The United States’ military will open all combat roles to women, Pentagon Chief Ash Carter announced in a press conference on Thursday.
“Our force of the future must continue to benefit from the best America has to offer,” Carter told reporters during a Pentagon briefing. “This includes women.”
The various arms of the military submitted their recommendations about the possibility of opening all combat jobs to women in September. Only the Marine Corps requested exemptions to the policy.
Carter overruled the request, because, he said, the military should operate under a common set of standards. “There will be no exceptions,” he said.
The decision to admit women to any role in the military for which they are qualified comes three years after the Pentagon first eliminated its ban on women serving on the front lines of combat. The move opened up thousands of additional military jobs to women.
The shift in policy means that the first two women to graduate from the Army’s Ranger School in August will now be allowed to apply for positions their elite training qualified them to take on. The women were among 19 women and 381 men who first entered the school in April. Less than 100 of them completed the physically and mentally demanding training which prepares soldiers to lead combat operations.
Lance Cpl. Brittany Dunklee is one of seven women who successfully completed trainings on tanks and armored vehicles at Camp LeJeune in North Carolina.
“I’ve done it,” she said. “So why can I not [participate in combat operations]? If I can physically do it, why can’t I?”
Recent studies have examined how gender plays in to physical strength, endurance, speed, and marksmanship. More privately, military personnel discussed whether allowing women to participate in combat missions would interfere with “unit cohesion.”
Many of the women who have proven their physically up to the task feel its unfair to deny them a place based on fears that they’ll alter the chemistry of group.
“After a while, you’ve been training together for so long, you’ve been living together and working together and sweating, and everybody’s suffering together,” said Sgt. Kelly Brown, who trained with Alpha Company, the infantry unit. “I’ve had some of the guys I was working with say, ‘Hey, I wouldn’t have a problem if you were serving with me in combat.’ “
Now, Brown and other women will get a chance to do so without gender-based limitations imposed by the military.