When the Pentagon opened combat roles to women in 2015, many assumed the debate on full sex integration in the U.S. military was over. But Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth’s March 12 order to review military fitness, body composition, and grooming standards, followed by a March 30 order to establish sex-neutral physical standards for combat arms roles, signals that the debate is anything but settled.
In addition to his directives on military standards, Hegseth and the current administration fired most top-ranking female military officers, leaving no women in four-star general or admiral leadership positions. According to the most recent Defense Department demographics report in 2023, women represented just 4 out of 27 total four-star officers and 9 percent of generals and admirals overall. Hegseth’s office also directed the removal of all diversity, equity, and inclusion content from military websites pursuant to President Donald Trump’s executive order, erasing so many references to trailblazing “firsts” by female servicemembers. Citing the same executive order, Navy and Marine Corps officials paused sexual assault prevention and response training, threatening a culture of awareness, prevention, and support, and putting the safety of sexual assault victims, who are mostly women, into question.
The stated purpose of these directives? In Hegseth’s words, to ensure the U.S. armed forces remain “the world’s most lethal and effective fighting force.” But to anyone familiar with the fraught history of women in the military, these moves follow well-worn patterns, where opponents of sex integration turn to national security and claims to nature to justify the exclusion of women. Hegseth’s recent orders are just the latest iteration of a conflict that has played out time and again.
The issue of full sex integration has been on my radar since serving as an officer in the U.S. Navy post-9/11. In 2009, while selecting my second tour of duty, nearly half the billets available during my selection cycle happened to be off-limits to women. This was a high number but not unheard of for surface warfare officers like me, despite women officially being permitted to serve on combat ships since 1994. Reasons for this included berthing configurations and privacy concerns on certain ship platforms, as well as ongoing ground combat restrictions affecting Marine Corps, riverine, and special warfare assignments. The irony was striking: During this time, female engagement teams, cultural support teams, and Navy “individual augmentations” were increasingly sending women into ground support roles alongside the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.
I support full integration, but my focus here is not on arguing for it. Both sides have long since stopped listening to each other. In fact, both proponents and opponents of integration are guilty of recycling century-old rhetoric. Instead, I examine how military necessity has historically driven policy changes advancing the integration of women, while the ideologically driven discourse has kept the fight raging even after policy changes are implemented. I then offer a playbook of sorts, lifting some hard-earned lessons from those who have successfully made changes stick in the past: show, don’t tell; change the narrative; and give reforms time to take root.
The 2015 Order: Real or Pyrrhic Victory?
To appreciate the current landscape, we must first rewind. Jeanne Holm’s book, Women in the Military, recounts some of the significant sex integration policy shifts. For instance, during mobilization efforts in World War I, then Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels noted a deficit of yeomen. Once he confirmed no law required a yeoman to be a man, Daniels put out the order to “enroll women in the Naval Reserve as yeomen.” In World War II, the Navy established a division called Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, and the Marine Corps established one called Marine Corps Women’s Reserve. These all-women divisions primarily staffed shore establishments to free men for duty at sea and overseas.
The Gulf War precipitated further policy changes. Over 40,000 women deployed to combat zones, despite a technical ban on women in combat assignments. On the heels of the war, President Bill Clinton rescinded the “Risk Rule” in 1994, formally allowing women to serve in all military positions except direct ground combat roles. The post-9/11 era saw additional barriers removed, including the Navy’s 2010 decision to permit women on submarines and a 2012 policy opening over 14,000 positions to women.
Then in January 2013, then Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, announced the rescission of the 1994 Direct Ground Combat Definition and Assignment Rule — the last legal restriction barring women from serving in frontline roles. Implementation of the new policy would first require reviews by each service branch. However, Panetta and Dempsey clarified that “[a]ny recommendation to keep an occupational specialty or unit closed to women must be personally approved first by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and then by the Secretary of Defense.” On Dec. 3, 2015, then Defense Secretary Ash Carter officially lifted the ban on women in combat. To many, this was the final victory. Inch by inch, proponents of full sex integration of the military had seemingly crossed the finish line.
However, the integration was not universally celebrated. In fact, Gen. Joseph Dunford, U.S. Marine Corps, did not attend the announcement event, even though he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time. Prior to becoming chairman, he was commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, the only military branch to request exceptions to the new policy based on the results of what became a controversial study. However, Ray Mabus, Navy secretary at the time, denied the request. Effectively, this meant all branches of the military — even the Marine Corps — would be required to comply.
