President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial nominee for defence secretary says women shouldn’t serve in military combat roles, ignoring decades of research and at least three millennia of actual practice.

“I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles,” said Pete Hegseth, a Fox News political commentator and former National Guard officer.

“It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.”

President Barack Obama’s administration lifted a ban on women in ground combat units in 2013. The Pentagon opened all combat positions to them in 2016, allowing them to fill about 220,000 jobs that were previously limited to men, including infantry, armour, reconnaissance and some special operations units.

Women accounted for roughly 17.5 per cent of the U.S. military’s active-duty force in 2022.

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decreed in 1989 that the Canadian Armed Forces open all trades and occupations to women within a decade. The military immediately made virtually all jobs available to women, including combat roles.

As of May 2023, women made up about 16 per cent of Canada’s regular force and primary reserve, including 19.6 per cent of officers and 15.4 per cent of non-commissioned members. More than 50,000 women served in the Canadian forces during the Second World War and while no women exercised combat roles, per se, a select few performed perilous undercover work for the Allied cause.

Canada’s defence chief, General Jennie Carignan, recently suggested there’s no chance Canada would reconsider women’s combat roles. She rejected comments by a U.S. senator at the Halifax International Security Forum that the “jury is still out” on how to deal with the “unique situations” that having women in combat creates.

“I wouldn’t want anyone to leave this forum with this idea that women are a distraction to defence and national security,” the general said.

“After 39 years of career as a combat arms officer and risking my life in many operations around the world, I can’t believe that in 2024 we still have to justify the contribution of women…in the service of their country.”

Females have been fighting alongside males since at least the 12th century BC.

The history of women’s participation in military activities is “blurred by societal norms, exclusionary laws and practices, and sensationalism,” a four-member team of military and non-military researchers wrote in a paper entitled “‘Proud, brave, and tough’: women in the Canadian combat arms.”

“Nevertheless,” they added, “their contributions to global military efforts have been present throughout history.”

Indeed the unattributed Greek work Tractatus de mulieribus claris in bello, or Treatise on Women Distinguished in Wars, written sometime between the 2nd century BC and 1st century AD, tells the stories of 14 women distinguished in ancient wars.

In the 9th century BC, Iranian nomadic peoples known as the Scythians and Sarmatians, including women, fought on horseback, conquering territories from Central Asia into what are now Ukraine and southern Russia. They stayed 400 years.

In ancient Macedonia, Alexander the Great’s half-sister Cynane was one of three royal women to fight on the front lines. She killed an Illyrian queen in battle and defeated one of her late half-brother’s armies.

Polyaenus, a 2nd century Roman Macedonian author, wrote 500 years later that Cynane was famous for her military knowledge, conducting armies and charging at the head of them on the field of battle.

“In an engagement with the Illyrians,” he wrote in Stratagems of War, “she with her own hand slew Caeria their queen; and with great slaughter defeated the Illyrian army. Upon Alexander’s death…she [met] the Macedonian army.

“The Macedonians at first paused at the sight of [King Philip of Macedon’s] daughter, and the sister of Alexander: while after reproaching Alcetas with ingratitude, undaunted at the number of his forces, and his formidable preparations for battle, she bravely engaged him; resolved upon a glorious death, rather than, stripped of her dominions, accept a private life, unworthy of the daughter of Philip.”

In ancient Britain, several women were said to have ruled after prevailing in combat, including Cordelia of Britain in 855 BC and Queen Gwendolen, who defeated her husband King Locrinus in battle at the River Stour in 1115 BC.

Boudica, a queen of the ancient British Iceni tribe, led a failed uprising against conquering Roman forces in 60 or 61 AD. She remains a British national heroine and a symbol of the struggle for justice and independence.

Pantea Arteshbod served as a lieutenant commander in the army of Cyrus the Great in ancient Persia, and Fu Hao was one of the most powerful generals during China’s Shang dynasty. Both women. In ancient Vietnam, the Trưng sisters were the first of several women to become national heroes rebelling against Chinese rule.

The contributions of women in Vietnam continued through the fighting that raged on with the French from the late-1940s through the American war into the mid-1970s.

Millions of Vietnamese women served. “When war comes, even the women must fight,” went a North Vietnamese slogan. Large numbers joined the Viet Cong, especially, serving in a variety of roles, including combat.

In Wales, Gwenllian ferch Gruffydd led a revolt against the Normans. Women fought in the ranks of Viking warriors, giving rise to tales of shield maidens. Women with names such as Nusaybah bint Ka’ab, Khawlah bint al-Azwar, and Ghazala were instrumental in the rise of Islam.

In the pre-Colombian Mayan city of Naranjo, Lady Six Sky launched several successful military campaigns. In Mexico, Toltec queen Xochitl led a battalion of women in a civil war. In the region that is now Burkina Faso, warrior princess Yennenga founded the Mossi Kingdoms more than 900 years ago.

The queen of the Indian state of Jhansi, Rani Lakshmi Bai, famously led an entire army against British invaders and became a leading figure in the Indian Rebellion of 1857—a national hero and symbol of resistance to British rule in India.

