What's happening with women and draft registration ("Selective Service")?
The expansion of draft registration to women is a bad idea that won’t go away until Congress ends draft registration entirely.
In 2016, 2021, and again in 2022, Congress came close to approving legislation to expand the requirement to register with the Selective Service System for a possible military draft to include young women as well as young men. Similar proposals have been introduced in each recent Congress.
Each year, this legislation has been buried in a 2,000-page bill with hundreds of other provisions. Congress has avoided any hearings, debate or vote specifically on the continuation, expansion, or repeal of draft registration.
This is a choice about militarism, not a choice about gender equality. Expanding draft registration to women will bring about a semblance of equality in war (although women in the military will still be subject to disproportionate sexual harassment and abuse). Ending draft registration would bring about real equality in peace and freedom, and help rein in planning for unlimited war(s).
Trying to expand draft registration to young women as well as young men would mean doubling down on decades of failure of draft registration in the face of widespread noncompliance.
Since 1980, all male (as assigned at birth) U.S. residents have been required to register with the Selective Service System when they turn 18, and to notify Selective Service every time they change their address until their 26th birthday. But few young men have ever complied fully with this law. Most young men register only if and when it is required in order to get a drivers’ license (in some states but not in California or some others) or some other government program. Almost nobody tells Selective Service when they move. Most draft notices would either be undeliverable or would go to draftees’ parents, many of whom would refuse to accept these induction notices or would tear them up to protect their children.
Only 20 people have been prosecuted for refusing to register since 1980. Show trials of activists called attention to the resistance and showed that those who quietly ignored registration could not be prosecuted. The government abandoned criminal enforcement of draft registration in 1988. Resistance made registration unenforceable and made the registration list useless for an actual draft.
Women have played key roles in resistance to military conscription, even though only men were being drafted. There’s a long tradition of anti-war and anti-draft feminism. (See this sampler of feminist statements against a draft of men or women.) Women are more likely to oppose being drafted than men have been, and more people will support their resistance.
Any draft serves war, militarism, and patriarchy. The perception that the draft is always available as a “fallback” enables planning for larger, longer, less popular wars, without regard for whether people will volunteer to fight them. Members of Congress and the public need to hear from anti-war and anti-draft feminists and from young people who oppose the draft. They need to hear from women who will resist being drafted. They need to hear from allies who will support young people in their resistance.
By preventing a draft, draft registration resisters are helping to protect us all against war. We can support them by asking our Representatives and Senators to re-introduce the Selective Service Repeal Act and urging House and Senate Armed Services Committee members to push for hearings on this bill.
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This page published or republished here 26 March 2021; most recently modified 28 January 2024. This site is maintained by
Edward Hasbrouck. Corrections, contributions (articles, graphics, photos, videos, links, etc.), and feedback are welcomed.