Voilà! Arguments That Can’t Be Beat
In a 2015 study while I was in law school, I mapped the discourse surrounding women in combat to understand why this debate remained so entrenched despite wartime realities that had, in practice, already placed women on the front lines. I analyzed sources including news articles, books, congressional reports and testimony, scientific and academic research, documentaries, and blog posts.
The most striking revelation? The arguments had barely budged over 100 years.
Both proponents and opponents of full sex integration invoke immutable claims to nature and the sanctity of the nation. In other words, this is a debate rooted in ideologies. The stakes are existential — any compromise is not just illogical but unnatural and sacrilegious.
The arguments Dunford and others deployed in 2015 echo those used to resist women’s integration into the military during previous decades. My analysis uncovered a two-step playbook for opponents: (1) establish national security as a sacred duty and (2) recognize men as nature’s designated protectors. Mission First, always — even if that means excluding women from military service. Similarly, advocates for sex integration have their own playbook: (1) establish civic equality as a sacred truth within democratic nations and (2) root all citizens’ inherent equality in shared mortality. Égalité, always — lest the military undermine the very principles it defends.
These competing worldviews create an impasse:
Opponents
The military’s first priority is military readiness. Its whole reason for existence is to protect the nation and keep it secure from attack. Our military as-is meets readiness needs, and experimenting by integrating women into combat specialty units would be a waste of resources and unnecessarily compromise our military readiness. The progress of women in this country, although important, cannot be put ahead of our national security.
Proponents
Although national security and military readiness are undoubtedly important, our nation is founded on the very principle of civic equality. Any group (provided age, physical, and cognitive standards are met) categorically excluded from any aspect of military service — women in this case — is implicitly considered of lesser value than other groups that are not excluded. Our military cannot purport to be protecting this nation when the military institution itself is violating the nation’s most fundamental principle.
This ideological deadlock means that advancements in sex integration policy should originate elsewhere, namely, from the battlefield where necessity forces adaptation in ways discourse cannot.
Back in 2015, although I’d been eager to share my study, I happily put it away since the final ban on women in combat had been lifted. Fast forward a decade, and I’m reluctantly wiping the dust off. Hegseth’s recent orders shouldn’t have come as a surprise. His directive to review military standards designates Jan. 1, 2015, as the benchmark date. This is no accident — the date falls squarely within the shift to full sex integration, raising an implicit question: Did integrating women make the military weaker? Hegseth doesn’t state it outright, but he has unquestionably opened the door to that interpretation.
National Security: The Ultimate Justification
Presumably, Hegseth considers his recent orders as essential to readiness, lethality, and “bring[ing] the warrior culture back.” Although he recently softened his stance on women in combat, Hegseth’s past statements suggest a deeper skepticism that goes beyond fitness standards. “I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective. Hasn’t made us more lethal,” he said during a podcast interview last November, leveraging the long-standing argument that national security should always come first.
And Hegseth isn’t alone in this. Government leaders have long invoked national security to justify otherwise questionable policies, such as Guantanamo detentions and bulk surveillance. The nation is, first and foremost, something to be protected. That it should be protected because it is a harborer of liberty and equality is not far behind — but it is secondary.
Proponents of integration have historically worked within this framework, arguing that inclusion strengthens rather than weakens the military. Otherwise, their arguments risk being dismissed outright, even perceived as heretical. Even Panetta, when lifting the combat ban, carefully framed his justification around national security: “[B]y opening up more opportunities for people to serve in uniform, we are making our military stronger.”
Yet, this approach — then as now — has historically failed to convince opponents of full sex integration. Proponents can argue that integration strengthens national security, but they cannot overcome opponents’ foundational belief that women’s very nature makes them a liability in combat. As Hegseth put it, “The gender integration of the military is a huge part of our modern confusion about the goals of war. In particular, the choice to put women in combat roles.” Submitting to the primacy of national security is only half the battle; overcoming claims about biological destiny remains a challenge.
In any case, how can anyone argue with the Defense Secretary’s call to action? “We must remain vigilant in maintaining the standards that enable the men and women of our military to protect the American people and our homeland as the world’s most lethal and effective fighting force.” Wrapped in the language of strength and security, it’s a statement no one could reasonably oppose. Nevertheless, it subtly plants the idea that today’s military is weaker than it should be, with compromised standards in the name of inclusion to blame.
