Thousands of Women Serve in Combat Roles. Pentagon Nominee Hegseth Says They Shouldn’t

A squad leader from the 25^th Infantry Division discusses the next phase of a squad live fire exercise with his team leaders during a security halt at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii on March 30, 2021. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sergeant. Alan Brutus)

Posted: November 19, 2024 --- Military.com | By Steve Beynon , Drew F. Lawrence and Konstantin Toropin

Updated November 18, 2024, at 8:11pm ET | Published November 18, 2024 at 6:19pm ET

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, President-elect Trump's pick to lead the Pentagon could mean upheaval for the careers of thousands of women serving in the military. Pete Hegseth, a now-former Fox News personality, stunned Washington as Trump's pick for Secretary of Defense (SecDef). With seemingly no experience in defense policy and a modest military career -- 13 years as a part-timer in the National Guard, culminating in the mid-level rank of major -- Hegseth's nomination raised eyebrows across the defense establishment.

It's unclear how Hegseth would lead the Department of Defense (DoD), the largest federal department and among the world's largest bureaucracies. But he has made clear, in his own words, that he is critical of military service by women and more specifically opposes female troops serving in combat roles. "It hasn't made us more effective, hasn't made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated," Hegseth said on an appearance on "The Shawn Ryan Show" earlier this month.

On that show, Hegseth told the host that he was "straight-up saying we should not have women in combat roles." He shared similar sentiments in his book published in June saying, "Women are life givers, regardless of what the abortion industry might want us to think." Hegseth no longer works for Fox News. 3,800 women are serving in frontline Army combat roles across infantry, cavalry, armor and field artillery roles.

The data includes active duty, reserve and National Guard, and encompasses enlisted and officers. Among them, fewer than 10 female Green Berets serve in the Army's most elite units, according to multiple defense officials with direct knowledge. At least one of those women is transgender. Additionally, one woman is currently advancing through the rigorous Special Forces training pipeline, signaling a gradual but significant shift in the makeup of the Army's combat forces.

Meanwhile,151 women have graduated from the Army's legendary Ranger school, a grueling 61-day combat leadership course. In the Marine Corps, nearly 700 women are serving in combat roles, including 112 female infantry riflemen and 15 Marine officers. Since fiscal 2018, the number of Marine women in combat roles has more than tripled for enlisted and increased sixfold for officers. Removing those women from combat arms roles could trigger a major crisis within the military, forcing thousands to transition into other career fields.

Such a shift would cause significant logistical challenges, including whether enough vacancies in other roles would exist. Additionally, the Pentagon could face enormous costs associated with retraining those women, further straining tight defense budgets and potentially disrupting overall force readiness. Some of those women could be forced out of the military altogether, and it could also have a chilling effect, setting women back years in military hierarchies after rapidly expanding their footprint in recent years.

Hegseth dedicates a significant portion of his recently published book to criticizing the inclusion of women in combat roles, strongly insinuating -- without offering evidence -- that they benefit from preferential treatment. In certain cases, he claimed women are unfairly lauded as war heroes. Specifically, Hegseth cites several instances in which women have been awarded medals for valor, saying one woman who earned a Silver Star -- one of the top recognitions for combat bravery -- was swiftly awarded because there was "an agenda."

"They don't care how many battles we lose as long as our dead are diverse," he wrote. "We can see this in how the woke PR machine has spun stories of female service members." Hegseth has pointed to claims from a male friend, who alleged being wrongly accused of sexual assault or harassment by 2 women in an Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program during his time teaching at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. Details about any investigation or whether the accusations were substantiated remain unclear. "He soon realized the biggest danger to his career was female cadets at ROTC," Hegseth wrote about his friend. 

An investigation by Military.com found insufficient oversight over ROTC programs has allowed senior officials to misuse their positions. Allegations include sexual advances, harassment and assault of young women in the program, many of whom face limited avenues to report such abuse. Hegseth claimed that Admiral (O10, 4-Star) Lisa Franchetti, the top Navy officer and the 1^st woman to hold the post, was unqualified for the job and was chosen for the role because "politics is all about optics instead of results.” "Naval operations being weakened won’t matter to anyone,” he added.

The Integration of Women

The exclusion of women in direct ground combat roles was lifted little more than a decade ago by the Pentagon, and the full integration into all military roles came in 2016. The decisions generated some friction and incidents, particularly in the Navy, in the beginning. Despite the critical roles of Female Engagement and Lioness Teams during the Global War on Terrorism -- which put women at the front lines to adapt to the cultural gender differences in Iraq and Afghanistan -- the Marine Corps has been historically the most reluctant service to officially accept women in combat roles and integrate them force wide.

After former SecDef Leon Panetta moved to lift the ban on women in direct ground combat in 2013, the Corps was the only branch to request an exception, which was rejected. In 2015, the Marine Corps issued a 4-page summary of findings from an experiment that assessed the performance of all-male and gender-integrated volunteer control groups during infantry tasks.

