The doors of opportunity for women in the military have opened wider, following a Department of Defense report submitted to Congress last week.

According to a DOD release, the department notified Congress Feb. 9 it intends to make changes to rules that have been in place since 1994 that govern the service of female members of the armed forces. Relaxing rules that allow women to perform jobs that are  co-located with ground combat units will open up more than 14,000 additional positions to them.

“Women are contributing in unprecedented ways to the military’s mission,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in the release. “Through their courage, sacrifice, patriotism and great skill, women have proven their ability to serve in an expanding number of roles on and off the battlefield.”

Mike McClung, father of Maj. Megan McClung, the first female Marine officer killed in Iraq, said women have always had a role in combat, official or not, and Congress is just playing games.

“It’s a paperwork shuffle, really,” he said. “If you stop and think about it, women have been in combat since time immemorial. The reality is if a job has physical requirements, there should be criteria. Megan always argued that you can’t exclude women because they are physically smaller.”

Part of the paperwork shuffle, as McClung calls it, is because

the modern battlefield has changed. There are no longer clearly defined front lines and combat support operations are spread throughout the battlespace.

Allowing women to do jobs such as tank mechanic and field artillery radar operator, for example, opens up more than 13,000 Army jobs for female soldiers. More than 1,000 jobs in intelligence, communications and logistics at units smaller than a brigade will also be opened.

According to the Pentagon, 144 military women have been killed and 865 wounded in combat and noncombat incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 200,000 women are part of the military’s 1.4 million-member active duty force.

McClung said men and women who join the military or become firefighters or police officers are a different breed. That shared spirit, or warrior ethos, sets them apart and makes them strive to do their jobs to the best of their ability.

He said his daughter wanted the same opportunities as her male counterparts in the Marine Corps.

“Had the rules been different all along, had Megan been allowed to join the infantry, she would have been in the lead,” McClung said.