Does anyone know what the current official policy is of the U.S. military regarding womwn in combat? Are they FULLY integrated? Or are they prevented from certain roles. If so, which ones?
I’m not going to point you to the official policy (probably on the Pentagon website) but here’s a good article .
About a month ago, there was a flurry of articles about this. The short answer is that women are not allowed to fill certain jobs (front line jobs), but because of the way the war in Iraq is going, they are essentially on the front lines.
- Peter Wiggen
My google search turned up lots of sites all of which said that women are still not assigned to combat units. However, this is small comfort in all current military operations were there is no front line and therefore no communication zone behind it where forces can be shielded from enemy action. In fact support units which do include women are more likely to be attacked because they are less well equipped to fight back. Not because of the women but because of less training and weapons for combat.
In US forces in Iraq, women make up about 8% of the soldiers, but only 2% of the dead have been women. (Online sources say 33-37 servicewomen killed, out of the approximate 2,000 total killed.)
so even if they are not assigned to actual active combat, US servicewomen are still being killed in Iraq. Just not as often as servicemen.
And figures on civilian casualities, both men & women, are very unreliable. But pretty clearly quite a bit higher than soldiers.
I’m trying to determine what the U.S. policy is regarding women in combat. Any ideas on where to go?
the policy is changing all the time, varies from service to service, and has official and semiofficial status.
"The supposedly “unofficial” Women in the Army Point Paper includes a subtle but momentous change in the wording of current Defense Department regulations, which the Army does not have the power to make. Current rules prohibit the assignment of female soldiers from assignment to “battalion size or small units which are assigned a primary mission to engage in direct ground combat or which collocate routinely with units assigned a direct ground combat mission.” (AR 600-13, as affirmed by DoD, 1994, emphasis added).
The new wording would only exempt female soldiers from such assignments when the land combat battalions are “conducting an assigned direct ground combat mission.” (emphasis added) Under this new “concept,” female soldiers in forward support companies won’t be collocated, even though they will be in the FSCs, because they really won’t be there when the battle begins. "
lots more in http://www.cmrlink.org/WomenInCombat.asp?docID=245 and http://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/bibs/wmcbtots.htm
For instance in the British services there are many women on the warships and in the planes. They will be fired on and vice versa.