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"    American women have long been threatened and killed by their proximity to battle, as the entrenched, well-defined front-lines of World War II have blurred and morphed. They&amp;#039;ve flown in combat missions for the Air Force. They&amp;#039;ve also died. But now, pending military action over the next three years, they will gain the respect inherent in combat titles. In doing so, they&amp;#039;ll be joining many nations around the world who&amp;#039;ve already honored their women with the distinction, some of which, according to a 2010 British Ministry of Defense study \u2014 like Germany, New Zealand, Spain, and Canada \u2014 the U.S. lags by a decade; and others \u2014 Israel, Denmark, Norway \u2014 the U.S. is a more than two decades behind. In many ways, the leading example of women&amp;#039;s combat prowess is the Israeli Defense Force. As of late 2011, women made up three percent of the Israel Defense Forces&amp;#039; combat soldiers (and 33 percent of the IDF overall). Israeli women, who are drafted, can serve in ten combat positions, including in artillery, field intelligence, and home-front search and rescue, and several infantry positions. In 2000, the Caracal infantry battalion \u2014 which defends the Egyptian border from &amp;quot;smugglers, infiltrators, and terrorists,&amp;quot; as the IDF site puts it \u2014 was created to enable female combat soldiers to serve alongside male soldiers. Today, women comprise 70 percent of the battalion. During their trials, they crawl through mud, carry stretchers, fill sacks with sand, and build walls. About 60 percent of women pass. But in order to enter into Caracal, the women must achieve the second-highest combat profile, one step below the requirement for serving in elite units. That includes special training in weapons like machine guns, grenades, and mortars. And Caracal members can apply to enter Oketz, a special forces unit that uses dogs to sniff out explosives and track opposition. According to the 2010 study, a recent IDF report found that female combatants maintained alertness better, were more knowledgable and professional when using their weapons, and had better shooting abilities than men. But even still, like in many other nations, a good number of combat positions remain closed to them, including much of those on the front lines. And though there was a 400 percent increase in Israeli women military careerists between 1999 and 2009, the brass ceiling in many ways still remains. In Denmark and Canada (where women comprised two percent of the regular combat force in 2006), astronomical fitness requirements have spurned women from the elite ranks, like those of the Canadian anti-terrorist unit and Danish special ops. Several American military officials have expressed this reservation for the U.S. infantry. But in France, as of 2006, 1.7 percent of combat infantry soldiers were female; though French women cannot serve in submarines or riot control units. And even the Dutch, who, according to the 2010 report, have recognized that women are better at communicating and negotiating and more than one of every ten female soldiers in the army are in combat roles, prohibit their women from serving on submarines or in their Marines. Of course, progress, especially in institutions steeped in macho traditions like the military, is slow. And elsewhere, unsurprisingly, the treatment of women remains more despicable. Take the Russians, who have hosted a Miss Russian Army contest, which includes judged singing and dancing. The winner receives a promotion to an ambassador of the forces, and the contestants are then paraded around as recruitment figments. &amp;quot;When the girls arrived in Moscow\u2026 the young men who were there were climbing the walls,&amp;quot; one spokesman told Radio Free Europe in 2005, adding, &amp;quot;[the men said]: &amp;#039;We&amp;#039;re running straight to the military commissariat, we want to serve!&amp;#039;&amp;quot; But momentum is gathering. And while, again, this morning&amp;#039;s change has a three-year span before the military needs to make final decisions about which combat roles it will open to American women, over the next few years, across the world\u2014in South Korea, in  Australia, and now in the U.S. \u2014 more and more women will see combat with some, but, if precedent holds, not all of the titles they damn well deserve. [Via NPR] "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a18339/women-in-uniform-15015967/>