Equal Rights? Men Make All the Policies for Women in the Military

I was perusing my usual news haunts trying to decide what to write about for International Women's Day, getting distracted by all the articles about the proposed policy changes regarding women on submarines and in combat. What, I thought, would I ever write about for IWD, with all this news about women gaining ground in the military?

The military is great for women: you get equal pay for equal work (even if you aren't allowed to do any job you want ... yet), full benefits, and a chance at an education if you budget your time well. But are women really gaining ground? I perused the names of the policy makers and the ones that newspapers always name as "key DoD officials" whenever a change has to be made regarding women in uniform. Robert Gates. Gary Roughead. Raymond Odierno. Anthony Cucolo. The list goes on, and they are almost all men. Some of them really pushing to help women, and others ... not so much.

The lives and careers of women in uniform are decided by men. We must ask permission and wait as we are granted crumbs of equality by them. We must wait as they dole out roles for us in the game of Masters of the Universe that they play.

As of 2008, there were 197,900 active duty women in the U.S. military, and of those, only about 5% were officers. Women aspiring to promotion through the officer ranks had only men to look up to and mentor them. Eight percent of the Army's Senior enlisted members are women. No woman has yet reached the highest ranking enlisted position in any of the military branches.

Even as the military is lauded for its efforts to promote equality and diversity in its ranks, I wonder if it can do so while not having equality and diversity amongst those who make the decisions. How can men truly know how to make policy regarding what is best for women in uniform? How can the intersections of what is best for women and what is best for the force be met when the people making those calls have no idea what it is like to be the body inside that uniform and carrying out those orders? How can we foster a military that gets women to these key positions?

We allow so so many who have no vested interest in what is best to make decisions. We put the lives of gay and lesbian people to a vote, we allow male politicians to bicker over women's reproductive health, and we seem to think it is just dandy to leave the careers of women up to men who don't even know how to lace our boots.

There isn't just a glass ceiling in the military. It is a brass ceiling, and breaking it is pretty remarkable. We have women who are smashing through and making ways for women to go further, and who believe that women can do all things. But women's careers are still limited by the policies decided by the men in charge, and then their promotions to decision making ranks are limited by those career choices. We need more women aspiring and pushing for those roles and demanding their due.

Nothing is equal until it is equal. There should be no vote on women's lives until women are an equal part of that process.

Photo credit: U.S. Army