purple Heart. The statement she made during a Washington Post interview days after the group announced its lawsuit was even more to the point: “The shrapnel that tore through the vehicle that day didn’t stop because I’m a female.”
One suit had already been filed in May by two female Army reservists—a colonel who had served nearly thirty years and a sergeant major who had served more than twenty. The fact that the military closed off combat opportunities to women, the lawsuit said, meant fewer promotional opportunities, smaller paychecks, and less money for retirement.
Hunt’s suit—the one she filed with Air National Guard Major Mary Hegar (named as the lead plaintiff), Marine Corps Reserve Captain Zoe Bedell, Marine Captain Colleen Farrell, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Service Women’s Action Network—was about recognition for the life-threatening fights women were already waging.
Their goal was to declare the policy barring women from combat—which boiled down to sanctioned discrimination and was in direct conflict with what was happening on the ground—unconstitutional. Continuing to fall in line meant propping up the DOD myth that women weren’t in the very roles that they had been in for more than a decade. The policy had turned women into fighters of convenience for men—ones willing to put their lives on the line for combat missions when men needed them but who also got no credit or benefit for displaying acts of courage. The policy also meant that women weren’t threats to male careers. Female fighters were denied access to promotions that would have pushed some of those same men who needed their help out of contention for spots as officers and high-ranking enlisted men in infantry units. The Department of Defense seemed content with women continuing to lurch forward, broken and used, while quietly and obediently allowing the public to believe the lie that they weren’t sending their daughters as well as their sons off to die.
During the November news conference announcing the suit Ariela Migdal, senior staff lawyer with the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, said, “The servicewomen who have been spending the last ten years trying to accomplish missions in Iraq and Afghanistan are coming back and seeing there really is a brass ceiling.”
In 2011 the military was about 15 percent female. That year there were close to 150,000 troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan; enlisted women were about 3 percent of frontline units.
The year the lawsuit was filed, Rodriguez had already served on the frontlines in the Panjwai District of Kandahar Province in Afghanistan. Near the end of her deployment she was trudging through villages in a district that was once the epicenter of Taliban recruitment and risking roadside bombs and firefights to reach out to village elders and reinforce the face of the US Army as a nation builder intent on strengthening women and communities. By that point in the wars about 150 women had been killed in combat and about 860 injured.
Service for Bedell and Farrell, two lawsuit plaintiffs who ran FETs, closely paralleled that of Rodriguez.
They were on the ground in Afghanistan in 2010. Bedell was in charge of forty-seven women assigned to multiple units throughout Helmand Province. Similarly, Farrell managed up to twenty women during her tour. And like Rodriguez, they experienced restrictions that hindered them from doing the jobs for which they were deployed. Bedell’s and Farrell’s teams had to return to their respective FOBs in the middle of longer missions, they said, because women technically weren’t supposed to be participating in ground combat. To get around that rule, unit commanders shipped women back early, told them to stay on the base overnight, and then, much like Rodriguez frequently had to, wait for a convoy to pass through on which they could catch a ride back to the field to complete the missions (like Rodriguez, the women were forbidden from driving themselves outside of the FOB). Bedell and Farrell say that restriction put them in even more combat danger. The more they traveled, the greater their risk of encountering an IED or ambush attack, all “for a legal façade,” Farrell wrote on an ACLU site blog. “And in some cases, commanders were forced to reschedule major operations due to the lack of an available Female Engagement Team.”
After Bedell returned to the United States in 2011 she left the regular Marine Corps and joined the reserves out of frustration. She felt that her FET work in Afghanistan wasn’t being recognized or appreciated. She saw officer advancement happening much more quickly for male combat Marines than for women like herself. She encountered sexual harassment, and so did her FET females, she said, and she felt helpless to do anything about it.
Perhaps the key to understanding why the military has struggled with equality for women is to examine the reasons why women were integrated into the regular Army. One of the earliest surges of enlistment for women came during World War II. The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (which eventually became the Women’s Army Corps) was created in 1942 for the sole purpose of freeing up men to fight. Women took over the noncombat jobs that men would have been working if they weren’t needed in combat. More than 150,000 women joined a gender-segregated Army, the first women—aside from nurses—to do so. Before then women were contracted to work with the Army but didn’t actually wear a uniform or join ranks. Both the military and the public resisted the idea. It took six years of women working as bakers and telephone operators and, in the case of nurses, performing duties incredibly close to the front for the government to integrate women into Army units with men in 1948. It took another twenty years for the government to allow women to serve in the National Guard and rise to the highest enlisted ranks. In 1972 the Army finally opened all jobs aside from those involving combat or physical risk to women.
