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Women and the Draft
<p class="body"> Why don't women have to register with Selective Service when they turn 18? This splinter in the back of my brain was planted in High School, likely my junior year, whilst studying contempory American history. I saw a photo that accompanied an article about the Equal Rights Ammendment. It was young girl, perhaps four years old, with a sign that said, "Don't Draft Me!" My first thought was not that this was a rather underhanded tactic on the part of the anti-ERA campaigners, nor that she seemed a bit young for the draft board... My first thought was, "Fuck you, little girl. Why the hell not? Your adorable little brother gets to be drafted, why the fuck not you?" As you might infer from the amount of profanity directed at this small child, this protest, this idea that little girls don't have to get drafted, but adorable, tow-headed boys do, *pissed me off*. Setting aside some obvious political reasons why these changes might not be made (merely mentioning the draft is rather unpopular, anti-ERA-esque "women should stay in the kitchen" conservatives, etc), perhaps the real question I'm asking here is: What *legitimate* reason is there that women don't have to register for Selective Service? Like in previous posts, I will refer largely to the Army (it being what I know), while most of what I speak applies to the US Military as a whole. Similarly, I will address the roles currently allowed to women in the US military, not how that might or should change in the future - that I'll likely save for a future post as well. In the US Army, women can not serve in the 11- (Infantry), 13- (Field Artillery), 19- (Armor), 18- (Special Forces)-series MOSes. They can serve in almost every other MOS series (For instance 09, 12, 14, 15, 21, 25, 27, 29, 31, 35, 36, 37, 38, 42, 46, 56, 68, 74, 79, 88, 91, 92, and 94). Were a conflict to arise that would require the reenstatement of the Draft, the Army will need more than just Infantry. It's going to need medics (68), truck drivers (88), mechanics (91), supply SGTs (92), constuction engineers (21), etc., etc. The Women's Army Corps was dissolved in 1978. Women have been doing basic training with men since 1977. Though still prevented from serving in some direct combat missions, women have been fully integrated into the US Army since the Carter Administration. Overall, the jobs that currently exclude women make up something less than 20% of the Army. Just as, during the second World War women filled many of the civilian jobs vacated by drafted men (Rosie the Riveter, "A League of Their Own", my own grandmother who operated an overhead crane, builing aircraft for the war), women are more than capable of filling non-combat military jobs that might otherwise be filled by men. If we are dead set on keeping women out of the Infantry/Armor/Etc, we can make women medics and cooks and truck drivers and constuction engineers, and make all of the male draftees Infanty and Armor soldiers. Women may currently comprise only about 20% of the US military, across all services. It is not for lack of available jobs, or lack of interest in recruiting women by the military, rather American women are less interested in joining. That said, when they choose to join, they are as strong, competent, active and able as the men they serve with. Three of the top five cadets in my commissioning class were women - based on inteligence, diligence, leadership and physical ability. There is no reason, come a national emergency that required conscription, that women couldn't comprise 50% (or more) of the military. No reason other than our own outmoded thinking and a fear of talking about the draft.
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2 Comments:
The official mission of the Selective Service System is "to provide manpower to the armed forces in an emergency." Your example of the Red Chinese marching across our fair neighbor to the North is probably as good an example as any, but it illustrates a point: the 'manpower' the draft provides is almost certain to be infantrymen, a position which women are not permitted to occupy. While the SSS can't admit they're supposed to supply cannon fodder, the plain fact is that the only reason we would initiate a draft (feelgood platitudes about equity aside) is because we need a huge surge of marginally trained foot soldiers to stave off a disaster. The post WWII draft, where 'doing a hitch' was simply an expected part of many men's lives, is gone and will never return. If we press the 'draft' button, it is because the stuff has hit the fan.
I agree, but the vast majority of those men didn't go into the infantry, and even fewer would today. They'll go into gender-immaterial jobs. Let's draft women too, fill the gender-immaterial jobs with them, and send all the men into the (currently) gender-material jobs.
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