Tag Archive for: women in combat

US Defense Secretary cancels Women, Peace and Security programs

Last week, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced the cancellation of his department’s Women, Peace and Security (WPS) program. In doing so, he ignored the well-established overlap of insecurity and gender inequality.

When announcing the cancellation on X, Hegseth described WPS as a social justice initiative that is woke, divisive and hated by troops. He claimed WPS was a Biden initiative that ‘distracted from our core task: WAR-FIGHTING’.

In fact, Congress passed the 2017 Women, Peace, and Security Act under Donald Trump’s first administration, with Trump even claiming it as one of his greatest achievements for women.

The WPS Act obliges all relevant departments (including Defense) and agencies of the federal government to ‘promote the meaningful participation of women in all aspects of overseas conflict prevention, management, and resolution, and post-conflict relief and recovery efforts’. This includes the collection and analysis ‘of gender data for the purpose of developing and enhancing early warning systems of conflict and violence’ and expanding and applying gender analysis, to improve program design and targeting’. These tasks are vital to warfighting.

There are two major global datasets that show that gender inequality is a key indicator and driver, of insecurity. With the WomanStats database, Valerie Hudson and her team have qualitatively shown that the way a country treats its women is the best predictor of its willingness to go to war.

In 2017, Hudson and I used this research to show why we should all pay attention to Russia’s decriminalisation of domestic violence. We argued that such willingness to accept physical abuse of women was not only an indication of its willingness to go to war; it was also an indication of how it would behave during such a war. Since then, not only has Russia invaded Ukraine, but there have been reports of Russian troops perpetrating widespread sexual violence against Ukrainian women.

Georgetown University’s Institute for Women, Peace and Security has publicly condemned Hegseth’s decision, stating that ‘WPS makes America safer, stronger, and more prosperous’. Georgetown co-publishes the WPS Index, which scores and ranks countries in terms of women’s inclusion, justice and security. The most recent Index placed Afghanistan, Yemen, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Syria and Iraq among the bottom 10 places.

We have previously suffered the consequences of disregarding gendered aspects in security operations. For example, failing to include sexual slavery in financial intelligence and analysis of the economy of ISIS in 2014 meant military actions did not sufficiently respond to the enslavement of Yazidi women and girls. My research has shown that this allowed an estimated US$121 million into ISIS’s economy.

Many US military leaders are aware of such issues and have seen the value of bringing a gendered perspective to their operations. It seems that ending the department’s WPS program was one of three courses of action proposed to Hegseth, and not the one that was recommended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and combatant commands. They said WPS provided ‘a low-cost, high-yield uncontested advantage over our competitors.’

Lieutenant General Mark Hertling has gone on record saying ‘killing this program won’t make the US military more lethal. But it might make it half blind’. Hertling was commander of US Army Europe from 2011 to 2012. He also commanded the 1st Armored Division in Germany and the Multinational Division-North during the surge in Iraq from 2007 to 2009. He has described WPS as ‘the strategic inclusion of half the population in the fight against instability, terror, conflict and chaos’.

The US Naval War College and ‘home of thought’ for the navy has held an annual WPS symposium since 2012. The events bring together faculty, practitioners, and national and international scholars. They share knowledge on warfighting and conflict resolution, focusing on the gender perspective, to better understand the complex and dynamic security environment. Topics have included regional lessons, organisational culture and security transitions.

WPS is not a woke issue. It is about responding more effectively to challenges to peace and security, and its importance is supported by increasing and irrefutable data. While many security experts still struggle to communicate this to some disbelievers, the evidence is clear. Yet those with outdated beliefs may still push back.

Conflicts such as Russia’s war in Ukraine demonstrate what data already is already showing us: the importance of gender in security. Maintaining the capacity for gendered perspectives in all security organisations remains pertinent. Hegseth and the administration surrounding him are making a huge mistake—one that will limit the effectiveness of US security operations.

Despite having some extremely supportive leaders in Defence in the past, Australia still risks pushing WPS implementation too far down the food chain. In the wake of the US’s actions, we must remember the importance of gender in regional and global peace and security, and focus accordingly.

