The US military is opening up all combat jobs to women, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said in a Pentagon press conference Thursday.
"There will be no exceptions," Carter said.
The historic announcement means that all military services must plan to open the currently male-only jobs such as infantry and artillery by April 1, 2016. It also paves the way for women to potentially serve in special operations fields such as Navy SEALs and Army Special Forces.
Most military services agreed with the change, while the Marine Corps was the only service that had asked for exceptions, following a gender integration study sponsored by the service which found all-male infantry units performed better than mixed-gender infantry units.
Carter overruled the Corps' objections and called for a common set of standards for males and females, saying the move would make the military "better and stronger."
"You have to recruit from the American population," Carter said in October, hinting at the decision he reached on Thursday. "Half the American population is female. So I'd be crazy not to be, so to speak, fishing in that pond for qualified service members."
The Pentagon had been reviewing the issue — which overturned a 1994 rule prohibiting women from serving in combat roles — for a number of years, following the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to lift the exclusion in Jan. 2013.
The services had already taken preliminary steps at integrating units, with the Army allowing women to go through its grueling Ranger School, while some female Marines have been included in initial officer and enlisted infantry training.
"The fight for full integration has not been easy, even after the decision to break down gender barriers was announced in 2013," Judy Patterson, CEO of Service Women's Action Network, said in a statement.
"But throughout the drawn-out process, proponents have been sustained by the stories we have heard of women performing with courage and valor on the ground and in the air in Afghanistan and Iraq ... by rejecting all requests for exceptions to full combat integration, Secretary Carter has ushered in a new era for American women to serve the nation with valor and courage on the battlefield."
