We may be headed for a significant war shortly, one that will require rapid expansion of our forces. The Army can only do that through the draft. Now that women can serve in ground maneuver units, will we draft women?
There needs to be a national discussion on this issue. When then Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, faced with an impending lawsuit concerning women in combat, signed off on opening combat arms to women, it was a bureaucratic action done without congressional approval or national discourse. The Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS) has ramrodded this agenda.
The considerations surrounding this are immensely complex. While equality and equity are undoubtedly important, so are biological necessities. The United Kingdom’s "Lost Generation" deeply affected its culture and future. This author is the result of the loss of German men during World War II, as my German mother met my American father when he was stationed there in the early 1950s. Combat and strategic bombings killed most of her male contemporaries.
Can a nation survive if it takes catastrophic losses of women during their vital child-bearing ages? This is a question of biological necessity: who will populate the next war’s boomer generation?
If we now allow women to serve in the maneuver combat arms, equality and equity demand that young women sign up for the draft as do their male counterparts. As the father of a daughter, I am a firm "no" on this issue, yet my daughter is a serving Navy surface warfare officer of whom I am immensely proud. Talk about being conflicted on this issue.
Further compounding this topic is the physiological difference highlighted by current discussions of whether transwomen should participate in women’s sports? Biological male differences give greater strength and speed to transwomen (XY) than their competition, whose genetic makeup is XX.
If biologically, men are stronger and faster than women, wouldn’t placing women on the physically arduous ground gaining combat arms (infantry and armor) units be counterproductive? Further impacting this issue is the quota system that the Army euphemistically clouds as "goals" of requiring at least two female officers or noncommissioned officers into each combat arms company.