Although a majority of women believe that women should, theoretically, be allowed to serve in the military, less than half of women support the idea of women actually having to be forced to serve if there is a draft.
A YouGov poll asked 1,000 Americans, including approximately 500 women, what they think about women serving in the military.
The poll found 68 percent of women support the idea of women being allowed to serve in combat roles in the military (40 percent “strongly support” the idea while 28 percent “somewhat support” it), while 87 percent of women support the idea of women being allowed to serve in non-combat roles (61 percent “strongly support” the idea while 26 percent “somewhat support” it).
However, despite the poll showing 75 percent of women believe men and women are equal, only 46 percent of women said women should be able to be drafted along with men.
Asked, “If the military draft were reinstated, would you favor or oppose drafting women as well as men?” only 19 percent of women claimed to “strongly favor” the idea while 27 percent said they “somewhat favor” the idea.
The poll found 40 percent of women either “somewhat oppose” (15 percent) or “strongly oppose” (25 percent) the idea of women being drafted.
There was a large divide among gender lines on whether women should be able to be drafted, with 60 percent of men claiming they support women being drafted (32 percent responded they “strongly favor” women being drafted and 28 percent “somewhat favor” women being drafted).
The YouGov poll was conducted through Web-based interviews from March 18-21. The margin of error is ± 3.9% (adjusted for weighting).