Israel is putting more women on the front line to help fix its manpower problem

The combat unit had been following a commando brigade in Gaza, recovering the bodies of dead soldiers on the battlefield. It is a routine task in the Israeli military, but it was unique that this team was made up mostly of women.

“A year and a half ago, I would never have dreamed of leading a combat team within Lebanon or Gaza," said a petite 25-year-old major. “I think the war proved to all of us how much we are capable of."

She is among a growing number of women serving on the front lines of Israel’s military. Before the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack that spurred the war, women were trained for combat, but left mostly to guard within Israel’s borders or run checkpoints in the West Bank, considered less dangerous tasks.

Now, they are entering the battlefield in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria in ways many previously thought impossible. Today, one in five combat soldiers is a woman, a ratio higher than many other modern Western militaries, experts say, and one which helps relieve Israel’s acute manpower shortage after 20 months of war.

Israel’s military is made up largely of volunteer reservists, placing the burden of the war on regular working people, often with young families. Still, full equality in the military remains a challenge. The military last week cut short a pilot program to integrate women into Israel’s main infantry units for “expected low effectiveness," after finding that the 23 female trainees were suffering injuries and were “not expected to meet the required standards of combat and physical fitness."

The Israeli military has been pushing to recruit ultra-Orthodox Jewish men into its ranks as a solution to the manpower problem. The military and most of the country supports drafting ultra-Orthodox men, who are largely refusing to comply with a recent Supreme Court ruling that overturned their longstanding draft exemption.

In light of this, integrating women eases pressure to free up men for other fighting roles. But with many of the military’s core combat positions still closed to women or dominated by men, integrating women means it is only a partial solution to the manpower problem.

Israel has for decades had one of the highest female representations among modern militaries, standing at about one-third overall, according to the military’s most recently available data. It quickly drew on women ahead of its 1948 founding war out of a mix of socialist ideology, nationalism and necessity, experts say. Israel later scaled back women’s roles until the 1990s, when Border Guard units opened their ranks to female fighters and a Supreme Court case forced the air force to recruit female pilots. Today, just over half of the military’s combat roles are open to women, and 90% of overall roles.

This high ratio of women in combat-designated roles is unusual for modern militaries. The U.S., although it has opened most military roles to women, still has a lower overall percentage of female forces at 18%, and therefore at the front lines.

Israel is also one of the few countries that subjects women to a broad-based draft at age 18, just like men. Today, women represent 21% of Israel’s combat-classed forces, jumping from 14% right ahead of the war and up from 7% a decade earlier, according to Israeli military data. The military said that it has about 4,500 female recruits in combat roles, driven by both an expansion in offerings to women and increased female demand to go into combat professions.

“There are three reasons militaries look to put women in combat roles: ideology, equality and necessity," said Jacob Stoil, chair of applied history at the Modern War Institute at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, who emphasized he was speaking from his personal research and not on behalf of the Army. “You’ll see women serving in combat roles when one of those three are the case," he said, adding that in Israel all three apply.

The search-and-rescue unit that the young major belongs to is a mixed-gender fighting force specialized in excavating collapsed structures and evacuating the wounded. Ahead of the war, the unit was mostly relegated to West Bank security-keeping roles, also considered a less dangerous task. After Oct. 7, the unit was sent to the front lines in Gaza and embedded with commando units. When the war expanded to Lebanon, women were sent on front-line missions there too.

The military plans to expand the unit by opening a new company in August. Since first being admitted in 2008, women have grown to fill about 70% of its combat roles, officers in the unit said.

Women’s conscription into combat units has long been a subject of debate in Israel. Some believe that the risk of torture or rape if captured puts women in a uniquely dangerous position. Others argue it hurts male morale, and that it creates additional challenges for some religious men who don’t want to be in the same unit as a woman.

Perceptions began to change after the Oct. 7 attack, when three all-female tank crews in the Caracal Battalion, meant to patrol Israel’s border with Egypt but not enter enemy territory, raced through the desert to fight off Palestinian militants in and around Israeli communities under siege.

Israel’s military said that it has about 4,500 female recruits in combat roles.

The Israeli military’s then-chief-of-staff Herzi Halevi took notice at the time, saying that their “action and fighting" against Hamas on Oct. 7 answers critics of women’s integration into fighting forces.

The search-and-rescue unit’s base in Zikim also came under attack, and seven soldiers died fending off militants. Among the rescuers sent to recapture and secure the base was a 21-year-old lieutenant. She and other relief forces held off militants for two days before tanks arrived to back them up, she said.

Shortly thereafter, she was attached to Israel’s equivalent to the Navy SEALs as part of the initial phase of Israel’s ground invasion, helping them hunt for underground tunnels in Gaza. She doesn’t think she would ever have been given such an opportunity before Oct. 7.

“I think that they just realized how powerful we are," she said. “They realized we can actually do it."