Sisters in arms: the U.S. military is lifting its long-standing ban on women in combat. What does that mean for the nation's armed forces?

• Author: Dao, James
• Position: Cover story

One day in 2007, during her second deployment to Iraq, Staff Sgt. Stacy Pearsall's unit came under attack. They had been clearing roadside bombs, but suddenly found themselves in the midst of a firefight.

The male soldiers in her armored personnel carrier dashed out to join the fight, so Sergeant Pearsall jumped onto the machine gun and began returning fire. In the midst of the chaos, she noticed a fallen soldier. She crawled to the man, who was 6-foot-2 and more than 200 pounds. Though he was twice her weight, she managed to drag him into the armored safety of the carrier.

Sergeant Pearsall was decorated for her actions that day, but she's far from the only woman who's put herself in harm's way during America's most recent wars. In the past 12 years, nearly 300,000 women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Working as medics, intelligence officers, military police, and in a host of other jobs, they've routinely been "attached" to all-male ground combat units on the front lines. There they've come under fire, returned fire, and been wounded and killed--even if, technically, they've been barred from combat.

That's about to change. The Department of Defense announced in January that it will lift the long-standing ban on women in combat, one of the most significant military personnel shifts since President Harry Truman's 1948 executive order to integrate the armed forces.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta * and General Martin Dempsey, who as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. military, say the decision to allow women in combat is in many ways an acknowledgement of what has already been occurring on the battlefield.

"They're fighting and they're dying together, and the time has come for our policies to reflect that reality," Panetta says.

Female SEALs?

The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines have until May 15 to submit plans for carrying out the new policy. Military officials say that more than 200,000 jobs could now open to women, including in elite Special Operations commando units like the Navy SEALs and Delta Force. A high percentage of men fail to make the cut for those units.

The armed services are now developing gender-neutral standards for all jobs. The Pentagon has vowed that standards will not be lowered to make it easier for women to join combat units. (The Army, for example, currently allows women to pass their physical fitness tests with fewer push-ups and a slower two-mile run than men.)

Serving in combat positions like the infantry remains crucial to career advancement in the military. Women have long said that by not recognizing their actual service, the military has unfairly held them back.

In November 2012, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit challenging the ban on behalf of four servicewomen and the Service Women's Action Network, a group that works for equality in the military. The A.C.L.U. says that one of the plaintiffs, Major Mary Jennings Hegar, an Air National Guard helicopter pilot, was shot down, returned fire, and was wounded while on the ground in Afghanistan. Yet she could not seek combat leadership positions because the Defense Department did not officially acknowledge her experience as combat.

The role...