Air Force Women In The Military Essay

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ranks when four female pilots and crew members were assigned to Air Force B-1 bomber units which flew missions over Iraq. These air missions were the first in aerial combat by women in each service of the military. At this time the Air Force had 350 women serving among its 13,000 aviators (Sisk, 1998). Air Force women also served in the Afghanistan War from 2001 to 2014, and in the Iraq War from 2003 until 2011. Out of the 1.6 million service members deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 200,000 were women. Women represented 11% of the forces deployed in operations in the two countries. These wars were among the first to allow women to regularly deploy and engage in combat situations. Female veterans of these wars also represent the largest unit of women in history who were involved extensively in combat operations. While women were still excluded from direct combat and occupations, many were in combat support jobs that could occasionally place them in combat situations (National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics). In 2011, the United States Air Force Basic Training scandal involved 43 female trainees who alleged being victimized by their training instructors during training. The scandal was introduced to the public in June 2011, when a young female trainee accused her instructor of …show more content…

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced that the Department of Defense lift its ban on women serving in combat. Panetta’s order made women eligible as infantrymen on combat patrol, and work on elite special operations units. However, women still had to meet high strength standards that could keep them out of units where physical demands were grueling. Panetta’s new policy opened 200,000 jobs to military women, and was implemented b 2015. Still, certain units could be kept off limits to women if reasoning could be justified to the Secretary of Defense (Martin,

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