The Physical Standards Debate: “It’s Logical Because It’s Natural”
One of the most enduring arguments against women in combat is that biological differences dictate a natural division of labor, where men are best-suited for military service. Opponents maintain that sex-based roles are not just logical but inevitable, citing men’s superior strength, along with women’s reproductive role and increased susceptibility to injury and even urinary tract infections (a point infamously echoed by Newt Gingrich). Notably, studies supporting these claims often rely on group averages. Ironically, this contradicts Hegseth’s own “laserfocus” on meritocracy, under which individual performance earns military achievements.
Each generation views its contemporaneous debate over women in combat as fundamentally different from past discussions. But like the rest of the discourse, core arguments about physical standards remain unchanged. Two themes persist: whether women possess necessary physical abilities for combat and whether shifting battlefields demand shifting skill sets. In 1987, congressional testimony noted that warfare had evolved beyond brute strength on new battlefields with blurred boundaries. By 2008, calls to revise the Combat Exclusion Policy framed the modern battlefield as having “no front lines.” Yet in 2013, marine officers still described infantry as a “male organization” due to the physical demands of carrying 100-pound packs. And today, the increased adoption of battlefield robots and other technologies contemplates appropriate physical fitness standards for this new, “different kind of warrior.” Nearly four decades, and the song remains the same!
While opponents insist that “women cannot physically meet the same standards as men,” those standards have never been fixed. Military requirements have historically evolved with warfare — except when the question involves women, the goalposts seem to move.
Science is often cited as an objective measure, yet for opponents it somehow always reinforces traditional gender roles. Consider Capt. Katie Petronio’s, U.S. Marine Corps, stance: “Even if a female can meet the short-term physical, mental, and moral leadership requirements of an infantry officer, by the time that she is eligible to serve in a strategic leadership position … there is a minuscule probability that she’ll be physically capable of serving at all.” Her reasoning turns science into a pretext, using speculation about a future physical decline to deny opportunities in the present, even though similar concerns about men are rarely, if ever, considered. Former Navy Secretary Mabus once exposed another double standard: “Women got injured a lot or more than men on duty. Men got injured four times as much as women off duty … So, do we keep men from being in the infantry because they get hurt so much off duty? I don’t think so.” In any case, the Navy SEALs and certain Marine Corps ground combat specialties have applied gender-neutral physical standards since 2015, effectively mooting the “same standards” argument within those communities.
In the end, the debate isn’t really about standards. It’s about who gets to define them and how.
The fallout from Hegseth’s March 31 order illustrates this. The Army recently unveiled a new fitness test as directed by Congress following a RAND study that found certain existing test events failed to predict combat task performance. The Army made its new standards sex-neutral for combat jobs, not in response to but nevertheless aligning with Hegseth’s order. Bethany Russell (71st woman Ranger tab recipient) and Rita Graham (field artillery officer in the first year of integration), recently wrote:
Some claim that the Army’s public revisions of its new fitness test mark a lower standard for women. However, there is a difference between a poorly constructed test and one built to accommodate women — and the fitness test is the former.
If performance-based evidence fails to convince, as it typically has, opponents can still turn to difficult-to-refute appeals to nature: “Some of the revulsion to the idea of women in combat comes from very deep hardwiring.” These essentialist ideas about gender roles reinforce the notion that women’s natural place is in nurture, not warfare. Interestingly, similar appeals have been used to exclude men from certain military roles, such as nursing.
In his book, Hegseth proclaims, “Women bring life into the world. Their role in war is to make it a less deathly experience.” He piles on: “Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bikes. We need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units.” The idea that nature prescribes immutable roles remains a powerful force in this debate. Ultimately, Hegseth’s order isn’t about fitness standards. It’s about deeply ingrained beliefs entangling science, natural law, and cultural norms in ways that have proven remarkably resistant to change.
Conversion or Compliance? The Limits of Policy-Driven Change
If history is any guide, the most effective force for changing military integration policy isn’t discourse. It’s military necessity. The Pentagon has incrementally expanded women’s combat roles not from moral victories, but because the battlefield demanded it. Yet today, the urgency that drove integration in the 2010s has faded. The memory of 9/11 no longer fuels national unity to the extent it once did. Without the pressure of “war at home,” sex integration policies risk stalling — or worse, regressing.
