USA: Americans Back Women In Combat, Poll Says

In the 1970s and 1980s, one of the main arguments against ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution would lead to women assuming combat roles during war.

Whatever role the argument served in defeat of ERA, the military service debate has become moot, if the results of a Rasmussen Poll released Monday are accurate.

According to the poll, 54 percent of Americans support placing women in the front lines of combat.

That would include service as Green Berets or Navy SEALs, as long as the women were able to pass the same physical tests as men.

According to the poll, more than one in five Americans mistakenly believes women are already allowed to serve on the front lines of battle.

The poll was of citizens who said they are likely to vote this year.

The American people continue to be supportive of its military.

A Rasmussen Poll released in January showed two-thirds of American believe military service is good for young people.

In November 2011, 86 percent of respondents to a Rasmussen poll rated the U.S. military as excellent or good.

On a global basis, placing female soldiers in harm's way is not unusual.

The United Nations' Department of Peacekeeping Operations reports it has female peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Timor-Leste, Liberia, Haiti, Cote d'Ivoire, Sudan, Darfur, Afghanistan and Lebanon.

"Women and men experience conflict differently," the UN said, "and therefore understand peace differently."

In 2000, a UN Security Council stressed "the importance of women's equal and full participation as active agents in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peace-building, peacekeeping, humanitarian response and in post-conflict reconstruction."

The peacekeeping organization "continues to respond to the call in all women, peace and security mandates to increase the numbers of women in peacekeeping by advocating for the deployment of more women," the UN said.

"In 1993, according to the UN, "women made up one percent of deployed uniformed personnel. Today out nearly 100,000 peacekeepers women constitute three percent of military personnel and nine percent of police personnel."

The UN can only add women to its military force if governments that hold UN membership assign females to military duty.

As of January, the U.S. assigned 102 police, 16 troops and nine others to the UN.