Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced last week that he will shut down the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS). In March, he announced sex-neutral standards for combat arms positions. Hegseth is shifting the priorities of our military away from feminist ideals to refocus on deterring and defeating our adversaries. This will benefit both our military and our nation.

DACOWITS was founded in 1951 “to advise on strategies to improve the recruitment of women into the U.S. military during the Korean War.” This focus has continued. And, as Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson explained in a refreshingly frank statement, “The Committee is focused on advancing a divisive feminist agenda that hurts combat readiness.”

In May, three female Democratic senators critical of Hegseth justified keeping the committee because of its role to “reduce barriers to the recruitment and retention of women.” This criticism assumes that recruitment and retention of women should be a special priority of the military. I disagree. For decades, increasing the percentage of women relative to men, expanding women’s roles in military career fields, and positioning women to break glass ceilings have been the driving forces behind “women in the military” policies. This needs to end. Here’s why.

Increasing the number of women in the military is not mission-critical. The reality: Recruiting and retaining women in our military does not increase the number of sleepless nights for our foes.

Prioritizing attention to women comes at the expense of recruiting and retaining men. Men are the backbone of our military. It is senseless, even bizarre, for a military to focus special attention (for decades, no less) on recruiting and retaining women with no parallel attention to recruiting and retaining men, while even disadvantaging men in promotion so that it can produce upward arrows on graphs about women in the ranks of the military. Men are stronger. Men have greater physical endurance. Because men do not get pregnant, their period of peak physical vitality, and their availability to be away from home, will not be interrupted.

Damaging Families

Additionally, normalizing the recruitment and retention of women in high and ever-higher numbers in our military during peacetime harms the culture of our nation. For America to thrive, the vitality of the American family must rank among our top cultural values. This will involve honoring child-rearing and acknowledging the reality of two human sexes with different roles in reproduction and distinct patterns of child-rearing.

Prioritizing the recruitment and retention of women in career tracks hostile to the rhythms of family formation is the opposite of this, and military careers for women are among the most hostile of all. As most military positions require availability precisely during a person’s years of peak physical vitality, this means during women’s peak and limited window of fertility, which is also when they have the youthful energy to meet the tremendous physical and emotional demands of childbearing and rearing. Promoting the image of non-pregnant females as the icon into which we want to prioritize our resources is a last gasp of a culture doomed to die; it sends the wrong message about what womanhood means. Additionally, American families need strong men as fathers. Failing to value men in the culturally iconic role of military service sends the wrong message about what manhood means.

Prioritizing recruitment and retention of women in the military involves favoring institutionalized daycare — or, far worse, abortion — to deal with the children of pregnancy. Parents make complex, private decisions about the care of their children. However, our nation’s government should not foster career structures that rely on institutionalized daycare for children. Again and again in its annual reports, DACOWITS has encouraged increasing funding for and access to daycare. Prioritizing recruitment and retention of women in the military comes at a cost not only to other priorities inside the military but also to our next generation of children and to women themselves.

Six Recommendations

As the Department of War now rethinks its policies regarding women in the military, here are six recommendations to continue Hegseth’s excellent new embrace of reality-based, mission-oriented policies — not only for the sake of our military, but also for our nation:

1. End efforts to increase recruitment of women in ROTC and our military colleges. The four years of our civilian college system are already a postponement of marriage; ROTC and our military colleges lock young women into essentially eight years of unavailability precisely when young women are at their prime to marry, bear children, and have the energy to start a family. Similarly, the recruitment of young enlisted women poses similar problems. Not a ban, but just do not make this a priority.
2. Keep women out of the draft.
3. For women in the military with children, offer a “career pause” as a voluntary career deceleration in specialties where this is feasible. It would involve accepting a loss of pay and fewer women in the higher ranks (not leapfrogging over those who do not pause). Moreover, it could encourage raising children instead of aborting them.
4. Continue to allow some Special Forces units to remain all-male.
5. Allow leaders in close-quarter situations, such as submarines, to opt for all-male crews.
6. “Try not to be an idiot.” This was a guiding principle of a group I was part of in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (great leaders have a sense of humor). For rethinking women in the military, it means do not rush from harmful feminist policies to some fantasy vision of an all-male military; instead, establish sensible guidelines and start with some smaller experiments. Accept that alongside general patterns of male and female, there will be exceptions. Remember that not every woman will become a mother, and caring for children is a stage of life, not the entirety of it.

After September 11, 2001, I worked as a civilian for the U.S. military for seven years, primarily for the Defense Intelligence Agency. I later taught part-time at the U.S. Army War College. I loved this work. Women were among my most competent colleagues. Some made vital contributions, such as the top interrogator on the team I supervised at Guantanamo Bay. When women are available and competent to serve, welcome them. But do not break the military to chase after feminist illusions. America needs a military whose priorities are to deter and defeat our adversaries.