The lesson? Policy shifts alone aren’t enough. For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction: Every policy “win” provokes cultural backlash. The 2015 decision to open combat roles to women was a milestone, but in the years since, opposition remains alive and well. It took an act of Congress in 2020 to force the Marine Corps to desegregate men and women in its boot camp, and the process drags on today. Only in 2023, under legal pressure, did the Army end a policy that barred enlisted women from combat battalions without at least two women “leaders” already assigned, effectively blocking enlisted women from serving in combat units. Not to mention, policy decisions can be reversed. That’s why this fight isn’t just about changing regulations. It’s about changing hearts, too.
So, what works?
First: Show, don’t tell. In this debate, where opponents elevate national security as a sacred duty, changing hearts is about as difficult as religious conversion. When the Women’s Army Corps was established and granted official military status in 1943, the shift was dubbed “The Conversion.” A few years later, Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, U.S. Navy, testified before Congress about his own change of heart: “I was one of the doubters in the early days and I was definitely reluctant to see [the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service] program started. However, after it started and after I saw it work, I became a convert.” A military blog from 2015 frames it as a “personal journey from opposing women in combat arms to supporting it.”
And second-hand accounts don’t cut it. Hearing about accomplishments like women competing in the prestigious and selective Best Ranger Competition or the number of women in special operations forces jumping from 7.9 percent in 2016 to 12 percent in 2023 isn’t enough to convert non-believers. True acceptance doesn’t come from a policy memo; it’s a slow, personal transformation typically catalyzed by first-hand experience — the “see it to believe it” effect.
Hegseth has shown no signs of such a transformation. This is a man who titled chapter five of his 2024 book, The (Deadly) Obsession with Women Warriors. Despite stating that women are “some of our greatest warriors” during his confirmation hearings, it’s unlikely he abandoned his convictions overnight. At best, he is going along to get along — not ideal, but perhaps it’s enough to keep the 2015 decision from unraveling.
In the meantime, proponents of integration should create opportunities for skeptics to witness women’s military capabilities firsthand. Document and publicize women’s achievements without fanfare or special treatment. And normalize women’s presence in previously closed roles through consistent visibility and performance.
Second: Change the narrative. Consider how people once argued that women weren’t biologically fit to vote. A 1912 satirical play mocked this idea: “Women’s suffrage is the reform against nature. Look at these ladies sitting on the platform. Observe their physical inability … All nature is against it.” Today, no one questions women’s right to vote in the United States and most of the world.
Sometimes all it takes is an old narrative dying out and a new one grabbing hold. For instance, once we stopped telling women and girls they couldn’t do pull-ups — a quintessentially “male” feat — women of all ages, even in their 70s, have proven otherwise.
It’s remarkable how much the power of expectation shapes reality. So instead of entering the integration debate via the usual, still-deadlocked themes, proponents should create new narratives showcasing women’s concrete capabilities and contributions in action. The focus needs to shift away from “Should women serve?” to stories about how “Women can lift heavy,” “Women can excel under pressure,” and so on. Like with pull-ups, narrative shifts work by establishing new cultural and societal norms instead of stubbornly colliding with a debate that’s as immovable as a brick wall.
And finally: Give reforms time to take root. This is perhaps the least satisfying playbook element because it feels passive, and time moves at its own pace. But the reality is that institutional and cultural transformations take time, often spanning generations. As we’ve witnessed with women in the military, policy victories can backfire without the cultural foundation to support them. Still, transformation does come: Women becoming sailors, pilots, submariners, and even astronauts has become less noteworthy over the years — and that’s precisely the point!
For proponents of integration, this is a wake-up call: Don’t rest on laurels! But don’t lose hope, either. Policy shifts open doors, and it’s what comes after that keeps those doors open. The work happens in the quiet periods between headline-making policy announcements: mentoring emerging women leaders, documenting successes, building networks of support that transcend political appointments.
In the meantime, full sex integration of the U.S. military continues to be an “unfinished revolution.” Until women are no longer seen as exceptions to a male norm, this debate will keep resurfacing. But history also tells us that, in time, today’s controversies will become tomorrow’s common sense.
M. Alejandra Parra-Orlandoni is a former surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy. She is currently the chief operating officer at an AI-driven physics simulation company and chief executive officer of Spirare Tech, a boutique leadership and responsible tech consultancy. You can find her on Substack and LinkedIn.
Image: U.S. Air Force photo by 2nd Lt. Kaylin P. Hankerson
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