Equal Access, Equal Obligation?

I was cooking the other day when I thought about a lieutenant I haven’t seen in years. I don’t know why. That happens to me sometimes. A memory will just show up. Nothing in particular brings it to mind. I’ll be driving, or walking, or standing in the kitchen cutting onions, and suddenly I’m back in some room I haven’t thought about in years.

This one has come back to me a couple of times recently.

It was sometime around 2018 or 2019. I was a squadron commander in the Air Force, and one of my flight commanders, a captain and a mother, came to see me about one of her lieutenants. The lieutenant was a woman who had recently had a baby and had been away from normal operational duty for quite a while. I don’t remember the exact amount of time anymore, and I don’t want to pretend that I do.

The Air Force had become increasingly generous with maternity and caregiver leave, and by the time this lieutenant was due to return, she had already been away for a significant stretch. Eventually, though, the leave ended. She was expected to come back to duty.

In our squadron, duty didn’t mean showing up at an office at eight in the morning and going home at five. It meant going out on a weapons-system alert. Roughly thirty-six hours away from home.

The lieutenant told her flight commander that she couldn’t go. She needed more time.

She was breastfeeding. More specifically, she said she couldn’t pump enough breast milk ahead of time to leave her baby for the duration of the alert.

Her husband was also active duty, but he worked a job that allowed him to be home. He could care for the baby while she was gone. The problem was not that there was no one to take care of the child. The problem was feeding the child.

So my flight commander came to me and asked the question commanders eventually get paid to answer: What do we do?

Do we send her back on duty? Do we give her more time? How much more? A month? Three months? Until the child turns one? And if nothing changes, then what? Do we simply accept that she cannot perform that portion of the job for as long as she is breastfeeding?

I remember the problem because no answer made everybody happy.

And I believed the lieutenant. I want to make that clear. I did not think she had invented a breastfeeding problem because she didn’t want to work. I think she had a baby, she was trying to feed that baby, and she was looking at thirty-six hours away from her child and saying, I don’t know how I can do this.

That mattered. She had a responsibility for the child.

But something else mattered too.

Somebody had to go on alert. The mission didn’t disappear because one lieutenant had a difficult family situation. If she didn’t go, somebody else did. Somebody else stayed away from his or her family. Somebody else carried the burden.

And suddenly a question that sounds like a personnel problem becomes a philosophical one.

If we say everyone can do this job, can we also say some people don’t always have to do all of it? And if we say that, who decides when that is okay?

That question is bigger than breastfeeding. But breastfeeding is what makes the question difficult, because biology is not imaginary. Pregnancy is real. Childbirth is real. Recovery is real. Breastfeeding is real. None of those things disappear because an institution adopts a policy of equal opportunity.

That is where equality gets complicated.

We often use the word equality as though it answers a question. Sometimes it only starts one.

There is equality of access. Can you enter the profession? Can you compete for the position? Can you command? Can you serve in the operational role? Can you serve on the combat team?

And then there is equality of obligation. Once you have the position, are the expectations the same?

That distinction becomes uncomfortable because we like clean moral principles. Treat everyone the same. Accommodate people according to their circumstances. Both sound good until they run into each other.

One way of thinking about this is the difference between equality and equity. Equality says people occupying the same role ought to face the same essential obligations. Equity says relevant differences may justify different treatment. The hard part is deciding which differences matter, and how much difference in treatment is still compatible with calling it the same job.

Another way of thinking about it is role morality. Certain roles carry obligations that ordinary life does not. A judge cannot decide a case based on friendship. A physician cannot simply abandon a patient in the middle of surgery. A military officer accepts obligations that most citizens do not.

That does not mean the officer stops being a mother, father, husband, wife, son, or daughter. It means those obligations sometimes collide.

The philosopher W. D. Ross wrote about competing duties. You can have more than one genuine moral obligation at the same time. You can have a duty to your child, a duty to your fellow officers, a duty to the mission, a duty to obey lawful orders, and a duty not to place unreasonable burdens on other people. The fact that one duty is real does not make the others disappear.

That is the part that gets lost when we turn difficult problems into slogans.

Sometimes two good things really are in conflict.

You can even make what you believe is the right decision and still leave something valuable damaged. Maybe you order the lieutenant back onto alert. The squadron is treated fairly, the mission is covered, and a mother believes she has been forced into a situation that makes caring for her infant harder.

Something has been lost.

Or maybe you excuse her. The mother and baby are protected, but another lieutenant goes in her place. And another time. And another.

Something has been lost there too.

There is no administrative form that makes the loss disappear.

This question also has an interesting history in the American military. For much of the twentieth century, the institutional answer to pregnancy and motherhood was much harsher than it is today. Women could serve, but pregnancy would effectively end that service.

One of the important cases in that history involved Air Force Captain Susan Struck, a nurse who became pregnant in 1970 and challenged the policy that would have forced her out of the service. Her case became part of the broader movement away from treating pregnancy as automatically incompatible with military service.

That change was important.

But it didn’t eliminate the problem. It moved the problem.

At first, the institutional answer had essentially been: women can serve, but motherhood may end that service.

Then the answer became: women can serve and become mothers.

Which immediately creates another question: what happens when the obligations of motherhood and the obligations of military service conflict?

That is not an argument against women serving. It is simply the next question.

