I don't believe in equality - it's a myth. Equal opportunity is different. In no way am I suggesting that equal number of women, can, or should be in active duty - only that the criteria should be meeting the operational standards.
If women meet the same standards required for active service - good for them, good for those they serve, and good for those they serve with.
While that is a laudable sentiment, and one that I can get behind, don't be surprised if you end up with approximately no women in your battalions.
We've seen the exact same thing happen in Sweden. Female fire fighters (well, not necessarily them per se, but other's speaking for them) complained about the macho culture that prevented women from being fire fighters. The had the numbers to support their arguments, there were very few females that were deemed to pass muster.
So, instead of the somewhat arbitrary previous hiring process, that did contain standards but also left room for judgement, quite a lot of work was put into defining what the actual requirements that had to be met to be a passable fire fighter were researched, tested and put into practice in the major fire departments in the larger cities.
The results were quite telling. At the smaller departments that kept the old process in the interim, the same abysmally small number of female applicants were hired, but in the cities, with their brand spanking new, objective, doesn't-leave-anything-to-subjective-judgement, not a single female fire fighter was hired after. Not one. *)
And if you look at the statistics that's not really that surprising. When you have strength, endurance, and psychological requirements that only a relatively small portion of the male population can pass, the number of females who could pass it in the general population becomes close to zero to begin with. And when you combine that with the small number of women who could see themselves in that line of work and even apply, it becomes a once-in-a-blue-moon even that the stars have aligned so that you will get a woman who both can pass the requirements, and would be interested and willing to do so.
*) A few years after two women actually managed to pass the physical requirements test by having been coached specifically. So out of 1000 fire fighters in my city there are now two women that are qualified for actual fire fighting (including "smoke diving"). The first time they tried coaching four women from neighbouring cities that already worked as fire fighters, but none of them passed... And just for reference, the physical requirements aren't completely over the top: Being able to run 3000 meters below 13:15, 30 kg bench press 35 times in under one minute, or lifting a 15 kg bar to the chin 40 times, etc. etc. These are requirements I myself would have had a shot at 25 years ago before I got old, slow, weak and fat, and I was no prime specimen of the male gender, far from it.
The physical differences between the sexes, at least in modern societies, are just that large. And if you say that "Women are OK, but you know, given the requirements there won't actually be any women," have you then actually opened up the position to women?