Marine Corps Brig. Gen. David Walsh and Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host, appear together on Nov. 10, 2023, during a Fox and Friends morning broadcast in New York City. Hegseth, an Army veteran, is nominated to be the next defense secretary. (Theodore Bergan/U.S. Marine Corps)
WASHINGTON — As Pete Hegseth faces the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday during his confirmation hearing to lead the Defense Department, his divisive views on women serving in combat are expected to come under intense lawmaker scrutiny.
Hegseth, a 44-year-old Army National Guard veteran and former Fox News TV host, has drawn fierce criticism for saying women have a place in the military but not in ground-based combat positions in special operations, artillery, infantry and armor units.
“I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles,” he argued on a podcast in November. “It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.”
Hegseth later softened his stance as he met with senators to shore up support for his nomination as defense secretary, praising women as “some of the greatest warriors.” But his earlier remarks, as well as his writing, have raised concerns that, if confirmed, he could roll back opportunities for female troops and harm morale among the thousands of women in combat jobs.
“I’d like him to sit down with a group of women service members and have the same conversation — would he be willing to tell them to their face that they’re not tough enough, that they’re not meeting standards?” said Allison Jaslow, a former Army captain and chief executive officer of the nonprofit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
Women fighting on the battlefield can be traced to the Revolutionary War, when Margaret Corbin fired a cannon to defend Fort Washington against invading British troops and became the first woman to receive a pension from Congress due to injury. But for much of U.S. military history, women were confined to clerical and medical roles.
That began to change with the more prominent participation of women in the Gulf War, which prompted Congress in the early 1990s to repeal a 1948 statute that had excluded women from positions that could be exposed to combat. By 1993, women gained the right to fly in combat aircraft and serve on combat ships.
More than 20 years later, amid the U.S. war in Afghanistan, then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter ordered the full integration of women into the armed forces, without exceptions. The 2015 decision, resisted most by the Marine Corps, opened about 230,000 combat positions that were previously off limits for women.
Today, thousands of women are serving in Army infantry, armor and artillery jobs, hundreds are in combat roles in the Marines and dozens are in special operations positions across the military.
In addition, more than 150 women have completed the notoriously grueling training to become Army Rangers, the service’s elite infantry.
Hegseth in November said he was against women serving in “physical, labor intensive-type” jobs such as the Army Rangers, Navy SEALs, Green Berets, Marine Forces Special Operations Command, infantry battalions, armor and artillery.
“I’m talking something where strength is the differentiator,” he said.
A source close to Hegseth, who is also a veteran, said his comments were misconstrued.
“He’s really focused more so on standards than gender,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “This is an issue that has appeared in, for example, the Ranger Regiment, where leaders have kind of prioritized and incentivized to see how many women they can get into combat as opposed to focusing on how many qualified Rangers can we get into the regiment and if women happen to meet that standard.”
Katherine Kuzminski, the director of the military, veterans and society program at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank with close ties to the Democratic Party, said the only standards that have changed over time to account for gender are for the Army’s recently revised physical fitness test.
The test was meant to have gender-neutral standards but eventually introduced different benchmarks for women and asks service members to do a plank instead of hanging from a bar and tucking their legs to their chest, which is especially difficult for women who have given birth.
Kuzminski noted the test is the bare minimum for being a soldier and additional physical requirements that are tougher for women to meet are still needed to join elite combat units. There are fewer than 10 female Green Berets and, in the Navy, only two women are in the Special Warfare combat crew.
“The very small percentage of women who are in these roles now that they are open to women I think is a sign that those standards are being upheld,” she said. “It wasn’t that all of a sudden we saw 50/50 representation in combat operations specialists, because there is still a very high standard.”
Women’s continued access to all that the military has to offer is not guaranteed. As part of the Pentagon policy that integrated women into combat roles, the services have the option to request some restrictions on women’s participation if they see an issue, according to Kuzminski.
Such a move requires the approval of the service secretary and the defense secretary, meaning President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for the top Pentagon job would have the authority to repeal access to opportunities, Kuzminski said.
Jaslow, the former Army captain that served in the Iraq War, said she believes it will be very challenging for Hegseth to turn back the gender integration policy if he is confirmed. But she worries his “outdated” views on female service members, as well as women in general, could set an exclusionary tone for the military.
In Hegseth’s 2024 book, “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,” he appears to extoll traditional gender roles, arguing women “bring life into the world” and therefore their role in war is to “make it a less deathly experience.”
“I’m going to say something politically incorrect but that is a perfectly commonsensical observation: Dads push us to take risks,” Hegseth wrote. “Moms put the training wheels on our bikes. We need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units.”
He acknowledged the history of women in combat roles but said it is difficult to find many examples, outside of religious or mythical settings, that had “anything close to a positive military outcome.”
“Not only are women comparatively less effective than men in combat roles, but they are also more likely to be objectified by the enemy and their own nation in the moral realms of war,” Hegseth wrote.
Jaslow said it was “extremely disappointing” that a contemporary of hers held such opinions. In Iraq, she led a mixed-gender platoon whose convoys were hit by roadside bombs and regularly came under small arms fire.
Hegseth also deployed to Iraq, as well as to Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, during his 13-year military career, rising to the rank of major.
“He should have been able to view with his own eyes the extraordinary leadership, extraordinary courage by women during our most recent wars,” Jaslow said.
More than 9,000 women received Army Combat Action Badges for engaging in combat with the enemy during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Two women were awarded a Silver Star, the third-highest military decoration for valor in combat, according to a 2015 report by the Congressional Research Service.
Hegseth, who was awarded two Bronze Stars and a Combat Infantryman Badge during his service, has also claimed women are being promoted over more qualified men.
He singled out the elevation of Adm. Lisa Franchetti to the first female chief of naval operations as particularly egregious because, among other things, she had no combat experience and received a master’s degree from the online University of Phoenix.
“If naval operations suffer, at least we can hold our heads high. Because at least we have another first! The first female member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — hooray,” Hegseth wrote in his book.
Franchetti served as vice chief of naval operations before her promotion and commanded U.S. naval forces in Korea, two carrier strike groups and the U.S. Navy’s 6th Fleet, which is based in Italy and covers Europe and Africa.
Hegseth suggested Adm. Samuel Paparo, then the commander of the Pacific Fleet, was a better fit for the job but “politics is all about optics instead of results.”
Democratic senators are likely to bring up these comments when they grill Hegseth on his qualifications, background and character on Tuesday. They are also expected to address the other controversies surrounding Hegseth’s nomination: accusations of sexual assault, drinking problems and financial mismanagement as well as his advocacy on behalf of troops charged with war crimes.
“On Tuesday, I look forward to exposing how unqualified he really is for this position,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., a former Army helicopter pilot and Iraq war veteran, said Friday. “Our troops and our country deserve better.”
Republicans, who hold a slight majority in the Senate, have increasingly rallied around Hegseth despite initial reservations from more moderate senators. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who is the first female combat veteran elected to the Senate, appeared to warm to Hegseth after several meetings with him and said she looked forward to a fair hearing.
“Following our encouraging conversations, Pete committed to completing a full audit of the Pentagon and selecting a senior official who will uphold the roles and value of our servicemen and women — based on quality and standards, not quotas,” she said in a statement last month.
