Roles for women changing, female vets say

[unhappycamper]

Roles for women changing, female vets say
The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Nov 12, 2007 9:58:14 EST

As more women enter the military — and increasingly take positions closer to combat — female veterans say perceptions of women in the armed forces are slowly shifting in a culture that for centuries has been geared toward men.

There are about 1.7 million female veterans living today. They have served in both peacetime and every war since World War II, but for most, military life did not include picking up a weapon.

Dorothy Wolfe, of St. Louisville, Ohio, was a Marine in the late 1950s and later went on to serve in the Ohio Air National Guard. She remembers her Marine boot camp as a time “when we watched a lot of films on how to wear make-up.”

~snip~

Times are changing. Current Defense Department mandates exempt female soldiers from direct combat units such as infantry and armor, and from smaller support units “co-located,” or attached, to combat units, but over the past five years, the rules have loosened somewhat to allow women to serve in co-located units as long as they are not carrying out a mission.

As of this week, 91 women in the armed forces have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than all the women who have died in previous U.S. wars combined. One in seven soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors serving in Iraq today is a woman.

“Women are still prohibited from direct combat, but the lines have blurred somewhat,” said Michele Jones, a veteran of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the first woman to hold the job command sergeant major of the U.S. Army Reserve. She recently retired.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/11/ap_femalevets_071111/

[Captain Hilts]

1. I know a navy corpsman who is a boorish sexist who...

was stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq and said women there are doing a great job and it's just not an issue.