Military opens up more jobs to women

Feb 9, 2012, 21:54 GMT

Washington - The US military will allow women into thousands of additional positions for the first time, by narrowing rules meant to keep them out of combat, the Department of Defence said Thursday.

After more than a decade of counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the change allows women in non-combat roles to officially take posts that put them closer to combat, in an era when battlefields have few clear lines.

The new policy will continue to exclude women from serving in military roles that are only open to men, such as infantry, but is an incremental change to rules for military jobs in which women have long had some opportunities.

The fluid combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan had made the old rules less relevant, and women have essentially been serving alongside their male counterparts on the battlefield for years.

Some 14,000 jobs will be opened to women in fields such as intelligence, communications and medicine attached to battalions serving in combat. Previous rules had limited women to working at the larger brigade level, which was designed to keep them further from the front.

The move was based on based on 'over a decade at war, where women were proven indispensable,' said Vee Penrod, deputy undersecretary of defence for military personnel policy.

Pentagon spokesman George Little told reporters that the change will be used to evaluate whether other positions within the military should also be opened to women.