In 1978 the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) was disbanded, and the handbook “What Do You Do with a WAC?” (created by the Racial Equality and Equal Opportunity Division of Fort Knox, Kentucky) was released to units during the change.
But the move toward greater gender integration in the 1970s pointed out an even more dangerous contradiction in the military’s treatment of females. That decade was the first in which weapons training was made mandatory for female recruits. Female soldiers had been sent to Vietnam for thirteen years as nurses without even the most basic of combat skills training. It wasn’t until 1977 that the Army made basic training equal to that of enlisted men mandatory. And unlike the guerilla warfare of the Middle East, where the frontlines are no longer clear, the frontlines in Vietnam were much clearer, and women were often crossing it. More than seven thousand women served in Vietnam as nurses, and at least one died from enemy fire. More than twenty-one thousand Army nurses served during World War I, and at least four hundred died. More than twice that number of nurses served during World War II, and more than two hundred died during the war.
And even as women started serving in Vietnam as nurses in 1956 (and during both world wars before that), the highest officer ranks remained closed to them. It wasn’t until an act of Congress was signed in 1967 that women were allowed to get promoted to general. And even today achieving the highest officer ranks is very difficult without credit for combat duty. As of 2013 only 7 percent of the top officers in the military were females, according to a CNN report. That included just one female general in the Marine Corps.
Despite barriers to service, women have come a long way in a very short period of time.
By 1993 the DOD allowed women to fly helicopters for the first time during combat missions—even though those women still weren’t considered combat troops. And in 1994 President Bill Clinton struck down the regulation that forbade women from joining units whose missions involved some combat risk. It was the most significant change for women the military had seen, opening thirty-two thousand jobs to female soldiers and leading to the first DOD mandate to integrate basic combat training based on gender.
I entered one of the first gender-integrated basic training classes in the US Army’s history under the new mandate. I landed in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for training in February of 1995, only months after Clinton signed the regulation that eased job restrictions for women in the service. The new regulation stated that placement for females should no longer be based on whether units took on missions that involved some level of danger or combat risk. It required, instead, for the military to bar women from serving in units whose primary directive was ground combat. In other words, women were allowed to serve in units that may encounter some amount of danger but not units whose primary mission was ground warfare. Actions in Desert Storm and Desert Shield practically forced Clinton’s hand. Units on the ground during those conflicts were using women during critical missions, and the traditional frontlines of war were already starting to disappear. The Gulf War was the first modern war during which two women were taken hostage. Fifteen women were killed on the ground. Some of the tactics used during those wars influenced new basic training protocols.
Fort Jackson in 1995 was ground zero for studying how gender integration in basic combat training could affect military readiness, the conditioning of male soldiers, and women’s ability to handle the stresses of dangerous combat-like conditions around allegedly more aggressive men. The military also wanted to know how training should be altered, if at all, now that women were formally taking on riskier assignments.
During basic I trained side by side with men. Males and females ate together, learned to fire weapons together, were split into two-mile running groups based on speed (not gender), and did push-ups and sit-ups daily together. We learned how to break apart, clean, and reassemble our weapons together. No one got pregnant (as was rumored would happen as soon as the women hit the ground in South Carolina), and there were no conflicts based on gender. In fact, the opposite happened. When faced with challenging circumstances—like going through live fire drills at night as ammunition rounds flew overhead or climbing up and rappeling down walls during obstacle courses—we propped each other up. Every morning we had to run at least two miles to prepare for basic training’s final physical fitness test. That daily run, for me, was the hardest part.
Participating in live fire didn’t scare me—in fact, it gave me an adrenalin rush. I remember screaming with exhilaration once I finished crawling under the barbed wire that was the last obstacle on the live-fire course. As I stood, I looked up at the night sky and could see red flashes of live rounds flying in quick succession overhead. I followed the man in front of me as we both ran the last few feet to the end of the course. The faint outline of our drill sergeant grew larger as we reached the finish line. To my right was another recruit, a male. After I stopped running I turned to him and saw sheer terror in his eyes. I asked him what was wrong, but he didn’t respond. He was immobile with fear. Far above his Kevlar helmet I could see red tracer rounds still streaking the night sky. I could hear loud pops in rhythmic succession as bullets rapidly discharged from their weapons. I glanced behind him and saw other recruits who had started the obstacle course after us, both men and women, stand up and run in our direction. To me that night was the successful culmination of so many things we had learned during an especially intense week of training—how to low crawl on our stomachs face down through the mud, falling into the prone position, moving with speed while protecting our battle buddies during enemy fire. I was proud of myself and the soldier beside me for getting through. Neither of us was injured; we had both finished. The idea that I might get shot—a very remote possibility during training courses like this but not unheard of—didn’t shape or alter my determination. And it didn’t dampen my sense of accomplishment once I was finished. In fact, it intensified it. As much as I was thrilled, the man next to me was terrified. I could feel it. I patted my fellow recruit on the back and told him he would be fine.
