Pentagon lifts ban on women in combat roles

The move knocks down another societal barrier in the US armed forces, after the Pentagon in 2011 scrapped its “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a suit in November seeking to force the Pentagon to end the ban on women in combat, applauded the planned move, which rescinds a 1994 policy preventing women from serving in small front-line combat units.

For many women service-members, the move is belated acknowledgement of the realities of the past decade of war, in which there were often no clearly defined front lines.