President Carter Recommends Women Register for Draft
As national security tensions rose dramatically as a result of the Iran Hostage Crisis (the seizure of 52 American by Islamic militants in Tehran in late 1979), President Jimmy Carter reinstituted registration for the draft (which had been eliminated with the adoption of the all-volunteer Army). In a dramatic departure from tradition, however, he recommended that women be required to register for the draft.
Carter did not, however, recommend that they serve in the military on a fully equal basis, but it was nonetheless a historic first step in the direction of equal treatment of women in the military.
Carter called only for the resumption of draft registration for males, not the resumption of a draft itself. Congress did not adopt his recommendation regarding women.
The military academies had already begun to admit women. The first women enrolled at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis on July 6, 1976. The following day, July 7, 1976 the first women enrolled at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. And on August 18, 1997 the Virginia Military Academy (V.M.I.) admitted its first women after the Supreme Court ordered it to end its all-male policy.
Among women who enlisted in the armed services, the Pentagon finally allowed women to serve in combat units on January 24, 2013.
President Carter: “. . . Women are now providing all types of skills in every profession. The military should be no exception.”
Read Carter’s Speech: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=32906
Learn more: Evelyn Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee, A Few Good Women: America’s Military Women from World War I to the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (2010)
Read the new biography of Jimmy Carter: Kai Bird, The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter (2021)
Learn more about President Carter’s civil liberties record: Samuel Walker, Presidents and Civil Liberties From Wilson to Obama (2012)
Learn more about Carter’s post-presidential work at the Carter Center: http://www.cartercenter.org/index.html