But basic training’s two-mile run—part of the physical fitness standards required to graduate that had to be completed in under twenty minutes—was, for some reason, my biggest obstacle. I’ve never been much of a distance runner—sprints were always where I shined. Add a stop watch, and that’s when I freeze. But in spite of my fears, I pushed myself to move up to the next-fastest running group. I was determined to make it out of basic training, and if I didn’t pass the physical fitness test, that wasn’t going to happen. My first day in the new run group I started to flag. It was my turn to get a pat on the back and be told I could do it. The men who ran with me didn’t complain about a woman joining their group; instead, they congratulated me on moving up and told me, when I needed to hear it, to keep going. When my breathing become irregular because I was getting nervous about moving so much faster than I previously had, they could tell. I could hear guys behind me calling out tips: “Rivers, loosen your hands! You’re running too tight. Relax. Relax your shoulders.” “Rivers, breathe. You can do this.” And I did. During the two months I was in basic I cut more than a minute off my run time. My drill sergeants noticed my improvements—not just in running but in my ability to help fellow soldiers. I got up early each morning to help the women in my platoon prepare their battle gear—cover their Kevlar helmets, tidy up and pack their rucksacks. The drill sergeants noticed. I excelled against other soldiers in an informal competition that involved drill and ceremony (those sharply shouted commands like left face, right face, right flank, eyes right). As drill sergeants rattled off the names of movements, soldiers executed them just as quickly. Those who got commands wrong were picked off one at a time and pulled out of formation. It came down to me and one other soldier—an older male who had prior military experience. The drill sergeant commanded: “Right face. Left face. Right flank!” My competitor got the last command wrong, and I was the only soldier left standing. I eventually became platoon leader.
The men on the ground who have worked with women are much less likely to perpetuate doubts about females’ ability to achieve. If they start with doubts, those are often erased once the mission is finished. They see women propping up their brothers-in-arms when needed. And the men on the ground prop up their sisters in return. There are always exceptions, but in my experience it was more frequently the officers, soldiers, and policy makers far removed from the fields of work, training, and battle—enlisted men in units that didn’t frequently deploy or soldiers on the ground who had never worked with women in any intense capacity—who supported regulations that restricted female service.
The baby steps of those Fort Jackson experiments—considered groundbreaking in the 1990s—seem like obvious ones now. When I saw a man who needed help, I gave it. When men saw that I needed help, they gave it. In times of intense struggle, gender difference never played a role in the group I was with. The question of whether the person next to me could protect me during battle maneuvers, finish the live-fire course, or pass their marksmanship test—those kinds of thoughts always played a role. Those Fort Jackson studies were the final steps toward the normalization of gender integration in Army basic training.
To women who have served on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan—and many of the men who have served with them—the importance of opening all combat jobs to women in 2012 seemed just as obvious.
The regulation signed by Clinton was a point of progress some twenty years ago. But as conflicts beyond Desert Storm and Desert Shield continued to push women closer to the front during wars, the groundbreaking 1994 change quickly became outdated. It actually solidified the rule that has kept women from full combat recognition since. And it eventually became the ultimate example of how the military wasn’t willing to back one of its basic principles to “train as you will fight.”
By 2012 in Afghanistan women were doing nearly every combat job that men were. But they weren’t going through the same training as men in infantry units. Infantry training is much more intense than the basic combat training I received and that all soldiers receive, no matter their jobs.
And until women like Bedell and Hunt returned from war and were confronted with noncombat environments that restricted their ability to move up, females who had served before them had simply accepted the restrictions for what they were. But previous generations of women hadn’t been on the frontlines in the same way that women involved in the lawsuit had.
More than anything, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown us how the nature of combat means everyone is a grunt and that all service members, no matter how far from the action they think they might be, actually are on the frontlines.
In February of 2012 the Pentagon made it clear it would eliminate parts of the 1994 regulation, specifically those that didn’t allow women to collocate with direct ground combat units and that excluded women from a few units below the brigade level whose primary directive was combat. In doing that, the Department of Defense admitted that “the dynamics of the modern-day battlefield are non-linear, meaning there are no clearly defined front line and safer rear area.” But Bedell, Hunt, Farrell, Hegar, and plenty of other women wanted more. The Pentagon ruling would only open 14,000 jobs to women. Their November suit demanded that women have access to the remaining 240,000.