By Bill Fancher and Chad Groening
March 1, 2002

(AgapePress) - A Pentagon feminist advisory committee on women in the military has been under fire for a long time and may be abolished soon.

Pentagon reports indicate the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services -- DACOWITS -- may be in its final days of existence. According to group's website, its purpose is to provide recommendations on the "optimum utilization" of women in America’s armed forces and on quality-of-life issues that affect the "mission readiness" of women in the military. But several conservative groups say the taxpayer-funded DACOWITS, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, is harming the U.S. military by pushing a radical feminist agenda.

Conservative military expert Elaine Donnelly was once a member of DACOWITS, but now opposes its agenda. She says the committee has changed from its original intent, to advise military leaders on women's issues, and is now an advocacy group.

"The last thing we need with a war going on is a runaway feminist committee, running around with their radical agenda, intimidating generals, and trying to get their way -- especially involving land combat units," Donnelly says.

She also says the committee has been noncompliant with its own guidelines. "They accepted new members who were selected not by the current Secretary of Defense [Donald Rumsfeld] but by his predecessor, William S. Cohen," Donnelly explains. "It was a Clinton holdover who used the 'auto-pen' of the Secretary of Defense ... to ratify the appointment of the Cohen-selected members. Now that's what I would call insubordination. It was outrageous."

DACOWITS policies and goals often result in "gender-norming," which reduces standards for women serving in combat-level positions -- and Donnelly says that endangers any mission.

Another group that is calling for the elimination of DACOWITS is Concerned Women for America. CWFA spokeswoman Wendy Wright says DACOWITS is pushing for women in combat, even though it harms combat effectiveness.

"Physically, women are not able to handle combat conditions, and men have a natural inclination, given to them by God, to want to protect women," Wright says. "So in a combat situation, instead of being focused completely on winning the battle, [men] have a tendency to want to try and protect the women."

According to Wright, the U.S. learned in the Gulf War that women captured by the Iraqis were molested. "[A]t first, when the women were released, they said that they had not been treated any different than the men had been," she says. "About a year afterward, they admitted that they had been sexually abused by their Iraqi captors."

DACOWITS says its recommendations have been instrumental in effecting changes to laws and policies pertaining to military women. But Wright says when DACOWITS pushes its feminist agenda, all it does is put women soldiers in greater harm by being put on the front lines.

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