During his Senate confirmation hearing, Trump nominee for secretary of defense and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth falsely claimed that military commanders are forced to “meet quotas to have a certain number of female infantry officers or infantry enlisted.” Hegseth further claimed this “disparages those women who are incredibly capable of meeting that standard.” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) pushed back on his claim, correctly noting, “Commanders do not have to have a quota for women in the infantry. It does not exist.”

Gender quotas, along with quotas for other demographic groups, do not exist in the military. A Defense official confirmed to USA Today that “there are no such quotas” after the exchange between Hegseth and Gillibrand. In fact, despite right-wing media's frequent false claims otherwise, the use of demographic quotas have fallen out of practice in society since the Supreme Court ruled racial quotas presumptively unconstitutional almost half a century ago.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the Department of Defense does have a “definition of diversity to be used throughout DOD.” However it still does not “outline targets or quotas for the recruitment, retention, or promotion of historically underrepresented demographic groups.” In 2015, when then-President Barack Obama’s Secretary of Defense Ash Carter opened all military roles to women, he wrote in his guidelines that “equal opportunity likely will not mean equal participation by men and women in all specialties, and there will be no quotas.” 

Right-wing media have repeatedly attacked nonexistent quotas or diversity efforts, blaming them for alleged problems within education, corporate hiring practices, and for different safety incidents in the country. Right-wing media also previously went after Carter for opening up combat roles to women, with figures suggesting that the military could “have its integrity compromised or safety compromised” as a result, despite gender quotas not being part of the policy.