Interesting that the military understands the implications of our push for gender equality.[1] I am not saying that women should not have a choice of careers beyond the home, nor that they should be denied access to medical school or law school the way they once where when the feminists were truly feminists. I am saying that some jobs are not appropriate for a woman to have, and that other jobs are only truly appropriate to those few women who have the ability to do the same physical work as a guy holding that job would be expected to do.
The military's combat roles, both as a soldier in combat, but also as a support/supply person exposed to combat, is one place women simply do not belong. Once we knew that. For centuries men understood their call to be gentlemen, and to protect the women around them. Because women and men are different.
Now however, we have lost that. We have women, in Iraq and Afghanistan, ending up in combat even though they are still, for now, banned from combat units. The Pentagon looks at this, and looks at the recruitment figures, and looks at the deployment needs, and is responding with a push to put women in combat roles, to further blur the distinction between the sexes. Congress is thus left as the break, attempting to preserve the ban as it was intended, to keep women out of harms way while allowing them to serve in areas not so utterly incompatible with a proper view of their place in a civilized society. I am sure that no mention is needed of the irony here, and thus the potential for further societal decay.
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4560847.stm