Trust us to decide our role in the Army, female servicemembers in Iraq say

By Sandra Jontz and Kevin Dougherty, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Wednesday, May 25, 2005

FORWARD OPERATING BASE MAREZ, Iraq — If Pvt. Roxana Figueroa had her way, the Army would open up all jobs — from infantry on up — to women, and leave it up to women to decide where they want to serve.

“If women want to, and can make it, I think they should be able to serve in combat,” said the 20-year-old, deployed to Iraq with the 94th Engineer Battalion based in Vilseck, Germany.

At a minimum, women should be able to serve in combat support units, and she opposes a congressional proposal that would ban women from such roles.

“I think it’s wrong,” she said. “It’s taken us a long time to come this far, to even have engineering jobs in the Army, and now they might take that away from us.”