Pentagon officials said that they were committed to lifting barriers to women but that it was difficult to make sweeping changes on the battlefield during a time of war.
“Sometimes this takes longer than you’d like,’’ said Virginia Penrod, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for military personnel policy. “It may appear too slow to some, but I see this as a great step forward.’’
In the 1970s, Penrod recalled, she was one of the first women allowed to serve at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. Female troops had previously been banned there because it was “too cold,’’ she said, adding that the military has come a long way since then.
But advocates for women in the military accused the Pentagon of dragging its feet and only belatedly recognizing the critical role that female troops have played in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They said many of the job openings announced by the Pentagon merely codify the reality on the battlefield, where commanders have stretched rules for years to allow women to bear arms and support ground combat units.
Since 2001, about 280,000 women have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Defense Department statistics; 144 have been killed and 865 have been wounded.
The biggest previous advance for women in uniform came in 1994, when the Clinton administration removed restrictions on more than a quarter-million troop slots. Since then, however, the Pentagon has kept in place a prohibition on women serving in units whose primary mission is “direct’’ ground combat, such as artillery, infantry, and tank units.
“Since then, it’s been drip, drip, drip,’’ said Nancy Duff Campbell, copresident of the National Women’s Law Center, expressing frustration with what she called incremental changes. “This is the pattern that they have been following for years.’’
