Women have played a vital role in serving and supporting the United States military for decades. Nevertheless, policies and laws dictating the number of women that should serve in the army, the types of assignments they should be given, and their authorized benefits have changed over the years. Even after the ceiling for the number of females in the armed forces was revoked in 1967, women have continuously been prohibited from participating in many occupations by the law (Lowry 2).
In the United States, every man must register with Selective Service Systems when they turn eighteen years (Lowry 2). These ensure that the US government lists individuals who can be called military operations if the draft is authorized. “A draft, which we haven’t had since the Vietnam War, isn’t supposed to be a mechanism for making people feel good about themselves or a tool of so-called social justice” (Lowry 1). Whereas women have the right to serve their country in battles, drafting them is unnecessary, it allows social experimentation in the military, and is risky and detrimental to military ethics.
While women have the right to serve their country in the armed forces, drafting them is pointless. The US draft has not been used for many decades. Nonetheless, in the case of significant conflicts, the country has sufficient males who can fill the draft’s demands without considering women. Currently, the United States army has over two million servicemen and women, including the Coast Guard (Lowry 2). “According to a recent Government Accountability Office report, the share of women in the military overall has increased only slightly, to 16.5 percent in 2018, up from 15.1 percent in 2004” (King and DiNitto 427).
For instance, for the army to be doubled to five million while retaining 16.5 percent of the current females, it would require an additional 2.5 percent of the total population of males in the US (Lowry 2). Considering that already 1.1 percent of the entire male population in the US are in the army, only an additional 1.4 percent would be required (Lowry 2). The high number of male populations already drafted in the selective services makes it unnecessary to recruit women.
The risk of women’s participation in combat is considerably high compared to that of men. The main goal is to enhance the replacement of brave soldiers who made ultimate sacrifices on the battlefield. “Both national security concerns and citizens’ engagement lead the military and political leaders to focus sharply on winning the war at hand as quickly as possible” (King and DiNitto 433). For this reason, there is the creation of a need for bodily fit soldiers who can be placed in the harshest environments. In their research, the Center for Military Readiness determined that females only comprised eight percent of the total top performers in clean and press practice (“Donnelly Advocates for the “Home of the Brave and Land of the Free”).
Additionally, in the pull-up training, the average of male participants was four times better than their female counterparts. The two exercises aim to stimulate muscular strength and tolerance that army personnel experience in ground battles. Females’ weakening and injury intensity throughout the entry-level exercise was double that of men while non-deployable rates were thrice higher (“New Army Combat Fitness Test”). “There is simply no substance to the argument that a draft keeps the peace, but it must be said that draft wars were fought with higher troop levels and higher casualties” (“Donnelly Advocates for the “Home of the Brave and Land of the Free'”).
Considering that some women do meet the battlefield standards, the procedure for ensuring physical fitness is not stringent, and the drafting process is random. These factors make the recruitment process unable to guarantee that female recruits meet the standard requirements sufficiently.
Drafting females is damaging to military readiness, lethality, and unit cohesion. Drafted women between the ages of eighteen to twenty-five experience menstrual cycles. During combat on the battlefield, soldiers usually survive from a backpack for more than a month. A female soldier is prone to urinary tract infections since there is no adequate cleanliness in the battlegrounds. “These issues can lead to a degradation of the medical health and effectiveness of service members, who are impacted, as well as the unit and the mission” (“Donnelly Advocates for the “Home of the Brave and Land of the Free”).
Besides, females in Co-ed units necessitate specific levels of accommodation that are not necessary for their male counterparts. The teams would either need exceptional privacy measures to be implemented in the harshest circumstances or generally neglect the privacy of both servicewomen and men. Consequently, Co-ed units can lead to an increase in rape and sexual traumas (Breland et al., 278). These factors lead to the hindrance of the main focus required on the battlefield to defeat an enemy.
The process of drafting women into the army seems like a social experiment with no place in the military world. In combat, only the best and physically fit militias should be deployed. The need for the best personnel ensures that a battle is won and that casualties have been minimized. According to Waddell (5), “the military should be singularly focused on defeating enemies and ensuring the security of our nation. It should not be a guinea pig for social experimentation.”
Due to the nature of military operations, social experiments should not be allowed, as that would be risky for the army and US citizens. Women have played and continue to play a vital part in the armed forces and are free to join voluntarily. Nonetheless, there is no security or military reason to mandate females to participate in selective services (Waddell 5). Furthermore, arbitrarily chosen women should not be obligated to be drafted before physically fit men.
Women who volunteer to offer these services in the army should be left to do so without any interference. Even though females have served honorably and admirably in the military, the military is still devastatingly male. Selective services require individuals who are physically fit and who can endure the harshest of conditions. These factors make men more qualified for military operations than females, and thus they should not be drafted.
Works Cited
“Donnelly Advocates for the “Home of the Brave and Land of the Free.“” Center for Military Readiness, 2021. Web.
“New Army Combat Fitness Test: 84% of Women Fail.” Center for Military Readiness, 2019. Web.
Breland, Jessica Y. et al. “Military Sexual Trauma is Associated with Eating Disorders, While Combat Exposure is Not.” Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, vol 10, no. 3, 2018, p. 278. American Psychological Association (APA). Web.
King, Erika Lee, and Diana M. DiNitto. “Historical Policies Affecting Women’s Military and Family Roles.” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol 39, no. 5/6, 2019, pp. 427- 446. Emerald. Web.
Lowry, Rich. “Drafting Women for War is Bad for the US Armed Forces and Bad for Women.” Nypost. 2021. Web.
Waddell, Mary. “Women Should Not Be Drafted into Selective Service.” FRC, 2021, pp. 1-5. Web.