American women will soon become eligible (in theory) for the draft

September 18, 2021

Washington, DC

mWAR ADMINISTRATION is a distant prospect in America. But if military service were declared, the country’s conscripts could soon look very different. An amendment to the annual defense policy bill that goes through Congress would for the first time call women into question for conscription. On September 2, the House of Representatives’ Armed Services Committee passed it. “The time has come,” said Congressman Chrissy Houlahan, a former Air Force officer and main sponsor of the change. Coupled with the success of a similar provision in the Senate, the change is now almost certain when the final bill is voted on.

Although conscription ended in 1973, controversy arose over who could be called up for service. The draft was so unpopular after the Vietnam War that after 1975 men no longer even had to register for the Selective Service, the directory of those entitled to draft. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 caused President Jimmy Carter to reintroduce the need for men, but Congress was reluctant to include women. The decision of the Rostker Supreme Court against Goldberg in 1981 determined that women could be excluded from electoral service because they were not allowed to take on combat functions. That argument seemed thin before Leigh Ann Hester became the first woman to receive the Silver Star for direct combat in 2005 after her convoy was ambushed in Iraq.

When President Barack Obama opened women’s combat roles in 2015, the legal logic that excluded women from the draft was overturned. Drawing women into combat initially met with opposition. Republicans argued this would undermine the cohesion of the American armed forces, and former generals have raised concerns. But President Donald Trump left the reform untouched, and the controversy fell silent. Katherine Kuzminski of the Center for American Security, a think tank, suggests that women’s experiences on the battlefield during the “War on Terror” went a long way in convincing the American military that women are indispensable. With the decision in Rostker a dead letter, lawsuits were brought to end the exclusion of women. In April, President Joe Biden asked the Supreme Court to allow Congress to resolve the issue.

The MPs on Capitol Hill are now introducing several progressive arguments for convening women. Representing the Democrats, Ms. Houlahan introduced the amendment by saying that “the selective service system is currently being written, is unconstitutional and discriminated on the basis of gender”. Republican supporters like Congressman Mike Waltz, also a sponsor of the change, are making a practical argument. They echo the arguments of American generals that women are needed if military service is ever called up – a necessity when less than a third of the adult population is considered fit for duty. The opposition comes from a handful of social conservatives who believe that including women in the draft would undermine traditional gender roles.

This bipartisan consensus, however, is characterized by the fact that it finds little support in public opinion, especially among women. While a little more than half of men are in favor of calling women up, only 36% of women do so. Kara Vuic, a historian at Texas Christian University, notes that the first push for women in the draft in the early 1970s was coupled with feminist advocacy of the Equal Rights Amendment, a proposed constitutional amendment that guarantees women’s rights. Conscription was seen as a requirement for full citizenship. Today, she notes, change is not being led by women alone. “The war in the 21st century is very different, and the military needs women.” For Ms. Vuic, the growing support of the Pentagon is critical.

An extension of the draft would mean that there would be almost no legal restrictions left for women in the armed forces. But a wider debate about the future of conscription continues. Senators Ron Wyden and Rand Paul have proposed that the Selective Service be abolished entirely. Others complain about the growing cultural gap between soldiers and civilians and call for a revival of conscription. Such differences are less easy to bridge.■

This article appeared in the United States section of the print version under the heading “XX Rated”