Women currently make up more than 14% of the 1.4 million active military personnel but were not allowed to serve in over 230,000 combat positions; despite that they have increasingly served at the front lines (Goudreau, 2013). In 2013, the U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta decided to allow women to serve in military combat roles, reversing a 1994 policy that excluded women from serving in combat units. This ensures that the best person is in a leadership position regardless of their sex. For instance, if the best sniper is a woman, it should be her in that role. On the contrary, some people believe that women are not physically built like men, attempts to integrate them may lead to lowered standards overall. Additionally, women in combat units may negatively change the dynamics, creating conditions of sexual competition and sexual harassment. Old-fashioned sexism involves overt contentions that women are inferior and that their roles should be restricted to those consistent with femininity (Young & Nauta, 2013).
During the time of drafting in the military, the Supreme Court held that Congress should receive great deference in the area of military affairs and national defense. Because of combat restrictions on women, the Court found that men and women were not “similarly situated” for draft registration purposes and, thus, the Military Selective Service Act did not offend the Due Process Clause (Ivey, 2014). Congress carefully considered its decision to exempt women from the military draft. Based on the testimony of military officers and civilian officials from the Department of Defense, Congress determined there was no military necessity for registering females. When comparing Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union, the perspective reveals differences in what dimensions are perceived as problematic in the relation of gender and combat and what are the conditions shaping this perception (Fieselera, Hampfb, & Schwarzkopfc, 2014). The conditions become apparent under which combat functions are made available to women, and also explores the long-term effects of the reconfiguration of the gender order under war-time conditions. Equality The issue of equal participation in the military is further clouded by "progressive" policies that set lower physical standards for women's participation in the armed forces. Such differential standards make more women eligible to participate (of course lowered standards for men would have the same effect) but the lower standard for women aggravates the existing conception that women are less physically suited for combat and military participation (Prividera & Howard III, 2014). Indeed, the standards indicate that women are generally inferior to men. So what is the solution? Similar standards could be set. If the standards are meaningful then simply expecting all participants to meet those standards would remove much of the stigma of "weakness." Many male soldiers are resistant to women's participation due to the fact that women will be less likely to help because of being less strong. They would then be a liability compared to a stronger individual. An equal standard would not predict or ensure that the strongest member of a unit is male or female, but it would ensure that all members of that unit were able to execute their jobs competently. An ongoing manifestation of ideological bias is the stateside issue of parenting and, in particular, single parenting. Men are recognized as great fathers for their service. Women are questioned as mothers because of their service. It is a simple extension of the classic argument that "the woman's place is in the home.” She is the child bearer / homemaker and should not be putting herself at harm’s way. Shared Leadership Leadership has become “central to the public conversation” and there has been “evidence of a shift in the very idea of leadership – a return to a more heroic, more inspirational definition than …show more content…
During military basic training all soldiers are drilled to execute standard procedures and are continuously educated to respect the military hierarchy through systematically disciplining of inappropriate behaviors, this may explain why the transactional type of leadership, especially based on contingent rewarding, is conceived as the most appropriate in effectively leading a unit in a critical context (Di Schiena, R., Letens, Van Aken, & Farris,