The Pentagon’s announcement last Thursday allowing women to serve in extended battalion-level positions is a small step in formally permitting women to serve in crucial positions closer to the front lines. The decision allows women to be assigned to a battalion as radio operators, medics, fire-detection specialists and mechanics. In total, six new opportunities previously closed to women have been opened.

However, women are still restricted from serving in the infantry, combat tanks, special operations units and other primarily frontline units. Although the six new positions available for women are a step forward, women are still barred from critical positions that help advance their military careers.

Combat positions and frontline experience are essential for developing the leadership skills and combat experiences that allow for military promotions. By barring combat positions, women are effectively barred from achieving high honors and promotions within the military.

Congress has kept additional combat positions closed due to concern that the American public will not tolerate deaths of women in combat, and the military reasons that women may not be able to perform the physical demands of combat positions. On the front line, soldiers frequently must carry as much as 100 pounds of equipment and in emergencies may need to carry wounded soldiers off the battlefield.

Vee Penrod, the deputy defense undersecretary for military personnel policy, said that women’s inability to perform the physical tasks of the front line was “based on experience with the leadership and experience in combat.” However, experience of the past 10 years seems to indicate the contrary.

Of the nation’s 1.5 million active military personal, 15 percent are women. More than 255,000 women have been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and 140 have died in service. Yet the American public still remains in support of the troops. Even though women were not allowed permanent assignments in frontline positions, temporary assignments were often used as a loophole to use women soldiers closer to the front.

In regards to experience and practice, the new policy is just recognition of positions in which women already serve. High demand for soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars created the practice of using women in many of the barred combat positions. The bureaucratic loophole allowed women into barred positions as “temporary attachments” to battalions.

Perhaps if women were given the chance for additional service in the front lines they could prove their valor. We do not advocate placing unqualified or inadequate soldiers on the front lines, but only that women be given the equal opportunity to serve their country in every position for which they are qualified and in which they want to perform.