The most famous of all fighting women, Joan of Arc, became patron saint of France, honoured as a defender of the country for her role in advising Armagnac commanders, rallying troops during the spring 1429 siege of Orléans, and insisting on the coronation of Charles VII of France during the Hundred Years’ War.

Claiming to be acting under divine guidance, she became a military leader who transcended gender roles and gained recognition as a savior of the nation.

Some 800,000 women served in the Soviet military during WW II, covering the gamut of wartime roles, including pilots, snipers, machine gunners, tank crew and partisans.

The Soviet Union was the first nation to allow women to fly combat missions. It formed three all-female air regiments, staffed by nearly 100 airwomen who flew a combined total of more than 30,000 combat sorties. They included two fighter aces and produced at least 20 Heroes of the Soviet Union, the nation’s highest honour:

• On April 16, 1942, the 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment became the first all-female unit to fly combat missions, completing 4,419 and engaging in 125 air battles with 38 kills by the time the war ended. Members Lydia Litvyak and Yekaterina Budanova became the world’s only two female fighter aces, with five kills apiece flying Yak-1 fighters.
• The 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment was the best-known of the Soviet air regiments. Commanded by Yevdokiya Bershanskaya, it began service as the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, but was redesignated in February 1943. Flying the dated Polikarpov Po-2 biplane, its crews would tally almost 24,000 combat missions by war’s end. The Germans gave them their iconic name, The Night Witches.
• The original commander of the 125th Guards Bomber Aviation Regiment, Marina Raskova, was killed in action and succeeded by Valentin Markov. It started service as the 587th Bomber Aviation Regiment until it was given the Guards designation in September 1943.

The Red Army deployed women as snipers and in a variety of infantry roles. Between the German invasion of 1941 and the Allied victory in 1945, 2,484 Soviet women served as snipers; just 500 survived the war. Their combined tally of kills stands at more than 11,000.

Of Red Army medical personnel during WW II, women comprised 40 per cent of paramedics, 43 per cent of surgeons, 46 per cent of doctors, 57 per cent of medical assistants and 100 per cent of nurses.

The Red Army deployed women as snipers and in a variety of infantry roles.

Women in Sweden, Norway and Denmark gained access to many previously restricted military positions in the early 1970s, then pushed for more. A decade later, Scandinavian women became the first in the world to officially be allowed to join the combat arms.

Owing to their successes in air force combat roles since 1988, New Zealand women were officially integrated into all combat occupations in the early 2000s.

Today, Israel is one of just a few countries where military service is compulsory for all able-bodied female citizens. According to Israeli military statistics, 535 female soldiers were killed between 1962 and 2016.

Female IDF soldiers played key roles defending the Oct. 7 assault by Hamas on southern Israel, including an all-female tank unit that fought for hours, killing dozens of attackers along the border and in overrun communities.

The Times of Israel reported in May 2024 that 47 female IDF soldiers were killed during the Hamas attack, and five more had been killed in the line of duty near Gaza, on the northern border and in the West Bank in subsequent months.

The IDF said it had seen a massive spike in female conscripts joining combat units during the war. The turnout for female troops in combat units hit 157 per cent during the March-April conscription cohort, meaning 57 per cent more than anticipated.

Even then, a majority of Israeli men—57 per cent—resist expansion of women’s roles in the IDF. “People think we are asking them to lower the bar [for entry] in combat positions” said retired colonel Maya Heller of Forum Dvorah, formed in 2015 to champion women’s participation in Israeli security and foreign policy decision-making.

“We are not asking for that. We are asking for women to be allowed to apply and try to get in.”

In their May 2024 paper published in the sociology journal Frontiers, authors Emalie Hendel, Alma Haxhui and Barbara T. Waruszynski of National Defence, along with Kate Hill MacEachern of Ottawa’s Atlas Institute for Veterans and Families, wrote that “in essence, women are perceived as the givers of life, placing them in stark moral contrast to the role of a soldier who is trained to kill.”

“Beyond this,” they said, “women are equated with needing protection, as they are depicted as weaker than men and more emotional, thereby manifesting contradicting gender norms and rules.”

While they noted that the integration and representation of women in militaries has slowly increased over the past 50 years, they said only two dozen countries currently allow women to participate in all military roles, including combat arms.

“The question of operational effectiveness is often raised when it comes to women’s inclusion in military operations,” they wrote. “Research highlights that personnel who do not display hegemonic traits such as physical strength, courage, or aggression, are seen to be putting military effectiveness at risk.

“In fact, there is a stereotypical sentiment that women are physically inferior to men, which puts them at a disadvantage and at greater risk when they participate in combat activities. Yet, women already meet the physical and professional standards for military participation around the world.”

If those sorts of data and informed perspectives can’t convince American policymakers that Hegseth’s ideas are antiquated and not worth their time, more practical considerations may well overtake them.

The RAND Corporation, an American global policy think tank, research institute and public sector consulting firm, reported in 2023 that mixed-gender combat teams often outperform male-only teams in problem-solving and adaptability.

“Without an effort to integrate both women and men into all roles,” it concluded, “the military will not be able to meet the security situations of today and tomorrow that will require people to unpack complexity and solve problems not as a leader in isolation but cooperatively.”