Today, Explained - Should women be in combat?

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

Combat roles have been open to women for a decade, but President Donald Trump's Pentagon still questions whether women can be lethal. Army veteran Emelie Vanasse says the debate over women's battlefield fitness is long settled. This episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlin with help from Denise Guerra, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Patrick Boyd and hosted by Noel King. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. Army veteran Emilie Vanass outside Army Ranger School at Camp Rogers in Fort Benning, GA. Image courtesy Emilie Vanass. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth came into his job promising a war on wokeness and weakness in the U.S. military. No more pronouns, no more climate change obsession, no more emergency vaccine mandates, no more dudes in dresses. We're done with that shit. Hegseth has taken aim at women. He's challenged the idea that women should serve in combat roles, as they have for 10 years now. He's danced around whether women make the military less lethal, including at his Senate confirmation hearing. Commanders meet quotas to have a certain number of female infantry officers or infantry enlisted,

and that disparages those women who are incredibly capable of meeting that standard. Next month, he's updating the Army fitness test to make it more difficult and to make the standards the same for men and women. Coming up on Today Explained, the war over women warfighters. Quick favor before we get started here at Today Explained, we are planning for the future of the show and we want to hear from you to figure out how we can make our show even better for you.

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Get your Hot Honey McCrispy today. Available for a limited time, only at McDonald's. You're listening to Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Sana Kurt is an investigative reporter at The War Horse. This is a national nonprofit newsroom that covers the military and veterans. Sonner recently wrote a piece titled Women Have Served in Combat Roles for a Decade. The Pentagon is reopening the debate.

Pete Hegstaff has been pretty clear that he is skeptical of women in combat. Because I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn't made us more effective, hasn't made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated. He's made statements in public, in his book, during his time on Fox News, saying that women should be able to serve in the military, but that combat roles specifically are not suited for women. When I'm talking about that issue, it's not about the capabilities of men and women, it's about standards.

Standards that we, unfortunately, over time, have seen eroded in certain duty positions, certain schools, certain places, which affects readiness, which is what I care about the most. Hexeth has talked a lot about standards, and specifically sort of how they've fallen in recent years. Grooming like uniform standards, these little things that make the military sort of disciplined,

saying they've sort of fallen by the wayside. But the big one that I think he's interested in is physical fitness standards specifically. What are the physical fitness standards that he's referring to? What does he mean? In general, the military branches have an annual or semi-annual physical fitness test that all service members take, sort of regardless of what you do in your day-to-day job. And that tests how in shape you are, how fit you are. And I think when he's talking about physical fitness standards, he's generally talking about those standards. So for decades, the military I joined, there were different male and female physical standards,

because men and women are different, and that's understandable. But there were certain jobs, combat MOSs, that were only for men, and so you had a male standard. In March, Hegsath released two memos, basically directing the military services, the different branches to reevaluate their standards, to specifically look at their physical fitness standards and in particular, how those standards relate to combat specialties or combat positions. We're ensuring that any combat position across any of the

services and the services are evaluating that has the same standard for men and women. The memos said basically they should revisit how they've changed since 2015. And I think it's important to note that date is probably not random. That's the year that Secretary Ash Carter said that all jobs in the military would be open to women. This means that as long as they qualify and meet the standards, women will now be able to contribute to our mission in ways they could not before. They'll be allowed to drive tanks, fire mortars, and lead infantry soldiers into combat.

The Army was sort of already looking at some changes to its physical fitness test, but the newly released test seems to be in response, at least at some level, to this request or this directive by HEGCEF to reconsider physical fitness standards. Okay, so the standards for the Army are going to change. What were they and what are they changing to? Army's yearly or semi-yearly fitness test, it was called the Army Combat Fitness Test. They're now changing it to the Army Fitness Test. And historically, the Army Combat Fitness Test was graded on sort of a scale. So the standards were different for men and women, and they were different for younger

and older people. They call it sort of age and gender norming. That's the test that the army has been taking. There's going to be some changes to how that's scored. In general, the standards are going up just a little bit across the board. People are going to have to do more push-ups. There's some changes in some places to the timing of the run. But the big change really is for women who want to go into combat armed specialties or who are already in combat armed specialties are going to have to meet basically the male standard. Okay.

