Pete Hegseth Really, Really Doesn’t Want Women in the Military

It’s no secret that Pete Hegseth always wanted an anti-woman military; in 2024, he fantasized out loud on a podcast about removing women from combat roles. And would you look at that!? He’s doing exactly what he vowed to do: Hegseth has reportedly ordered a six-month review into the several thousand women in ground combat positions to ensure the country’s military “effectiveness.”

In a seven-page memo initially obtained and reported by NPR (and not by one of the reporters who sucked up to Hegseth’s insane new press policy in October), Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel Anthony Tata wrote in December that the review will investigate the “operational effectiveness of ground combat units 10 years after the Department lifted all remaining restrictions on women serving in combat roles.” It also asks Army and Marine Corps leaders for any internal research on “the integration of women in combat.” NPR reports:

Tata requested Army and Marine Corps leaders to provide data on the readiness, training, performance, casualties and command climate of ground combat units and personnel. The services are to provide points of contact no later than Jan. 15 to the Institute for Defense Analyses, a nonprofit corporation that assists the government on national security issues. The memo says the data should include “all available metrics describing that individual’s readiness and ability to deploy (including physical, medical, and other measures of ability to deploy.)”

Well… we could save Pentagon Pete six months. Roughly 3,800 women serve in the Army’s infantry; more than 150 have completed a notoriously difficult Ranger training; and about 700 women currently serve in the Marines in ground combat jobs. As of 2023, women make up more than a fifth of active-duty military members—many of whom have been serving in combat roles since the Obama administration—and according to various surveys, men on active duty who serve alongside women are more likely to support a fully gender-integrated military.

But logic—and women—continue to have no place in Hegseth’s military. Speaking to NPR, Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said the study will make sure the U.S. “maintains the most lethal military.” (Not a flex.) “Our standards for combat arms positions will be elite uniform, and sex neutral because the weight of a rucksack or a human being doesn’t care if you’re a man or a woman.” Well, clearly, someone cares if you are. “Under Secretary Hegseth, the Department of War’s will not compromise standards to satisfy quotas or an ideological agenda—this is common sense.”

Jezebel has reached out to the Pentagon for comment.

In 2024—months before he was confirmed as Defense Secretary—on the same podcast where he said he doesn’t believe women should serve in combat, he also said that their presence “has made fighting more complicated.” Since joining the Trump administration, Hegseth has removed women and people of color from leadership positions; proposed new military fitness tests that he alluded would weed out women in combat roles; and scrapped a panel dedicated to encouraging women to enter the military. In November, he reportedly blocked a Navy captain’s promotion because he didn’t want a woman in the position.

Hegseth is also an alleged rapist, alcoholic, and misogynist. He’s just as bad at his job in government as he was as a Fox News host, and earlier this week, a former infantry chief and top general compared his military to Joseph Stalin’s. So if the Pentagon truly wants to conduct a study of military effectiveness, I can think of a much better place to start.

---