I watched the 60 MINUTES tribute to Don Hewitt yesterday.  And in an interview he said [something to the effect] that he didn’t recognize the world we now live in and that it felt somewhat unfamiliar to him.  I don’t recall his exact words, yet I think I understood what he meant.

Although I’ve come a long way since I was a young wife and mother in the 70’s, and my anti-feminist [Eagle Forum]  ideologies have diminished significantly, I confess that at my core I feel more comfortable with clearly defined social roles for men and women.  Perhaps I was socially brainwashed with deeply ingrained cultural belief systems such that I continue to believe in the model of the traditional family - husband, wife, children; and gender defined professions; policeman, fireman, lineman, nurse.  Yet intellectually, I know that the era of twentieth century social ideology shaped by gender was wrong, and is long gone and will never return. 

Still, many times I ask myself why do I continued to wrestle with the tension between the old vs new social/cultural order?  I ask myself why do certain belief systems of the past era that I grew up in continue to resonate within me when I now perceive myself as being more enlightened and tolerant of this new age ideology respective to roles of men and women in our society?  Why does this world feel somewhat alien to me in the manner I think Don Hewett expressed?

I’m not sure.  Yet, I suspect that my reason for not feeling quite comfortable in this new 21st century has a lot to do with the fact that I’m not so sure that all the changing roles that women have made, all the obstacles that women have overcome, and all the progressive changes that women have made has not elevated our society to a higher value norm.  Certainly [in my mind], the progressive strides that women have made came at a phenomenal price - particularly and specifically as it relates to the nuclear family - no matter how ‘creatively’ sociologist have redefined the term of family in this century.  And, it is in this context that I feel ‘out of touch’ and somewhat uncomfortable in a world I no longer recognize …  where most of my nieces don’t have husbands, where two of my grandchildren do not live with both parents, where the UPS delivery person who brought the last heavy package to my door was a woman, where I sometime cannot distinguish what gender a person is by the way they dress, where I cannot understand my inner conflict when I simply feel it’s unfeminine for women to be in roles of aggression - women police officers and security guards, or women in combat …  

I suppose my dilemna is that I’m still struggling to ‘adapt’ to a changing world that is redifining itself far faster than my ablility to grasp and embrace new core belief systems that makes sense.

I am an Army veteran from the late 1970s. I was stationed in Germany during the cold war. Though we were told we wouldn’t be called upon for combat, I was trained at the firing range just like everyone else. It was crystal clear to me that if the USSR decided to invade Germany, there would be no time to move female soldiers out so I just assumed I would hunker down with my fellow soldiers and do what needed to be done.

I have done many interviews with women soldiers from that era. They all joined the military to do a job and just wanted to have some opportunity to move up the ranks and contribute. I cannot think of one who was not subjected to some form of sexual harassment. At that time women were newly integrated into the regular Army and that was a huge change.

Today, there seems to be less resistance until you get to the issue of combat. But women are already in combat. Lioness, an award winning documentary, is a gut wrenching film on women in combat in Iraq. Here is the link to the website. www.lionessthefilm.com

So let’s make the policy match the reality. All US soldiers are volunteers with career goals and service motivations of their own. They deserve an even playing field.

Everyone makes great points and overwhelmingly, the answer seems to be yes, but I have to wonder if there would be the same conclusion if this were a primarily male site?  Just curious.

My father was in the military, both active and reserve.  I have several military family members.  My husband is military, also both active duty and active reserve. I have heard this debated many times, but with no definitive outcome.  I’ll admit, I’ve heard good arguments, but my first reaction is still to say yes, why not.  But as others have said, it should be exercised across the board.  If women in the military have equal responsibility and benefits as men, there’s no reason the draft should exclude women either.