Recruiting and retaining women in our military does not increase the number of sleepless nights for our foes.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced last week that he will shut down the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS). In March, he announced sex-neutral standards for combat arms positions. Hegseth is shifting the priorities of our military away from feminist ideals to refocus on deterring and defeating our adversaries. This will benefit both our military and our nation.
DACOWITS was founded in 1951 “to advise on strategies to improve the recruitment of women into the U.S. military during the Korean War.” This focus has continued. And, as Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson explained in a refreshingly frank statement, “The Committee is focused on advancing a divisive feminist agenda that hurts combat readiness.”
In May, three female Democratic senators critical of Hegseth justified keeping the committee because of its role to “reduce barriers to the recruitment and retention of women.” This criticism assumes that recruitment and retention of women should be a special priority of the military. I disagree. For decades, increasing the percentage of women relative to men, expanding women’s roles in military career fields, and positioning women to break glass ceilings have been the driving forces behind “women in the military” policies. This needs to end. Here’s why.
Increasing the number of women in the military is not mission-critical. The reality: Recruiting and retaining women in our military does not increase the number of sleepless nights for our foes.
Prioritizing attention to women comes at the expense of recruiting and retaining men. Men are the backbone of our military. It is senseless, even bizarre, for a military to focus special attention (for decades, no less) on recruiting and retaining women with no parallel attention to recruiting and retaining men, while even disadvantaging men in promotion so that it can produce upward arrows on graphs about women in the ranks of the military. Men are stronger. Men have greater physical endurance. Because men do not get pregnant, their period of peak physical vitality, and their availability to be away from home, will not be interrupted.
Damaging Families
Additionally, normalizing the recruitment and retention of women in high and ever-higher numbers in our military during peacetime harms the culture of our nation. For America to thrive, the vitality of the American family must rank among our top cultural values. This will involve honoring child-rearing and acknowledging the reality of two human sexes with different roles in reproduction and distinct patterns of child-rearing.