The Pentagon is recommending that women be required to sign up for the military draft, saying it would be beneficial to the military, according to a Defense Department report to Congress obtained by The Washington Times. “It appears that, for the most part, expanding registration for the draft to include women would enhance further the benefits presently associated with the Selective Service System,” the report said.

The story of women serving in the American military gets forgotten. The memorial is a gathering place where people can see what these women have done.

To date, more than 500 female soldiers have completed training to serve in infantry and armor jobs that only became opened to them in December 2015 when the Pentagon eliminated rules barring women from serving in certain military jobs, Lt. Gen. Thomas C. Seamands, the Army's chief of personnel, said during the Association of the U.S. Army's annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Like the African-American women who worked behind the scenes at NASA during Sputnik, the American women who served in Vietnam played a vital role in sustaining the national effort while facing sexism and disparagement at home and in the field.

The female graduate will be the first in the Marine Corps to be awarded the military occupational specialty to become an Assault Amphibious Vehicle platoon commander. She is the first to complete the course since the Marine Corps opened all military occupational specialties to women in April 2016, said Capt. Joshua Pena.

"Well, anybody that calls me anything but 'Marine' is going to hear from me," one of the female Marines wrote, in a letter in Hewitt's book."

The woman is the first to pass the course of three dozen women who attempted it. She is expected to lead a platoon of about 40 infantry Marines in a service that is often seen as the most resistant to full gender integration in the military.

Women are more likely than men to experience instances of sexual harassment, sexual discrimination and rape in the military and the resultant mental health issues, or what female U.S. military vet Letrice Titus called "military sexual trauma."

Hundreds of Iranian Kurds, many of them young women, have volunteered to defeat the so-called Islamic State - and to fight for a Kurdish homeland.