President Pranab Mukherjee has announced the government’s intention to induct women in all military combat roles. Since time immemorial, men have apportioned to themselves the leading role in fighting and hunting. It has stayed that way with a variety of arguments and customs barring women entry into the armed forces of nation states. The main arrow in the quiver is the primordial fear of the enemy ‘violating’ captured women warriors. The other argument is of a modern make and makes the point that India is not culturally as advanced as the Nordic countries to have mixed dormitories and common toilets.Both fears against the entry of women in combat roles, one old and another of recent make, ignore the history of their participation in modern warfare. Lyudmila Pavlichenko was one of the deadliest snipers in World War II with 309 confirmed hits. Armies of the post-revolution Soviet Union, China and Cuba have accommodated women in combat roles. And women guerrillas have taken on men-only armies in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Colombia. Recently, women fighters of the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Syrian YPJ successfully took on the ISIS known for press ganging captured women into sex slavery.The third argument is that men are genetically programmed to kill and women balk at shedding blood. As women guerrillas and soldiers have shown, this is a misplaced notion.  Candidates are selected after a gruelling psychological examination for aptitude and the ones falling short are winnowed. Though women have been inducted into the fighter stream of the Indian Air Force, this was an easier decision. Air force bases are family stations and pilots operate from the cockpit where issues of cohesion, etc. are absent. It will be tough to create space in infantry and combat units or on warships. If the example of other countries is an indication, the number of women in combat units will be miniscule. This means the costs of additional facilities will not be much but the President’s declaration has succeeded in sending a clear signal that India will embark on the path of full gender parity in the armed forces.