Women in combat roles strengthen our defence force

The Ukraine war has been called the bloodiest conflict since World War II. As of July 2024, 10,000 women were serving in frontline combat roles. Try telling them—from the safety of an Australian lounge room—they don’t belong there. But that’s exactly what the now disendorsed Liberal candidate for Whitlam, Benjamin Britton, did last week when he doubled down on his claim that women didn’t belong in combat.

The idea of women in combat is not new; it dates back centuries. That this topic has re-entered mainstream political debate is dangerous and damaging. It risks undermining the morale of our defence force and stoking a culture war at precisely the moment when we should be focused on enhancing capability.

National security is a bipartisan priority, with both sides acknowledging the strategic uncertainty Australia faces: war in Europe, instability in the Middle East and China’s assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific.

Yet instead of strengthening our defence capability, recent political discourse risks undermining it. The resurfacing of comments from Britton—calling for the removal of women from combat roles to ‘fix the military’—and a 2018 interview in which opposition defence spokesman Andrew Hastie claimed the ‘fighting DNA’ of close combat units was ‘best preserved when exclusively male’ do exactly that.

It’s important to clarify what combat roles actually entail. These are positions that engage directly with enemy forces—traditionally found on warships, in fighter aircraft and on the battlefield. But as the character of war has evolved across the five domains—land, sea, air, cyber and space—so too has the nature of combat. The lines are increasingly blurred, exemplified by growing recognition of drone operators as combat roles. Today, defining a combat role is far less clear-cut than it once was. Which only reinforces how ludicrous it is to exclude 50 percent of the Australian population from these roles.

Australia’s journey towards fully integrating women has been a long one. Women have proudly supported Australian military operations since the Boer War in 1899. In 1990, the chief of navy lifted restrictions on women serving at sea, with Royal Australian Navy women deploying in frontline roles during the Gulf War aboard HMAS Westralia. By 1998, the navy allowed women to serve on submarines.

In 1992, most Australian Defence Force roles were opened to women, with only a few exceptions remaining: clearance divers, combat engineers, infantry, artillery, airfield defence and special forces.

In 1992 the Royal Australian Air Force opened fighter pilot roles to women, though uptake has been slow because of cultural barriers rather than capability. Yet even before that, in 1990, female RAAF pilots were already flying C-130s in combat-related roles, and by 2000 women were serving as navigators in Australia’s F-111 strike aircraft.

While admittedly the nature of conflict across the domains is different, these are combat roles where women’s lives are on the line and the sacrifices are just as real.

The journey towards the inclusion of women in land combat roles in Australia has been slower. While ADF women have made key contributions to peacekeeping missions since the 1990s, it wasn’t until 2011 that the formal ban on women serving in land combat roles was lifted, followed by special forces roles in 2014.

This was despite the first woman earning her commando green beret as early as 1981 and women serving as combat medics alongside special forces in Afghanistan before the policy change.

But what of Britton’s specific comments? Setting aside his apparent misunderstanding of the broad range of combat roles, he expressed concern about ‘women’s hips’.

It’s true that studies in Australia and Britain have found that body armour designed for men can have adverse physical impacts on women. But these same studies conclude that such issues can be resolved through improved design. It’s not a reduction in protection, just a redesign to fit the body it’s intended for.

And what about the success rates of women in these physically arduous roles? In 2018, the director of workforce strategy for the army told a parliamentary committee that attrition rates for women in combat roles were broadly the same as those for men.

Likewise, the proportion of applicants, male and female, who fail to meet the physical employment standards for these roles shows no significant gender difference.

As for the so-called fighting DNA of close combat units—I’ve never served in land combat—it’s an experience that deserves the respect of a grateful nation. But based on my operational experience, from service at sea during the second Gulf War to chasing armed drug smugglers in the Caribbean, I can say this: the fighting DNA of a warship is strengthened, not weakened, by diversity of all kinds—including gender.

Australia faces the real prospect of conflict in our region. Faux culture wars such as this serve only to distract from the serious task of preparing our defence force for the challenges ahead.