Hegseth is dangerously wrong. US needs women in combat.

Pete Hegseth, nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to serve as Defense secretary, recently said he opposes women serving in combat roles in the U.S. military.
“I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles,” Hegseth said. “It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.”
His opposition to women’s presence in combat is not only a regressive ideology, it’s also rooted in misogynistic biases.
For decades, women have fought, bled and died in uniform while defending our nation. Yet, women continue to face systemic barriers and discrimination because of people like Hegseth.
About 350,000 women served in a variety of roles in the U.S. military during World War II. More than 400 American women were killed in uniform during the war, and nearly 90 were captured as prisoners of war.
Women first attended the nation’s military academies in the 1970s and started to fly combat missions and serve on naval warships in the 1990s.
But it wasn’t until 2013 that the Pentagon allowed women to fill any combat role. The first women to officially fight in ground combat for the United States served in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2016.
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Women have proved themselves as worthy warriors since then. And there’s research to prove it.
RAND researchers reported last year that mixed-gender teams often outperform male-only teams in problem-solving and adaptability.
“Without an effort to integrate both women and men into all roles across (the Department of Defense), the military will not be able to meet the security situations of today and tomorrow that will require people to unpack complexity and solve problems not as a leader in isolation but cooperatively,” the RAND team concluded.
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Critics like Hegseth use outdated arguments such as women are not strong enough physically or mentally to serve in combat. Those beliefs perpetuate harmful stereotypes that women are too emotional, weak or nurturing to handle the extremes that soldiers must endure in modern warfare.
That has been disproven repeatedly by women who have served in the military with great distinction.
“As a former Army engineer and someone who had the honor of leading some of the first women in the 12B combat engineer role, women performed their duties with the same professionalism and courage as men, proving they were assets to the mission,” Army veteran Paden Sickles told me.
“The women who joined the combat engineer ranks met the same physical, mental and technical requirements as their male counterparts” she said. “The Army did not lower its standards; these women rose to meet them. On the ground, what mattered was competence, resilience, adaptability and teamwork − not gender.”
Women serving in combat are essential to the success of America’s armed forces. Rejecting that truth not only harms gender equality, but it also compromises national security.
It’s worth asking Hegseth and those who agree with him: Is your opposition truly about maintaining standards or is it about preserving an outdated worldview?
Women have earned their place in combat, and their contributions make the military stronger. Their rightful place in America’s armed forces is nonnegotiable.
Marla Bautista is a military fellow columnist at USA TODAY Opinion.