Pete Hegseth and Women in Combat
I Can't Believe We're Having This Debate Again
There is renewed interest in the topic of women in combat arms because of the nomination of Pete Hegseth to the role of Secretary of Defense and a viral clip of him during an interview on the Shawn Ryan Show.
Pete Hegseth on the Shawn Ryan Show, Episode #143, November 7, 2024
I would like to contribute to the argument against his confirmation by clarifying what we know about Pete’s beliefs on women in the armed services, based on his interview (quotes are based on the happyscribe trancript of the episode he spoke on).
Pete explicitly lists some branches and units he believes women should not serve in, which include: “Seals, Rangers, Green Berets, MARSOC, Infantry battalions, armor, artillery. I'm talking about something that would need strength, [as] a differentiator.”
Two of the redeeming points Pete makes include to say that he understands the role of female engagement teams and that female pilots are OK by him. I want to emphasize this, because ultimately, he still opposes a wide variety of military career fields being open to women.
What should be especially concerning: Pete’s statements illustrate a failure to fully understand why the previous combat exclusion policy was problematic. He does start to unpack how modern warfare started to challenge the notion of being able to exclude certain genders from combat. On forward support companies in Iraq he says, “And suddenly now you have women in combat. That's maybe a modern reality in a 360 battlefield.”
But - perhaps because he has had no reason to do so - he does not explore how the policy failed both men and women in the armed services. Many women who were suddenly thrust into combat, when they performed admirably and honorably, were often quickly moved or reassigned so their commanders could avoid being reprimanded for allowing a female to serve in combat. This often reduced the ability of women to demonstrate continued high performance in combat, and occasionally harmed these women’s careers.
One high-profile example of this was Army Specialist Monica Brown who was awarded the Silver Star for treating wounded soldiers during an attack in the Paktika province in Afghanistan in 2007. However, within a few days of this heroic act, she was “pulled out of the remote camp… because, her platoon [leader] said, Army restrictions on women in combat barred her from such missions.” (Washington Post, 2008)
Since 2013 all combat positions and military occupational specialties (MOSs) are open to both men and women; and the services had until 2016 to fully integrate women into combat arms. Currently, around 3,800 women are serving in frontline Army combat roles across infantry, cavalry, armor and field artillery roles, according to service data reviewed by Military.com.
Thus far, no catastrophic issues have arisen on the integration of women into these roles; and most of the protests that Pete raises are based on the assumption that the only way this was possible was through the lowering of standards. He goes on in the interview to assert,
“And if there's some, you know, hard charging female that meets that standard, great, cool, join the infantry battalion. But that is not what's happened. Yeah, what has happened is the standards have lowered because they, the general comes by and asks a question.”
Pete admits this and his other assumptions on how to fix the military have been fueled by long talks with “a network of a lot of guys.” In his own words, Pete admits he took “months [of] my Saturdays just on the phone, off the record, anonymously with guys in service.” He apparently did not think that interviewing the women serving in those jobs would give him any helpful insight for his future potential job as Secretary of Defense. Perhaps he believes there is an Assistant to the Secretary whose job is to handle all the lady issues.
After dismissing the thousands of women who have passed the standards required to enter their career fields, Pete goes on to assume - I must stress without a ton of input from women in the service -
“…if [women] had their first choice, it probably wouldn't be that an [sic] 11 series job, armor or infantry.”
Pete truly believes that women have only succeeded due to a lowering of standards, that it has not made the fighting force more lethal, and has implied the only solution is to close up these jobs to women again. This is not a strategy that allows for the meritocracy that he claims to champion. There are absolutely always concerns about women in male-dominated career fields and continuously assessing and addressing issues is important; but the solutions that Pete has suggested are a step backward for women. I hope that we see a more qualified candidate succeed in Pete’s place.