Should women be in combat?
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What is the debate about women in combat roles?
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth came into his job promising a war on wokeness and weakness in the U.S. military.
No more pronouns. No more climate change obsession. No more emergency vaccine mandates. No more dudes in dresses. We're done with that shit.
Hegseth has taken aim at women. He's challenged the idea that women should serve in combat roles, as they have for 10 years now. He's danced around whether women make the military less lethal, including at his Senate confirmation hearing.
Commanders meet quotas to have a certain number of female infantry officers or infantry enlisted, and that disparages those women who are incredibly capable of meeting that standard.
Next month, he's updating the Army fitness test to make it more difficult and to make the standards the same for men and women. Coming up on Today Explained, the war over women warfighters.
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I'm Noelle King. Sana Kurt is an investigative reporter at The War Horse. This is a national nonprofit newsroom that covers the military and veterans. Sana recently wrote a piece titled, Women Have Served in Combat Roles for a Decade. The Pentagon is Reopening the Debate.
Pete Hagsath has been pretty clear that he is skeptical of women in combat.
Because I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn't made us more effective, hasn't made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.
He's made statements in public in his book during his time on Fox News saying that women should be able to serve in the military, but that combat roles specifically are not suited for women.
When I'm talking about that issue, It's not about the capabilities of men and women. It's about standards. Standards that we, unfortunately, over time, have seen eroded in certain duty positions, certain schools, certain places, which affects readiness, which is what I care about the most, readiness.
Hegseth has talked a lot about standards and specifically sort of how they've fallen in recent years. Grooming, like uniform standards, these little things that make the military sort of disciplined, saying they've sort of fallen by the wayside. But the big one that I think he's interested in is physical fitness standards specifically.
What are the physical fitness standards that he's referring to? What does he mean?
In general, the military branches have an annual or semi-annual physical fitness test that all service members take, sort of regardless of what you do in your day-to-day job. And that tests how in shape you are, how fit you are. And I think when he's talking about physical fitness standards, he's generally talking about those standards.
So for decades, the military I joined, there were different male and female physical standards because men and women are different, and that's understandable. But there were certain jobs, combat MOSs, that were only for men, and so you had a male standard.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the debate about women in combat roles?
0:01–6:17
2
What are the new physical fitness standards for the military?
6:17–9:36
3
How has women's participation in combat roles evolved?
9:36–12:29
4
What challenges do women in the military face?
12:29–17:45
5
What is Pete Hegseth's stance on women in combat?
17:45–21:07
6
How is the Pentagon addressing the question of women in combat?
21:07–25:23
7
What impacts do changes in military standards have on women?
25:23–27:37