Trump’s defense secretary pick said women shouldn’t be in combat roles. These female veterans fear what comes next

(CNN) — When Elisa Smithers was deployed to Iraq in 2005, there was a ban on women serving in ground combat operations.

Smithers was a “female searcher” with the National Guard and was attached to an infantry unit to help with searching detained Iraqi women, among other tasks. But she returned home to find she wasn’t offered the same support by the US Department of Veterans Affairs that male combat veterans were offered, Smithers said.

Now, the 48-year-old veteran fears the progress made for women in combat since then will be reversed after President-elect Donald Trump announced Pete Hegseth this week as his pick for secretary of defense – a Fox News host and Army veteran who has criticized efforts to allow women into combat roles.

The ban on women serving in ground combat units was lifted in 2013 and, in 2016, all US military combat positions were opened to them, allowing women to fill about 220,000 jobs that were previously limited to men – including infantry, armor, reconnaissance and some special operations units. Women account for roughly 17.5% of the Defense Department’s active-duty force, according to 2022 data from the agency.

Hegseth, who has a long record serving in the military in Afghanistan and Iraq, has not announced any plans to reinstate the ban if he’s confirmed, but has previously accused the military of lowering standards to allow women into combat jobs.

Speaking about his book, “The War on Warriors,” published this year, Hegseth said in a recent podcast he was surprised “there hasn’t been more blowback” on the book, “because I’m straight up just saying, we should not have women in combat roles.”

“It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated. … We’ve all served with women, and they’re great,” Hegseth said last week on “The Shawn Ryan Show.” “But our institutions don’t have to incentivize that in places where, traditionally — not traditionally, over human history — men in those positions are more capable.”

Even if a combat exclusion policy is reinstated, Smithers said women will still be pushed into such roles in an unofficial capacity like she was, just with less recognition and access to benefits like before.

“They will still need these women in these roles,” Smithers told CNN. “So, we’ll go back to this, like, pseudo attaching them to the unit. And then this perception by the men that, you know, the women are not in combat roles.”

US Army veteran Elizabeth Beggs said women in military service have already proven they’re capable.

“Let’s not get it twisted. Women have been in combat since the beginning of history,” Beggs said.

But she does agree with Hegseth on one thing: “Not all women are capable – just like not all men are capable,” Beggs said.

Vets say Hegseth is diminishing women’s accomplishments

More than 2 million female veterans live in the US – and the number is expected to continue to grow, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The combat exclusion policy was lifted shortly before 27-year-old Beggs joined the US Army. She went on to hold several roles during her four years of service, including armor officer, tank commander and platoon leader.

“I believe it’s incredibly divisive to water down and diminish the accomplishments that I and other women have made serving in these roles, not just to women, but to men who’ve gone through the same courses and hit the same standards, especially in a time where we should be unifying,” Beggs said.

Lory Manning, a 25-year Navy veteran, takes issue with Hegseth accusing the military of lowering standards to allow women into jobs with the Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, Army Special Forces, Marine Special Operations, and jobs such as those in infantry, armor and artillery units.

Hegseth has specifically criticized having women in roles where strength “is the differentiator,” he said on the podcast last week.

“I’m not talking about pilots… I’m talking about physical, labor-intensive type jobs,” Hegseth said. “Seals, Rangers, Green Berets, MARSOC, infantry battalions, armor, artillery.”

Manning, also the former director for the Service Women’s Action Network, said Hegseth’s assertion the military lowered their standards to accommodate women is a false, yet repeated one.

“Sometimes, it’s said to protect women who don’t need protecting,” Manning said.

In a 2013 op-ed for the American Civil Liberties Union, Manning refuted the claim that “tough combat training standards will be lowered by making them ‘equal’ for both genders.”

“Women have already been integrated into air and sea combat duties with no lowering of standards,” Manning wrote.

While the ban on women participating in ground combat operations wasn’t lifted until 2013, women have been flying in combat operations and serving aboard US combatant ships since the early ’90s.