The summary reported that mixed units in the study performed slower, were less accurate during shooting tasks and that women in those groups sustained more injuries than their male counterparts. However, the full study said that the mixed-control groups succeeded in complex tasks and did not reflect changes in morale, The New York Times reported in 2015.

The study was also panned by critics as having methodological flaws, to include not having clear standards set in place, experience gaps between the male and female Marines volunteering for the experiment, failing to adequately assess if individual female Marines were up to the task, rather than the collective group measurement, and -- according to one top official at the time -- institutional bias.

"It started out with a fairly large component of the men thinking this is not a good idea and women will never be able to do this," then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said of the Marine Corps' study on NPR. "When you start out with that mindset, you almost presuppose the outcome." Meanwhile, the Navy, which is structured and operates differently from the 2 land warfare branches (Army & Marine Corps), considers its submarine service -- which is all volunteer and, until 2010, all male -- to be akin to a combat role.

There are currently 730 women serving in the submarine force, according to Navy officials. The Navy integration efforts, which began in 2010, were marred 4 years in by a scandal that involved nearly a dozen sailors secretly recording their female shipmates while they showered. Then, in 2019, sailors aboard the USS Florida were investigated and punished over allegations of a "rape list" of female sailors stationed aboard the submarine.

However, the Navy has also managed to cultivate a cadre of female sailors who have not only risen through the ranks of the submarine service but have begun to take leadership roles.  Two years ago, the Navy announced that a female sailor, one of the 1^st to serve on submarines, was named as the USS Louisiana's top enlisted official. The same year, the Navy also tapped a female officer to serve as the 1^stExecutive Officer of a submarine.

Navy officials say they plan to expand the number of subs with women aboard from 54 boats up to 61 by 2033, and new submarines, like the recently commissioned USS New Jersey, are being built with integration in mind. The Navy has also opened Naval Special Warfare roles to women, including special warfare combat crewmen and SEALs, but a Navy official confirmed to Military.com that while women have attempted the rigorous training needed to qualify for those positions, none has succeeded to date.

Combat Roles as Career Path

Rising to the top ranks of the Army or Marine Corps has often depended on experience in combat arms -- a career path that remains critical for those aiming for the service's most powerful positions. For example, every Army Chief of Staff, the 4-star General (O10) who oversees the Army, has come from a combat arms background since the position was formalized in 1840, and no woman has yet ascended to the position.

The same pattern holds for the Sergeant Major (E9) of the Army, the highest-ranking enlisted soldier who advises both the service chief and the Secretary of the Army, a civilian position. Here, too, the position has always been for those with combat arms experience, including infantry, cavalry, artillery and Special Forces backgrounds. Meanwhile, women's involvement in combat operations extends far beyond the specific roles they are now allowed to fill.

When the Pentagon under SecDef Ash Carter opened all military jobs to women in 2016, it was estimated that approximately 10% of military positions -- around 220,000 jobs -- had previously been closed to women. Those restrictions included not only direct combat units but also vital support roles in frontline units, effectively limiting women's participation in some of the most pivotal positions within the military. The lifting of all remaining exclusions to women in 2016 was somewhat of a formality, reflecting what had already been happening on the ground for years.

Women had long been fighting -- and dying -- alongside their male counterparts, particularly in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, where the absence of clear frontlines meant that even traditionally non-combat units often found themselves in the middle of intense firefights. "Women have fought and died in every U.S. conflict since the American Revolution," Emelie Vanasse, a former Army infantry officer and one of the 1^st women to pass the service's grueling Ranger School Course, told Military.com. "Our combat service is not new; ending the ground combat exclusion policy was merely a recognition and a continuation of years of dedication to the defense of our nation."

No Recruiting Slump Among Women

As Hegseth's nomination threatens to reignite a debate over female troops, women appear ready and willing to serve. The larger branches of the military -- particularly the Army -- have struggled with a persistent recruiting slump in recent years. A review of internal Army data by Military.com revealed that much of this decline stems from young men, who are disproportionately less qualified to enlist compared to young women.

"There's a narrative that this was some sort of feminist movement, and it's in some ways hurting readiness," said Katherine Kuzminski, who studies military personnel issues at the Center for a New American Security. "In reality, we've had a challenging recruiting environment. Women are more likely to graduate high school or have a GED; they're outperforming young men cognitively. "We've seen real growth in young women in sports, and so the ratios of physically fit young women versus young men we see shifting in favor of young women," she said.

Female recruitment in the Army has remained steady since 2013, with an average of about 10,000 women enlisting annually. In contrast, male enlistments have seen a sharp decline, dropping 35% over the same period -- from 58,000 in 2013 to just 37,700 in 2023. Overall, only about a quarter of young Americans are eligible to serve, due largely to rising obesity rates and an inability to meet the military's academic entrance standards.

Boys have been falling behind girls on test scores for years. "It has nothing to do with being 'woke.' I truly believe the best, most qualified person should get the job -- in a ruthless profession where people's lives are on the line, that matters even more," Vanasse said. "If you exclude women from combat positions, you exclude an entirely capable, qualified population. You weaken the lethality of the military."