Conscripting Citizens: Women and Selective Service Registration

At no point in U.S. history have women been compelled to risk their lives for their country through military service. While women have voluntarily served in the military throughout its history, the government has stopped short of requiring their service. That exclusion has had far-reaching consequences for women’s legal standing, economic opportunities, and citizenship. Increasingly, as women have served in wars and become an integral part of the military—especially since the beginning of the volunteer system in 1973—the American public has become more comfortable with and accepting of their service. Women have broken all “brass ceilings” limiting their promotion, and they have integrated all positions, including combat. And yet, the idea of drafting women remains one of the most controversial issues in politics today and in many ways serves as a litmus test for one’s political, social, and cultural ideologies. In fact, women’s exclusion from Selective Service registration remains the last legal sexual discrimination in U.S. jurisprudence.

It is likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will soon hear a challenge to that exclusion, and it is also likely that the court will agree with the plaintiffs that women’s exclusion amounts to unconstitutional sexual discrimination against men. This case stands to make one of the most historic transformations of women’s place in the nation, yet historians have little understanding of how we have come to this moment. This paper will analyze the meaning and ramifications of this important, little understood, issue by analyzing public debates about the gendered nature of military conscription and placing them in the context of broader legal, social, and cultural changes. It will provide the necessary historical background for an informed public discussion about what it will mean to require women’s military service, or at least, to require their registration for it.