Like Manning, veteran Smithers believes a woman should be allowed to serve if they qualify for the “physical, labor-intensive type jobs” that Hegseth has a problem with them taking on.

“At the end of the day, in order for us to be a dynamic and agile force and the great military that we are, we’ve got to have diversity. And that includes women in our force,” Smithers said. “Diversity always makes us better.”

Concerns about culture of sexual assault

Another female veteran, who identifies as a military sexual assault survivor and asked not to share her name out of fear of retaliation, said she worries how Hegseth’s rhetoric as the leader of the military, if confirmed, would influence the culture in the armed services, which is already grappling with issues of sexual harassment and assault.

“Whenever a man does not see a woman as an equal, that’s where you’re going to see that kind of culture continuously get worse,” the 46-year-old disabled veteran told CNN. “It’s going to hurt the military force.”

Roughly 20% of women serving in the military reported experiencing military sexual trauma during their service as of 2021, compared to about 1% of men, according to the National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics.

The statistic, according to the Combat Female Veterans Families United, underscores the “prevalence and impact of gender-specific challenges faced by female veterans during and after their time in service.”

In August, findings from a Senate investigation into misconduct within the US Coast Guard were released, detailing “systemic sexual assault and harassment, including a culture of silencing, retaliation, and failed accountability.” And in 2023, a study by the US Army Special Operations Command showed how its women are facing significant discrimination including sexual harassment and sexism from their male counterparts, CNN reported.

Brandy Cottrill-Cox, a Purple Heart recipient who served in combat while stationed with the US National Guard on the border of Kuwait and Iraq in 2004, called Hegseth’s comments “dangerous rhetoric to target women.”

During her second tour in Iraq, Cottrill-Cox said she was given a rape whistle.

“There is a rape culture that is not being addressed,” Cottrill-Cox said. Women across the country who have served in the military are accessing resources for their trauma from experiencing sexual harassment and assaults while in service – many of which go unreported, she said.

‘That’s basically telling a woman she’s not good enough to serve’

Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran, said Hegseth is “dangerously unqualified.”

Earlier this week, Duckworth wrote about her “Alive Day” anniversary on X, commemorating the day the Black Hawk helicopter she was piloting was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

As a result, she lost both her legs and partial use of one of her arms, according to her biography page. She remains proud of her service.

“By choosing to put a TV personality with little experience running much of anything in charge of the Defense Department’s almost 3 million troops and civilian employees, Donald Trump is once again proving he cares more about his MAGA base than keeping our nation safe—and our troops, our military families and our national security will pay the price,” she said in a statement.

Wendy Coop, a 45-year-old US Navy veteran, called Hegseth’s comments on women serving in combat roles a “very disturbing and potentially dangerous take.”

Coop, who lives in St. Augustine, Florida, graduated from the US Naval Academy in 2001 before she went on active duty on a ship doing maintenance work which included painting and working with tools.

While Coop did not serve in combat while in the force, she said Hegseth shows a “lack of understanding of the military complex,” stressing the many other military jobs that support those who engage in combat – chaplains, nurses, logistics and doctors.

“His comments open the floodgates to people who just say that women don’t belong in the military at all, as though we are too weak, as though we don’t have the personality to do the job,” she said.

She also worries any course reversal on women serving in combat will have a sweeping impact on women serving in other government jobs.

“We have to look at the individual and stop saying your gender determines your ability to serve in the military,” Coop said. “And then what happens is that people say, ‘oh, well, they don’t belong in the military?’ They also don’t belong in the police force. They also don’t belong as firefighters. They don’t belong in the Secret Service.”

The veteran who did not wish to share her name said the discourse around a potential rollback of women serving in combat roles is “very disparaging.”

“It’s a slap in the face for a lot of the women who have worked so hard to get to where they’re at,” she told CNN. “We served this country with pride, dignity and respect.”

“And when you have someone say that women are not good enough to be in combat, that’s basically telling a woman that she’s not good enough to serve.”

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CNN’s Jeff Winter, Cindy Von Quednow and Jade Gordon contributed to this report.