Lt. Col. Maura Keller, U.S. Army lieutenant colonel (retired) served 26 years in the Army and is the Democratic Party’s nominee for Congress in Georgia’s 3rd Congressional District.
I enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1978 as a military policewoman. During my 26 years in the service, I worked my way through the ranks to become an officer. At every point along the way, I met the standard the Army required.
That’s why it angers me to hear Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggest that standards have been lowered to accommodate women in the military. They haven’t. The standard is the standard. You meet it, or you don’t.
I graduated from basic training as part of one of the first groups that integrated men and women. When I arrived at my first duty station in 1979, I was quickly told what I could and couldn’t do as a female military police officer.
A total of 33 organizations, including the NAACP and the National Women’s Law Center, sent a letter to Hegseth last month accusing him of wrongly blocking the promotions of Black people and women officers who’ve been recommended for advancement. The Pentagon has denied that the Defense secretary has made promotion decisions based on race or sex, but Democrats in the Senate and House this week introduced the Military Officer Promotion Integrity Act, which Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said in a news release “would protect qualified military officers from being arbitrarily removed from promotion consideration for ideological or political reasons by establishing clear standards, basic due process, and meaningful independent review.”
I graduated from basic training as part of one of the first groups that integrated men and women. When I arrived at my first duty station in 1979, I was quickly told what I could and couldn’t do as a female military police officer. Women couldn’t work together or alone; there always had to be men involved. Even at 18, I knew that made no sense. Eventually, I was put in a situation where I was told I had to work alone. I refused. Not because I didn’t want to do the job. I refused because their own regulations, which I threw right back at them, said I couldn’t.
The next morning, I was sitting in the first sergeant’s office getting chewed out and receiving a counseling statement. But something else happened. The regulations changed, allowing women to work alone — and work together. Why had we been prohibited from doing it in the first place? Because somebody had decided women couldn’t handle it.
In a 2024 interview with a podcaster, that is, before he was in office, Hegseth said that “men in those positions are more capable.” In a speech to military leaders last year in Quantico, Va., he announced a policy that he said would make sure “every designated combat arms position returns to the highest male standard.”
I saw versions of Hegseth’s attitude throughout my career.
In 1985, I went to Jump School, where I was taught by members of the 10th Special Forces Group. On graduation day, some of the guys came up to me because I was the ranking female. They told me they were impressed. They were surprised by how well we had done. They weren’t used to working with women. But we had done the job. We had proven ourselves.
Even so, their assumption that women had to prove they belonged followed me. When I was promoted to major, someone congratulated me and then immediately told me how many deserving men weren’t getting promoted because the military had to promote so many women and so many Black service members. Think about what they were really saying: Congratulations, but you didn’t really earn it.
I scored more than 300 points on my Army physical fitness test, and a brother-in-arms felt the need to point out that women had different requirements for push-ups, sit-ups, and running. So, I told him to take my age, then take what I’d done and apply the male standards to my scores. How did I do? I was in the 90th percentile in every category.
Because no matter how you cut it, women continue to meet the standard for our armed forces.
That’s why I have a problem with the way Hegseth talks about the “highest male standard.” Why are we calling it that? If a soldier needs to lift a certain amount of weight to do the job, then make that the standard. If a soldier needs to run a certain distance in a certain amount of time, make that the standard. If a soldier needs to demonstrate a specific skill to keep the person next to them alive, make that the standard. Then everybody meets it. Because being able to deadlift 343 pounds doesn’t automatically make someone a better soldier.
Hegseth eliminated the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, an organization that had spent decades examining the experiences and challenges facing women in the military. I don’t think we should dismiss the value of that work simply because it doesn’t fit neatly into a political argument about “wokeness.”
For 26 years, I watched women get told what they could and couldn’t do. And then I watched those same women do the jobs anyway. We served alone. We served together. We jumped out of airplanes. We led troops. We got promoted. We met physical requirements. And we kept proving ourselves. I believe in standards. I spent 26 years meeting them. What I don’t believe in is using the word “standards” as a way to tell women, once again, that we don’t belong. I’ve heard that argument before. And I’ve continued to watch women prove it wrong.
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