If I'm a literal minded person, I might say, you know, it makes sense to me that women should have to meet the same standards as men, especially maybe even only if they weren't doing their jobs as well as men. So we now have some years of data on this. In those combat jobs, did we have evidence that women were not doing them as well as men, not doing them well enough? There really hasn't been evidence. There are sort of two things I think are important to consider. One is that the Army and the military branches sort of look at or make a distinction between fitness standards and occupational standards.

So while the physical fitness test for the Army, the Army Combat Fitness Test, has been gender normed and age normed, every woman who serves in a combat role has had to meet occupational standards. So basically these physical demands that the job requires, tasks that test how well you can really do the physical parts of the job. And that's gender neutral. They're great at the same for everyone.

The debate over women in combat didn't come out of a vacuum. It came out of Iraq and Afghanistan where women were doing the job alongside men in a lot of cases. I basically got an email that was kind of mysterious and was like, can you meet these physical requirements? Do you want to deploy with a special operations unit? And I said, yes, you know, you deploy to Afghanistan and you're attached to a special operations unit. So I was attached to a special forces operational detachment alpha.

There were lioness teams, these female engagement teams that, because of cultural reasons, would be involved in raiding and clearing houses, engaging with women, and they were exposed to a lot of the same combat threats that men were. I guess I'd say the thing about combat is that everyone has a role to play, but it ends up being much more than just your assigned role. Like I carried ammunition, I carried extra equipment for other people.

Because technically their time on the front line didn't count as combat, they weren't getting awards, they weren't getting promotions. Being in combat counts for a lot in the Army and the Marine Corps. So it was impacting their careers, impacting promotions, it was impacting benefits they could get after they got out of the military. And so a lot of the decision making around women in combat was based on the fact that women were doing these jobs, they just weren't being recognized for it. Is there anything else that the Pentagon under Pete Hegseth is doing that suggests it might

want to reopen the question of whether women should be in combat? I think that there are a number of things that are causing concern for women in the military. One is just sort of the scrubbing of Defense Department websites of accomplishments of women and other military minority groups. But kind of more concretely, the Pentagon and the military branches have eliminated barrier analysis groups, which was really an Air Force initiative that the other services were starting

to emulate that worked on issues for women and various minority groups, saying basically, how can we remove barriers to their service? How can we make them better? How can we make them more lethal? How can we help them do their jobs better? And how do we develop body armor that fits women's bodies? Because that's been a big problem, is that small body armor, which is issued often to women, is designed for a small male body.

The bottom was so heavy, it didn't fit, it would clank up against my hips, and it would cause bruises on my ribs. And then the Pentagon basically removed all of the members of some 40 plus defense advisory committees. There are these basically independent committees that advise the Secretary of Defense on everything from R&D to how the military handles sexual assault. Is there any sense that Secretary of Defense Hegseth is overstepping and some of this may be relitigated later on? I think there's a chance that it will be sort of reconsidered later on, but a lot of this

really for the most part is the secretary's prerogative. He can stand up or dismantle these committees. He has a lot of decision-making authority. He can direct the military branches to do XYZ. I think a lot of the concerns people are having now is that these big questions, like women in combat, are going to be addressed without sort of the independent study and counsel that have historically accompanied big decisions in the military. SONIA DARA-MARGOLIS-DESAIERRE-PETER PEDERSON PETE HEGGSETH is an unusual choice for Secretary

of Defense. He has in some ways, I think it's fair to say, targeted women in the service. What do you hear from your sources, from your women's sources in the military, about what they think of him and how they're feeling about all these proposed changes? Heather Fetcher Hextheth and military leadership are focusing on sort of small culture roars questions rather than some of the big questions that are facing the military. And I think, you know, one thing that I've heard is that Haigsef talks a lot about lethality and the importance of lethality and that sort of woke, quote unquote, woke

culture in the military is undermining lethality. But they haven't really seen a definition of what lethality is. I think a lot of people in the military would like to get a clearer understanding of how he defines lethality. Sondra Kurtz, she's an investigative reporter at The War Horse, which is a national nonprofit newsroom that covers the military and veterans. Find him at thewarhorse.org. Coming up, a lady veteran who did something that Secretary of Defense, Hegseth, couldn't. Podcasts are great because they help us make the most out of our routine. We learn about the fall of the Ottoman Empire while we drive, keep up with news while we

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Growing up, did your parents ever tell you money doesn't grow on trees? Mine didn't, but their Nissan was duct taped together, so point made. You can pick up where my parents or yours left off and help teach your kid about money with Greenlight. Greenlight is a debit card and money app made for families. It helps kids learn how to save, invest, and spend wisely. You can send money to the kids. You can keep an eye on what they're doing.

