If our country must instigate a draft, Barak Obama has said he supports having women register for it.
My response is don't instigate wars and don't draft anyone (men or women), but if we find ourselves in a situation in which a draft is necessary, then it should be gender-neutral.
Ana Marie Cox (Wonkette) and Ann Althouse debated this issue on the NYTimes website.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2008/10/17/opinion/1194825584629/bloggingheads-a-female-draft.html
Ann Althouse makes some strong, respectable feminist arguments against drafting women, but in the end, I side with Ana Marie Cox--that women should be included in a draft. I only wish Ana Marie Cox had argued her case better. The responsibilities in a draft would have to be equal, so that women were not disproportionately filling in lower-level jobs like kitchen work. Let qualified women in the infantry (if that's the kind of war we would have).
Women should not be protected from the front lines of war, and men should not be expected to deal with war more easily than women.
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Because women play such an important role in wartime now, on the front lines and behind, this seems like a fair position. The potential of drafting women would make politicians think even harder about the draft itself.
I showed the NYTimes blogging heads video to my students in Intro. to Feminist Theory and they wanted to talk about it the entire class. Questions of a gender-neutral draft go to the heart of criticisms of essentialism.
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