Should Women in wartime be exempted from serving in combat?

Should Women in wartime be exempted from serving in combat?

Women, in the past two decades, have been allowed to serve on naval vessels, combat aircraft, and other combat actions. The department of Defense in 1994 prohibited women from taking part in combat roles, but from 2016, women in the United States have the right to select any military occupation they desire to participate in. According to Catherine Ross, women veterans face the same dangers as their male colleagues, and therefore she does not see why women should not fully take part in combat roles.

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The debate on whether women should accomplish combat roles still exists until today. Israel is a state that is often mentioned when the combat roles debate is mentioned. The Israel military permits women to fulfill combat roles since the state was established in 1948 (Jerome 55). People against women accomplishing full combat roles argue that women are not physically capable of handling cruelty in wars. Also, most Americans are not ready to see women’s lifeless bodies returned to the country in bags. Supporters argue, “There are no existing experiments that precisely measure the physical skills necessary for every military occupation field – the only way to test this is have the soldiers simply go out and perform their task. The goal is to create these gender-blind specific tests that more accurately predict a soldier’s success in combat” (Jerome 60).

One of the reasons that arise on the debate of whether women should be permitted to take combat roles is physical capabilities. Women, for the longest time, have been termed as weak beings. One of the opponents argues, “Women on average do not have the physical capability to lift a fully loaded male soldier who has been wounded under fire, to save his life. No one should have to die because women do not have the capability” (Segal, 24). the time factor is essential in the battlefield, and when a soldier’s life is in danger, the troop will require an individual who can take the responsibilities and duties of transporting the injured soldier to a safe place. Sociologist Mady Segal is against women taking part in all the combat roles because she believes that biological production needs more men than women. She further argues that a few men can impregnate many females, and therefore more females need to survive than men in the society (Segal 13). Segal also believes that apart from being fathers, men have the responsibility of taking care of the women and children in the society.

Women should be allowed to take part in combat roles because before a person goes to the battlefields, he goes through some tough training. There is no need to exempt women because they have proven in the tests and practice that they are capable of any combat roles. It is unfair if women are exempted from some combat roles since they are trained together. When a woman volunteers to protect the citizens, it means that she is ready for any combat task, and therefore women should be given a chance to prove their capabilities.

Works Cited

Jerome, David. Examining War and Conflict around the World. ABC-CLIO, 2019.

Segal, Mandy “The Argument for Female Combatants,” in Nancy Loring Goldman, ed., Female Soldiers—Combatants or Noncombatants? (1982), pp. 269–270.