A year has passed since officials at the U.S. Department of Defense decided to open up combat jobs previously closed to women, and directed all the services to craft gender-neutral standards for those jobs or explain why they should be excepted by Jan. 1, 2016.
While the issue of whether women can or should serve in combat in the U.S. armed forces has been settled — they can and have served with honor for more than a decade in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere — a key question remains about the intent of the Obama administration in pushing this change. Will this be a way for qualified women to serve in any capacity they can, and rise as high as their merits and skills carry them? Or is it designed to fill somebody’s politically correct quota of combat jobs for the female sex?
