DoD to open 14,000 Army jobs to women - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

DoD to open 14,000 Army jobs to women

During an interview on This Week in Defense News that aired Oct. 16, 2011, Army Gen. Ray Odierno spoke of the future role of women in combat. Discussion of the topic in the below video segment begins at the 2-minute mark.

A new Pentagon policy will open 14,000 — mostly Army — combat-related jobs to women, but only after Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno pushed the Army to go further.

Critics call the new policy a “baby step” that merely aligns policy with reality without significantly advancing equality within the ranks.

The new rule was announced Feb. 9 and will likely take effect this spring. It will open up about an additional 3 percent of Army jobs to women, but about 30 percent of Army jobs will remain restricted to men.

Women make up about 15 percent of the active-duty force.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta “believes this is the beginning, not the end of the process,” said Pentagon spokesman George Little.

“The services will continue to review positions and requirements to determine what additional positions may be opened to women,” Little said. “While practical barriers do still exist to removing other restrictions on women serving, we are reviewing those to see if more opportunities can be opened. We need time, experience and careful review to ensure that we do so in a way that maximizes the safety and privacy of all service members.”

Shortly after he became chief of staff, Odierno reviewed the Army’s planned contribution to the Pentagon plan and decided it didn’t go far enough.

“I was not involved with this specific report. It was done before I got here,” Odierno told Army Times in October. “And the reason I want to clarify that is because I am not real happy with it. I don't think it represents some of the things that our women are doing in combat.” It was clear it did not go far enough.

“We need them there. We need their talent,” he said. “This is about managing talent. We have incredibly talented females who should be in those positions. We have work to do within the [Defense Department] to get them to recognize and change. We did not get there at this time in this report, and I'm focused on this and I will spend some time on it.”

The plan announced by the Pentagon reflects Odierno’s input. “The secretary of the Army and I determined that the Army should expand opportunities beyond the finding of our 2010 review,” Odierno said in a statement to Army Times. “We requested to go even further by opening key positions in combat units at the battalion level that were previously closed to women.”

Congress in the 2011 National Defense Authorization Act required the defense and service secretaries to review policies “to determine whether changes are needed to ensure that female members have an equitable opportunity to compete and excel in the armed forces.” That report was due to Congress on April 15, 2011, but the Pentagon was granted an extension through October 2012.

Many restrictions remain

Though the new policy fails to open combat specialties to women, it does take preparatory steps that seem to point in that direction. For example, the Army and Marine Corps in coming months will work on developing “gender neutral” physical standards for individual jobs and career fields, officials said.

For now, the biggest change will be the elimination of the 1994 ban on women serving in units that “co-locate” with direct ground combat forces, which is defined as those “engaging an enemy on the ground with individual or crew-served weapons, while being exposed to hostile fire and to a high probability of direct physical contact with hostile personnel.”

“This policy has become irrelevant given the modern battle space with its non-linear boundaries,” according to the report, released Feb. 9 by the Defense Department’s Office of Personnel and Readiness.

A prohibition on women serving with combat units “below the brigade level” also was revised to allow women to serve “at the battalion level” in “select occupational specialties,” according to the report. That means women can serve on some battalion staff jobs, such as personnel or intelligence officer, but cannot assume roles that would require company command of an infantry unit.

“It is good that DoD recognizes the co-location rule doesn’t conform with the roles women are already performing,” said Nancy Duff Campbell, a member of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services and co-president of the National Women’s Law Center. “It’s good, but it’s not very much more of a step forward. This decision just doesn’t go far enough. It’s time for the [Defense] Department to eliminate the exclusion policy and open up all military positions and assignments to women.”

Several other restrictions will remain. The individual service secretaries will retain authority to restrict women from jobs in the special operations units, jobs that are deemed “physically demanding,” and assignment to units where “berthing and privacy” accommodations are not feasible.

Further changes may be on the horizon but will require more study, the report says.

“The Army will continue to review positions and requirements to ensure that all soldiers are provided opportunities to reach their full potential and that we accomplish our missions with the most capable and qualified soldiers,” Odierno wrote in the statement to Army Times.

Pentagon officials acknowledged that many women have served in dangerous jobs alongside combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but did so as “attachments,” a loophole that allowed them to circumvent the co-location combat exclusion.

The experiences of those women will inform future studies, officials said.

Overall, the new rules will open up about 5 percent of the roughly 250,000 jobs that have been closed to women.

For the Army, the change means nearly 14,000 new jobs are available for women, less than 10 percent of the jobs currently closed to them. The Army will be opening six enlisted occupational specialties to women, including artillery mechanic, and maintainers for the Abrams tank and Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

The new policy will take effect automatically after 30 working days, unless Congress takes action to block it.

‘Brass ceiling’ for women?

The issue of women in combat has tended to revolve around the argument that career and promotion opportunities for women in uniform are limited because they cannot serve in jobs central to wartime missions and, as a result, are underrepresented in the Pentagon’s senior leadership.

Defense officials rejected that notion.

“If you look at promotions in fields where women currently serve or are partially open … [studies showed] there was no disadvantage in the promotion rate of women,” said Virginia “Vee” Penrod, deputy assistant secretary of defense for military personnel policy.

However, the Military Leadership Diversity Council and the Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in the Service submitted reports that describe combat exclusion rules as “unnecessary barriers” that are detrimental to the careers of women serving in uniform, prevent deployed women from getting necessary combat training, and keep capable and qualified women from contributing to the strength of combat units.

Women often lose key assignments because they can’t be assigned to the units or jobs most likely to see direct offensive ground combat, the advisory groups said. These lost opportunities have a lasting effect.

Today, 80 percent of general officers come from the tactical and operational career fields that are closed to women. Just one female soldier was selected for brigadier general in 2010, out of 100 military officers chosen in all the services.

Only 24 of the Army's 403 general officers — or 6 percent — are female, though women represent about 15 percent of the force.

The Pentagon’s failure to open all career fields to women will perpetuate the “brass ceiling” that keeps women from top military jobs, said Anu Bhagwati, executive director of the Service Women’s Action Network.

“This is extremely disappointing,” Bhagwati, a former Marine captain, said in a statement about the report. “To continue such a ban is to ignore the talents and leadership that women bring to the military and it further penalizes service women by denying them the opportunity for future promotions and assignments that are given to personnel from combat arms specialties.”

Women have played an increasingly important role on the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many female troops, including military police and security forces, have taken part in ground combat actions.

A total of 144 female U.S. troops have died in those wars, and 865 have been wounded.

The Marine Corps has deployed women alongside infantry troops because female troops are often able to speak with women in traditional societies and obtain intelligence that would be off limits to men.