And over time the question became sharper. The military opened more roles to women: aviation, ships, operational specialties, and eventually direct ground combat positions. Each time a barrier came down, the debate centered on equal access.

But another question always follows behind it.

Does equal access imply equal obligation?

Or can equal access coexist with different obligations?

And if the answer is yes, how different can those obligations become before we are no longer talking about the same job?

This is where historical fights over equality become more complicated than they first appear.

A woman like Susan Struck was effectively saying that pregnancy shouldn’t automatically end her military career. I think she was right.

But once an institution accepts that principle, it has to turn an individual claim into a general rule. Not because every woman necessarily wants exactly what she wanted. Not because every future mother will make the same decision. Institutions simply cannot operate on individual intent. They need principles.

A person fights for the right to remain. The institution recognizes that right. Then, years later, someone else enters under that right and asks for an accommodation the earlier system would never grant.

That does not mean the original principle was wrong.

It means principles have consequences.

Rights create obligations. Access creates expectations. Equality is not complete until we talk about both.

There is an old philosophical test that helps here: ask what happens if the exception becomes the rule.

Not because exceptions are always wrong. They are not. But because a functioning institution has to know where exceptions stop.

Suppose any member with a serious personal obligation could decline an essential operational duty whenever the two conflicted. That sounds compassionate. It may be compassionate. But could the unit function?

If not, then you need a limiting principle.

Which circumstances justify accommodation? For how long? Who carries the burden in the meantime? At what point does accommodation change the nature of the position itself?

Those questions apply far beyond pregnancy.

A father can become a sole parent. A spouse can become seriously ill. A parent can require constant care. An officer can be injured. A family can suffer a tragedy.

Everybody eventually encounters something outside work that matters more to them than work.

And yet some professions exist precisely because society needs people who will sometimes place the obligation of the role ahead of the obligation of the moment.

That is especially true in the military.

Which brings me back to that lieutenant.

She had a baby. She wanted to breastfeed. She said she could not produce enough milk to leave the child for thirty-six hours. Her husband could care for the baby. Her authorized time away from duty had reached its end.

Her flight commander came to me and asked: What do we do?

I know what I decided.

I am not sure I want to tell you. At least not yet.

Because the more interesting question is what you would have decided.

Do you order her back on duty?

Do you give her more time?

If so, how much?

And what principle are you using to decide?

Because whatever rule you create for her has to become a rule you could defend for everyone else.

Maybe that is the hardest part of leadership.

Compassion is personal.

Command cannot always be.

So here is the question.

If we say everyone can do the job, can we still say some people don’t always have to do all of it?

And if the answer is yes, who decides when that is okay?

Sources

Air Force maternity-leave policy in effect beginning in 2016—12 continuous weeks of paid maternity leave: U.S. Air Force, “AF Implements New DOD-Wide Changes to Maternity Leave,” February 9, 2016 Air Force

Air Force parental-leave policy adopted in 2018—six weeks maternity convalescent leave, six weeks primary-caregiver leave, and three weeks secondary-caregiver leave; caregiver leave was in addition to maternity convalescent leave: U.S. Air Force, “Air Force Implements New Parental Leave Policy, Secondary Caregivers Given 21 Days,” June 8, 2018 Air Force

Contemporaneous Air Force summary of the 2018 policy, including its retroactive applicability and the distinction among maternity convalescent, primary-caregiver, and secondary-caregiver leave: U.S. Air Force, “Air Force Parental Leave,” June 18, 2018 Air Force

The 1948 law formally integrating women as permanent members of the armed services: U.S. Government Publishing Office, Women’s Armed Services Integration Act of 1948, Public Law 80-625, June 12, 1948 GovInfo

Historical overview of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, including the original limits on women’s participation and combat service: Naval History and Heritage Command, “Women’s Armed Services Integration Act”Naval History and Heritage Command

Captain Susan Struck’s challenge to the Air Force regulation requiring discharge of pregnant female officers; the appellate opinion describes her pregnancy while serving in Vietnam and the Air Force’s attempt to discharge her: Struck v. Secretary of Defense, 460 F.2d 1372, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 1972 OpenJurist

U.S. Army historical discussion of Susan Struck’s case and its place in the changing relationship between motherhood and military service: U.S. Army, “Serving on Two Fronts—Finding Balance Between Motherhood and Military Service,” March 29, 2023 Army

The Department of Defense’s 2015 decision opening all military occupations and positions—including direct ground-combat positions—to qualified women beginning in 2016: U.S. Department of Defense, “Carter Opens All Military Occupations, Positions to Women,” December 3, 2015 Defense.gov

DoD’s implementation of women’s full integration into previously closed combat positions, including its stated emphasis on maintaining combat effectiveness and standards: U.S. Department of Defense, “Statement from Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook on Secretary Carter’s Approval of Women in Service Review Implementation Plans,” March 10, 2016 Defense.gov

W. D. Ross’s idea of prima facie duties—multiple genuine moral obligations that can conflict, requiring judgment about which obligation carries the greatest weight in a particular situation: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “William David Ross” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The philosophical concept of universalizability—the idea that a moral judgment should be defensible under the same standard regardless of which person happens to occupy the relevant position: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Impartiality,” section 4.2, “Impartiality and Universalizability” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy