War Secretary Pete Hegseth and tended a 74-year-old military advisory committee rooted in feminism.
According to a report from The Daily Signal, Hegseth issued a memo declaring that the Defense Advisory Committee for Women in the Services should not be reinstated. The committee costs the DOW $1,128,000 in fiscal years 2023-2024, the report explained.
In response to a report that claimed the committee “encourages women to enter [the] military,” the DOW said the panel “focused on advancing a divisive feminist agenda that hurts combat readiness,” emphasizing that officials are “cleansing the Department of wokeness.”
The committee’s website describes itself as “one of the oldest War Department advisory committees.”
“The Committee was created following the passage of the 1948 Women’s Armed Services Integration Act to advise on strategies to improve the recruitment of women into the U.S. military during the Korean War,” the website says. “Over the years, the DACOWITS charter has evolved, enabling the Committee to submit numerous recommendations to the Secretary of War – the majority of which have been either fully or partially implemented. The Committee’s recommendations have been instrumental in effecting changes to law and policies pertaining to the service of women in the U.S. military.”
A 2023 report from the committee urged the DOD to ensure that “servicewomen have access to reproductive health care in the wake of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.”
The termination of the committee’s reinstatement builds upon Hegseth’s February directive to shift $50 billion from “woke programs” and use the funds to support President Donald Trump’s priorities.
Hegseth “directed a review to identify offsets from the Biden Administration’s FY26 budget that could be realigned from low-impact and low-priority Biden-legacy programs to align with President Trump’s America First priorities for our national defense,” a statement from the Pentagon read at the time.
