To understand how women can fight, but still not be in combat, is all about definition. For decades, the Pentagon has been opening up roles for women to serve on combat aircraft, ships, and, as of 2010, even submarines. But, the prohibition against “direct ground combat,’’ known as DGC, has never changed.
Pentagon policy uses phrases like “collocation’’ and “primary mission’’ to help explain the present panoply of rules governing women. It can be confusing to most civilians. More women are being brought closer to the combat line, without violating the DGC rule. The Marine Corps has created, for example, Female Engagement Teams to be assigned with, but not to, combat Marine Expeditionary Units because of a growing recognition that in many countries, male Marines ought not to engage civilian women. So, women are there with the very forces that are waging combat; they are in combat, but not “in combat.’’ Get it?
Neither, often, does the military. Defense Department definitions prohibit women who are placed “well forward on the battlefield’’; Army policy omits that phrase and instead adds that women will not be assigned to any forces that are “repelling the enemy.’’
Even forgiving the paternalism in all these rules, none of these definitions makes much sense when applied to modern warfare. As the Service Women’s Action Network, an organization committed to repealing the ban, notes: “Iraq and Afghanistan exemplify asymmetric battlegrounds, where the potential for engagement in direct ground combat is ever present.’’
