“There Is No Law, but It Is Policy”: How Senior Military Leaders Drafted the Military Combat Exclusion Policy

The concept of combat exclusion for women in the military became law in 1948, when Congress passed the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act. Implementation of combat exclusion was not in question until 1975, when, as part of the passage of the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act (DOPMA), the section mandating the separation of women into a separate Army corps was rescinded. The debate surrounding this decision made clear that none of the military branches had fully defined: what constituted combat operations; why women should not perform combat operations; or which positions women should be excluded from. It was clear from military testimony before Congress that senior military leaders believed it should be obvious what combat operations were. Equally clear, they believed, was why everyone in the country would not want women to be in combat situations. While some members of the Subcommittee on Priorities and Economy in Government, which heard testimony on the subject, may have agreed with the senior military leaders, it seemed clearer from the survey results Senator William Proxmire (Wisconsin) presented that everyone in the country did not necessarily believe the military should exclude women from combat. In “‘There is No Law, But It is Policy’: How Senior Military Leaders Drafted the Military Combat Exclusion Policy,” Dr. Cook explores how the military developed the official Combat Exclusion Policy despite not having full societal or Congressional support underpinning the assumptions they based the policy on.