And they, in the meanwhile, will build financial confidence and skills in a fun way, like with games. One of our colleagues at Box, Oisham, has used Greenlight. Here's Oda. The Greenlight app has definitely helped my 15-year-old learn about how to use money. There is different sections. There is one for everyday spending,

and there is one for savings. So if he knows there's something he wants to save up for, he can tell me how he wants me to put the money in, whether it's like 25 into spending and 75 into savings, he can give me some kind of allocation and that way as he's getting older he can learn how to budget also through this. You can start your risk-free Greenlight trial today at greenlight.com slash explain. That's greenlight.com slash explain to get started greenlight.com slash explain. This is Today Explained. Ranger school is kind of a crucible event for the army.

It's a three-phase school in which individuals are deprived of food and sleep and warmth and kind of basic human comforts and forced to make decisions and lead in complex situations, and then they're evaluated on those leadership decisions. So Ranger School was founded in 1952 and it's kind of touted as the premier leadership training and evaluation school for the Army. And women weren't given the chance or the opportunity to attend until 2014. So it took the Army 62 years to realize that women could be leaders too. Emily Van Ass served in the Army for seven years

as an infantry officer. She was in fact in the first group of women to commission as infantry officers, that was in 2016, and she was among the first women to graduate from the Army's elite ranger school. I went to ranger school on the 1st of January, 2017, and I woke up you know 3 a.m. that day in Fort Benning, Georgia, shaved my head quarter-inch all

the way around just like the men, took my last hot shower, choked down some French toast and then I drove to Camp Rogers. And I remember being like very acutely aware of the pain that the school would inflict both physically and mentally but I very much considered it a prerequisite for my job as an infantry officer. I was also very aware that there was kind of half of this population of objective graders that just kind of hated my guts for even showing up.

They hated you for showing up because you're a woman? Back in 2016 and 2017, it was so new to have women in Ranger school. I used to think like, I don't have to just be good. Like I have to be lucky. I have to get a grader who is willing to let a woman pass. I had dark times at that school. I tasted real failure.

I sat under a poncho in torrential rain and I shivered so hard, my whole body cramped. I put on a rock that weighed 130 pounds and I crawled up a mountain on my hands and knees. I hallucinated a donut shop in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains and I cried one morning when someone told me I had to get out of my sleeping bag. But I think all of those experiences are such like quintessential Ranger School experiences. They're what everyone kind of goes through there. The point of the school is that failure, that suffering,

it's not inherently bad, right? In a way, I like to think Ranger School was the most simplistic form of gender integration that ever could have happened, because if I was contributing to the team, there was no individual out there that really had the luxury of disliking or excluding me. out there that really had the luxury of disliking or excluding me. Did you only cry that one time?

I think it was just once at Ranger School. Yeah. Damn! It was a cold morning and I just really didn't want to get out of my... It had been like 10 minutes of sleep and I was like, no, please, 10 more minutes. But you did it. You just did it. And then you kept going. Well, you just did it. Most of us didn't. Okay, so when you wanted to give up, I'm going

on a tangent here just because I find this fascinating. I'm so sorry. I'm of the age where like, I was like 13 when GI Jane came out. So I just think this is so badass. When you wanted to give up, why didn't you? What did you tell yourself? Was it like, I'm a woman and I must prove a point, or was it like, fuck no, I, Emily, am certainly not going to pull out of something that I want? What was going through your head? I don't think I ever really considered quitting at Ranger School.

I just knew that it was something that I could get through and had the confidence to continue. I think I had a thought going in of what could be so bad that would make me quit, and the answer that I found throughout the school was nothing. Did you ever feel when you were in Ranger School like they had lowered the standards for you compared to the men who were alongside you? No. Never. I did the same thing that the men did. I did the same Ranger physical fitness test that all the men took. I ran five miles in 40 minutes. I did 49 push-ups, 59 sit-ups,

six pull-ups. I rocked 12 miles in three hours with a 45 pound rock. I climbed the same mountains. I carried the same stuff. I carried the same exact packing list they did plus 250 tampons for some reason, at no point were the standards lowered for me. But whose idea was it for you to carry 250 tampons? It wasn't yours. It was not mine, yeah. A misguided effort to have everyone very prepared for the first women coming through Ranger School.

