ABSTRACT
The multiple roles that women play in society, or are relegated to playing in society, are the very roles that reinforce their subordinate status and, through systematic coercion, all function to keep them marginalized as a group. For women, the situation in the United States military is particularly onerous. Here, the combat exclusion policy was originally established to control the status of women by keeping them in check and consequently marginalized. Women face a double-edged sword in that, even as they are deliberately being marginalized by the military, they are still being held accountable for circumstances owing to essentially an unjust policy over which the women have neither control nor say. What is remarkable is that even in democracies like Israel where conscription into the military is compulsory by law for all in the service of country, women are still marginalized.
