Military women's long march to equality

The Pentagon's announcement this week that it will lift the ban on women in ground combat positions is welcome news to many of those who value equal rights. But it is also an urgent reminder that sexual assault remains a blight on our armed forces that only constant, sincere efforts will erase.

As a writer who has been interviewing female veterans for many years, I have long argued that lifting the ground combat ban would help military women win the respect they deserve. As long as women were officially prohibited from engaging in that essential act of a soldier - fighting - they were seen as second-class. And that has contributed to the violence, predation, and harassment so many military women endure.

The ground combat barrier is gone now, but the attitudes that sprung from it will not disappear so easily. Plenty of military men will decry this decision and resent the women who wish to fight by their sides. Some will be angered, insisting that their female comrades endanger them - an assertion often made but never demonstrated. And some will express their anger with violence.

The hostility and distrust with which certain military men regard women has been around for generations. That is why women have had to fight on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan for more than 10 years now without official recognition. It's why the ban on women in ground combat has stayed in place since 1994. And it's why rates of harassment, bullying, and sexual assault of women in the military are astronomical.

The most recent study by the Pentagon's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office estimates that 19,000 service members were sexually assaulted in a year, or 52 a day. And these figures don't count the women who are sexually harassed, denied promotions, humiliated by comrades and superiors, or bullied.

Furthermore, the study shows that most cases are never reported or investigated, and that the few assailants who are convicted often get off with nonjudicial punishments, such as demotions in rank. In short, despite a long series of reprimands by Congress, the military justice system remains woefully inadequate in its prosecution of sexual assault.

So here's a call to all commanders, from the highest general to the lowest sergeant: Women are officially your equals now, and they must be treated as such - during recruitment and training, at home bases, in military courts, and, most of all, at war. You cannot put women on the front lines and at the same time treat them as sexual prey.