Why women should be drafted
By Marissa Loya | 3 p.m. Feb. 20, 2016
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2016/feb/20/military-women-draft/“There can be no doubt that our nation has had a long and unfortunate history of sex discrimination. Traditionally, such discrimination was rationalized by an attitude of ‘romantic paternalism’ which, in practical effect, put women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.” This excerpt from a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court case, Frontiero v. Richardson, sums up perfectly the basis for laws regarding women and their historic roles within the military.
Until recently, the Department of Defense barred women from thousands of positions in the military due to antiquated and emotion-based beliefs on the roles they were allowed to play. We’ve been down this road before, many times. Despite now being allowed to compete for any position, gender remains the rationale exempting women from the Selective Service system, despite American male citizens being required to register by law upon their 18th birthday. Females should be required to register with the Selective Service, a change on par and reflective of the recent opening of all combat positions to women across the services.
See also: Why women should not be drafted
Similar to the arguments against allowing women into any combat position that they meet the standards for, skeptics of universal Selective Service registration argue that women are not as strong as men; that they aren’t mentally and physically capable of enduring the rigors of combat; and that they ruin unit cohesion. These arguments fail against both historic and modern examples, from Deborah Sampson of Massachusetts who dressed as a man to successfully fight in Civil War battles, to Afghanistan where teams of female Marines lived and operated with infantry units for seven-month deployments supporting counterinsurgency operations. There is no shortage of examples challenging and shattering the validity of such arguments. What tends to happen when skeptics boil their reasoning down to its core is that the essence of their arguments are based on emotion and generalization, versus facts and evidence.
The decision to remove gender barriers and open all combat positions to qualified women was not simply political as many believe but rather a decision to have our laws catch up to reality. Similarly, the prospect of including women in Selective Service is also supported by numerous examples of why this decision is on par with reality.
Women have and continue to make significant contributions in the defense of our nation. The decision to open all jobs to women expands the talent pool for all positions in the military, so long as an individual meets the standard. Requiring women to register with the selective service vastly expands the number of registered citizens should our nation implement a draft.
The question of whether to require women to sign up for selective service is not new. With the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, President Carter reinvigorated the Mandatory Selective Service Act and requested funds from Congress to include women in the registration process; however, Congress authorized funds for male-only registration. The exclusion of women from the obligation to serve as part of their civic duty stemmed from an emotion-based decision based on the belief of women’s role in society.
Retired Air Force Col. Martha McSally, the first female fighter pilot to fly in combat in U.S. history, in “Defending America in Mixed Company,” states the introduction of the concept of coverture by the revolutionaries still bleeds into the gender-discriminatory laws in place today. Coverture rationalized that women had an obligation to a man as part of their civic duty; a concept which required a woman’s were subsumed by her father before marriage and her husband once married; consequently they had no right to vote, none the less an obligation or expectation to defend.
After more than 30 years since revisiting the notion during the Carter administration and immense progress made to shatter gender-based barriers, most recently in the military, we have the ability to make remaining antiquated laws mirror reality; that women have provided more than enough evidence to demonstrate their capabilities to defend our nation as part of their civic duty. As skeptics continue to use the same debunked line of reasoning to keep women exempt from Selective Service, it becomes clear the same arguments crumble.
With the historic decision to lift the last official gender barrier in the military, we should reexamine the issue of Selective Service with less emotion and more fact.
Including women in the Selective Service is a critical change to teach our nation’s children that national security is everyone’s civic duty. As our country’s children and future leaders learn about our constitution and the obligation we all have as citizens, they can begin to see one another as bearing that obligation equally, irrespective of gender.
Then-Sen. Barack Obama, in a 2007 presidential debate, stated it well when asked his opinion about including women in the Selective Service: “I think it will help send a message to my two daughters that they’ve got obligations to this great country as well as boys do.” Our civic duty to our nation is not a birthright, it is an obligation; it’s time we change the male-only requirement for Selective Service to include women.
Loya is a captain in the Marines. After serving seven years as an active-duty Marine, she is now in the Marine Corps reserves and is pursuing entrance into law school.
