About a month ago, Navy and Defense Department officials notified Congress of their intent to lift the ban on women serving on submarines. 

CNN.com reported that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, along with chief of naval operations and the secretary of the Navy, made the recommendation with no opposition from Navy leaders. 

Under the plan, officers would be the first position to go co-ed and the larger, nuclear powered subs would carry the first females. 

While this might not seem like a big deal in this day and age, it is. This is just another step toward lifting the ban on women serving on the “front lines.”

Women were first allowed to serve directly in the military with the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act in 1948 and military academies became coeducation in 1976, and yet women are still banned from direct combat.

There are a lot of arguments as to why this is, most of them focusing on the physical and mental aspects of having females in combat units.

No one can deny that women are typically less physical then men, and do suffer from physical restrictions like menstruation. Likewise, women have been socialized to be more sensitive and with less of a killer instinct then men. 

But the argument that is most compelling is not about what a woman can’t do, but what a man might do.

Men have been socialized to see women as mothers, sisters and wives. So to see a woman being blown up, killed, or captured could effect a male soldier more than seeing a fellow male.

The subject of sexual abuse has also been brought up after a Presidential Commission report was published saying it was found that male POWs, while being subject to physical abuse, were never subject to sexual abuse, and women were almost always subject to sexual abuse.

And while all of these arguments are valid, not allowing women to fight on the front lines is becoming more and more detrimental. 

The U.S. is fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan with 122,000 soldiers deployed between the two as of Feb. 28, 2010 according to the Brookings Institute’s Iraq Index, and Army enlistment is at it’s lowest since World War I.

By not allowing women to serve in combat positions, the military is failing to utilize able-bodied American’s who want to serve their country alongside their male counterparts. 

The majority of women in the military probably won’t be eligible or even want to fight on the front lines, but they should at least be given the option. 

A man’s life is worth just as much as a woman’s, no matter how hard that is for people to accept.