Ten years ago, amid sometimes bitter debate, the first women began the Army's notoriously hard Ranger infantry training program. The same year, combat jobs across the military were opened to female troops.
Now, a decade later, there's a secretary of defense who has said women don't belong in those jobs.
"I'm straight up saying that we should not have women in combat roles," Pete Hegseth said on a podcast in November, before he was nominated. "It hasn't made us more effective. Hasn't made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated."
During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services committee in January, Hegseth said, "in ways, direct, indirect, overt and subtle, standards have been changed" to boost the number of women in combat roles 鈥� something earlier military leaders said isn't true.
Hegseth recently ordered the services to develop gender neutral physical standards that troops will have to meet to enter 鈥� or stay in 鈥� "combat arms" units like infantry, armor, and artillery. Plans for the new tests are due in May.
The Department of Defense didn't respond to a request for an interview.
About 160 women have now made it through Ranger training, and thousands are now serving in jobs that had been open only to men.
The women who were among the first to break the gender barrier say they met the same standards as men for those roles. And they say Hegseth finds himself leading a military that in many ways has moved on.
"The reality is this has already sort of been a settled issue," said Charley Falletta, who graduated from Ranger school, was in the first gender-integrated group of women allowed into the Army's armor branch, and led a mortar platoon in Afghanistan.
She said there's ten years of evidence Hegseth is wrong.
"The women for the past decade who have raised their hand and volunteered to go into these jobs have both served incredibly well and are incredible patriots, and it is so unfair to anyone who has served their country and done it in such an honorable way to turn around and question the premise of if they should even be in that job," Falletta said. "I think that's both insulting, but it's also insulting to the greater Army."
Insulting to the greater Army, she said, because it essentially accuses broad swathes of the military of lying, including the men who certified women to be in those jobs, who gave them good ratings, and who promoted them.
Ranger school is voluntary, but vitally important for anyone who wants to be an infantry leader. About 90 percent of the Army's senior infantry officers have earned the arch-shaped Ranger Tab. If women couldn't attend, it would effectively close access to many Army jobs and key promotions.
Falletta said she earned the highest rating among 31 company commanders in a brigade of paratroopers.
"If there was a problem with women not being able to perform the job, then I think you would see that reflected in things like evaluation reports and other issues, but we're not seeing that," she said. "My boss never had a concern about me meeting physical standards, and I certainly met them, and women across the force are doing that."
Emilie Vanasse was one of the first female Rangers, one of the first female infantry officers with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, and later a top-rated instructor at the Army's rigorous Infantry Basic Officer Leader Course.
Vanasse, now a civilian, said revisiting the argument makes no sense in part because gender neutral standards are already in place.
"This discussion around women in Combat Arms, in my opinion, was put to bed ten years ago, and it's just the most fragile of egos are the only ones that continue to bring it up," Vanasse said. "Gender neutral physical standards are really important in combat arms, and women have been meeting and exceeding those standards for ten years."
Retired Marine Lt. General Lori Reynolds commanded the recruit training depot in Parris Island, South Carolina when the Corps was trying to figure out the mechanics of how to put women in combat units.
What the Marines found, she said, was the Corps didn't really have job-specific standards. So they were forced to figure out what kinds of standards Marines 鈥� male and female 鈥� should meet for specific jobs.
"It made us better," she said. "It forced us to look and say, 'Okay, what does it really take to be a good infantry man or a good artillery man?' We started with physical, and then we moved across mental and all the others."
"Standards" is one word Hegseth often uses in ways that rankle female troops and veterans. Another is "lethality."
Hegseth's definition of that word seems oversimplified to Falletta.
"A physical test is certainly not the only test of lethality," she said. "I think being fit, to some extent, is necessary to be lethal. But that's not really a problem that we're seeing, or at least that I saw in my company when I was a commander."
Falletta said lethality also has to include attributes like tactical skills and good decision-making.
鈥淚 mean, it鈥檚 like if we could have just done a few more push ups, maybe we would have won in Afghanistan?鈥� she said. 鈥淚t's totally crazy.鈥�
Reynolds - who also led the Marine Corps cyberspace command - said there's no question Marines need to maintain their traditional skills at closing with and destroying the enemy. But she said lethality is more complicated on the modern battlefield, as warfare becomes more dependent on artificial intelligence, drones, satellites, and other technology.
Another part of lethality is building trust among the men and women who are serving together, Reynolds said.
"I don't care what color you are, I don't care what gender you are, I don't care who you love," Reynolds said. "I only care that you're ready to go and that you trust me, that when everything else goes bad, you listen to somebody's voice, and I need you to listen to mine."
The Pentagon's current war on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, she said, undermines that trust.
"It's not my experience that ignoring the fact that we're different makes us better," she said. "That's not my lived experience, especially not in war fighting. So I worry we've taken a step backwards."
Ranger school is notoriously hard. Only about half the candidates in any given class graduate. Falletta first tried in 2017 and failed. She came back in 2021 and passed.
She said that gap between attempts meant she got to see two eras of training - before and after the presence of women because normalized.
"There was a huge shift in the culture at the school," she said. "The first time it was very, very toxic to women .... I mean, palpable the sort of dislike and the anger coming from their eyes."
The second time, though, was different.
"It was like, a non-issue," she said.
This story was produced by the American Homefront Project, a public media collaboration that reports on American military life and veterans.
