Roles for military women changing

As of this week, 91 women have died while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As more women enter the military — and increasingly take positions closer to combat — female veterans say perceptions of women in the armed forces are slowly shifting in a culture that for centuries has been geared toward men.

There are about 1.7 million female veterans living today, including about 62,000 in Ohio. They have served in both peacetime and every war since World War II, but for most, military life did not include picking up a weapon.

Dorothy Wolfe, of St. Louisville, central Ohio, was a U.S. Marine in the late 1950s and later went on to serve in the Ohio Air National Guard. She remembers her Marine boot camp as a time “when we watched a lot of films on how to wear make-up.”

“The women Marines had their own song, and the words went, ‘We serve that men may fight to keep our country great,” Wolfe said. “We were there to support the men.”

Times are changing. Current Defense Department mandates exempt female soldiers from direct combat units such as infantry and armor, and from smaller support units “co-located,” or attached, to combat units, but over the past five years, the rules have loosened somewhat to allow women to serve in co-located units as long as they are not carrying out a mission.

As of this week, 91 women in the armed forces have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than all the women who have died in the United States’ previous wars combined. One in seven soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors serving in Iraq today is a woman.