Let me ask you a question about six pull-ups. Were there any men who you were physically superior to? In Ranger School, were there any men who could only do five pull-ups? Or was it basically like, look, women have different levels of strength, upper body strength, and so six is good, but that's sort of the low point. No, not at all. It's six pull-ups or you don't get to do Ranger School. You get dropped on the first day.

So everybody does six pull-ups. So in Ranger School, there's only one standard for the fitness test. Everybody's got to meet it. Correct. And that allows you to get out of Ranger School and say, look, fellas, I took the fitness test. Everybody's got to meet it. And that allows you to get out of ranger school and say, look, fellas, I took the same test as the men and I passed. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is saying that army combat jobs should only have one standard of fitness for both men and women. And there's part of me that thinks, doesn't that allow the women who meet the standards to be like, look, we met the same standards as the men?

Nothing suspicious here, guys. I think gender neutral standards for combat arms is very important. Like, it should not be discounted how important physical fitness is for combat arms. I think there's nuance in determining, like, what is a standard that is useful for combat arms, right? But I think it's an important thing. is a standard that is useful for combat arms, right? But I think it's an important thing. And there have honestly been gender neutral standards for combat arms and things like infantry basic officer leadership course, which is kind of the initial kind

of basic training for officers going into the infantry. There are gender neutral standards that you have to meet. You have to run five miles in 40 minutes. You have to do a 12 mile rock. Like all of those standards have remained the same. Pete Hegseth is specifically referring to the Army Combat Physical Fitness Test. And to a certain extent, I agree, it should be gender neutral for combat arms. But I think there's nuance in determining what exactly does combat arms entail physically. Secretary Hegseth has a lot to say about women,

and sometimes he says it directly, and sometimes he alludes to it. What he often does is he talks about lethality as something that is critically important for the military. He says the army in particular needs more of it, but he never really defines what he means by lethality. What is the definition as you understand it? There's a component of lethality that is physical fitness and it should not be

discounted. But lethality extends far beyond that, right? It's tactical skills, it's decision making, it's leadership, it's grit, it's the ability to build trust and instill purpose in a group of people. It's how quick a fire team in my platoon can react to contact, how well my saw gunner can shoot, how quickly I can employ and integrate combat assets, how fast I can maneuver a squad. All of those things take physical fitness,

but they certainly take more than just physical fitness. So I think there's more to lethality than just how fast you can run and how many pushups you can do. To your average civilian like myself, I hear lethality and I think, I do, I think of the dictionary definition, the ability to kill. Does this definition of lethality involve the ability both physically and emotionally and psychologically to kill another person?

Yeah, absolutely. And so when Secretary Hegdeff cast doubt on the ability of women to be as lethal as men, do you think there's some stuff baked in there that maybe gets to his idea of what women are willing and able to do? Yeah, possibly. I think the Secretary's message is pretty clear. According to him, the women

in combat arms achieved success because the standards were lowered for them. We were never accommodated and the standards were never lowered. So what's your response then to hearing the Secretary of Defense say, women don't belong in combat? I mean, it makes me irate, to be honest. It's just a complete discountment of all of the accomplishments of the women that came before us. There's this Rupi Kaur poem that I love and that like gives me solace and strength in these moments where it just feels like I'm having the same conversation on a repeat these

days and it goes like, I stand on the sacrifices of a million women before me thinking what can I do to make this mountain taller so the women after me can see further. It's exhausting to have this conversation again, but at least I get to relive the accomplishments of some incredible women that have added so much to that mountain. Do you think that if Secretary Hegseth could take a look at what you did in Ranger School and he could hear from you that there were no second chances, there were no excuses, there was no babying, the men didn't treat me nicer just because I was a woman, do you think that he'd change his mind about women serving in combat?

I'd like to think he would, but I've met plenty of people whose mind couldn't be changed by reality. I'd love if he went to Ranger school. He has a lot of opinions about Ranger school for someone who's never been. He may have gone and failed, I'm actually not quite sure, but he does not have his Ranger tab. What is a Ranger tab for civilians? A Ranger tab is what you receive upon graduating Ranger school, which means you have passed all three phases and you are now Ranger qualified in the military. Aha.

So you have that and the Secretary of Defense doesn't. He does not, though he has a lot of opinions about Ranger school. Emily Van Ness, she has since left the military and today she works for a defense technology company. That song you're hearing is This Will Defend by the Army Rappers. They're part of the U.S. military. Today's episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlain with an assist from Denise Guerra. It was edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristen's daughter and Patrick Boyd. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Thanks for watching!