Karen Springen of 'Newsweek' Discusses Growing Presence of Women in U.S. Military
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: Switching gears now -- women in the military have assumed even greater responsibilities in America's New War. There are currently about 200,000 women in the military -- that's about 15 percent of all of those serving. And Karen Springen of "Newsweek" is joining us now from our Chicago bureau to discuss the growing presence of women in uniform. Thank you very much for joining us this evening -- this afternoon.</s>KAREN SPRINGEN, "NEWSWEEK": Thank you for having me.</s>CALLAWAY: You know, just 10 years ago women were not allowed to fly fighter jets. They could not serve on combat ships, but things have quietly slowly changed over the last few years, haven't they?</s>SPRINGEN: Right, slowly but surely. They're still not allowed to do direct combat, but they can do combat aviation. They just can't be on the ground and about one in six women in the -- one in six people in the military now are women.</s>CALLAWAY: Now in your article, which I enjoyed, thank you very much for that, it talks about how the mindset really has changed in the military about women. I think there was a quote about someone said that he was a fighter pilot in her Navy.</s>SPRINGEN: Right. Exactly. Yes, there are women who are generals now and believe it or not the first women generals weren't named until 1970.</s>CALLAWAY: Tell me what do you think the limitations still are for women in the military right now.</s>SPRINGEN: Well, there are still a couple. I mean part of it is psychological where my own daughter says she doesn't think that moms should go to war and there are a lot of people who still feel that way. But they can -- actually they will deploy a new mother once her child is 16 weeks old. So I think most of it is sort of a public relations campaign. The women have to do the same physical tasks. They have to do a few fewer pushups and they don't have to run quite as fast, but they have to climb the same walls and do all the same physical tests to -- that the men have to do.</s>CALLAWAY: You know, this time we have F-14 Tomcat pilots, female pilots dropping bombs in Afghanistan. This has to be Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare.</s>SPRINGEN: Exactly.</s>CALLAWAY: A female pilot in a regime that represses women so, don't you think?</s>SPRINGEN: Exactly, and that is part of the -- some of the women have some emotions where one of them said to me that she hoped that one of the good things that came out of this is that the women over there might get some of the same rights that we have.</s>CALLAWAY: Tell us where women are mostly serving now.</s>SPRINGEN: Well in the olden days, as people know, from watching even movies like "Mash", the women were basically, you know, nurses. They served in personnel functions and that kind of thing. But now they're deployed all over the place. The Army is a great place for the women to go and they serve basically everywhere. They're out there. They're killed -- in the Gulf War 11 women were killed. So women are losing their lives and serving just about in everything except for in the special forces. They're not training -- you know they're not doing counter-terrorism and stuff, and they're not -- they're not down and near the hiding holes with the men with a single buddy.</s>CALLAWAY: All right, well, there has to be some problems with these mixed troops. The high pregnancy rate in some cases, some sexual harassment?</s>SPRINGEN: Right. We referred in that story that there was one boat, I guess during the Gulf War and ...</s>CALLAWAY: The love boat.</s>SPRINGEN: The love boat, because 36 women came home pregnant. But everyone we talked to swore up and down that they thought of the men as more like their brothers. That said, several of the women in the military I talked to said it just is a distraction to sort of just right next to the men. They also said, though, that it's hardly a romantic situation. In the Gulf War, the women sometimes didn't get to have, you know, showers, you know, except for every three or four days, and if they put lotion on their body it would attract sand and bugs. So we're hardly talking about a glamorous romantic situation with soldiers.</s>CALLAWAY: Right and I spoke with an Army aviator of a Kia Warrior (ph) recently who is now -- who obviously wasn't able to fly in the Gulf War, but now is flying the Kia Warrior (ph), now teaching students to fly in battle and she says she has female students in her classes, but not nearly enough. What do you think it's going to take?</s>SPRINGEN: Right. You know, some of it, I think, is just convincing the women that they want to serve our country in that way. I mean there are a lot of women who are moms who just don't want to be away from their families, who don't want to risk their lives in that way. And some of it's just going to make it a more attractive long- term career option. A lot of the high-ranking women who I talked to in the military didn't have children. So maybe that's true for a lot of professions, but that seemed to be true in the military.</s>CALLAWAY: All right, Karen Springen of "Newsweek". Thanks for joining us today.</s>SPRINGEN: Thank you so much. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com