For all three officers, the ban on women in combat was not so much a glass ceiling as a seemingly bulletproof one that limited their career options even as women played an increasingly important role in defending the country. For them, the significance of Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta’s decision last week to lift the 1994 ban on women in combat was not just that it gives them the opportunity to fight but also that it offers women a chance to advance in a career in which combat experience remains essential…

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