Pete Hegseth wants women in the kitchen — but his wife as his top adviser

However much Donald Trump-style BS-ing he does around it, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth can’t hide the dim view he takes of women’s worth outside of the home.

“Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bikes. We need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units,” he wrote in his book “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.” In the months since he’s been running the Defense Department, Hegseth’s apparent priority is pushing as many women out of leadership as possible — and often with the flimsiest of excuses that make it clear his disapproval stems from their gender, not their work.

During his Senate confirmation hearings in January, his ex-sister-in-law submitted an affidavit begging senators not to confirm him, claiming he’s a misogynist who abused his second wife. She wrote that she heard him “say that women should not have the right to vote and that they should not work.” Hegseth also, she said, made excuses for sexual assault, which he was accused of by a woman who attended a Republican women’s conference in California in 2017, where he spoke. (He settled out of court with the alleged victim in 2020.) 

Hegseth has denied holding these beliefs. But he also is a fervent devotee of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, a body that preaches the “most extreme views of women’s submission found in any form of Christianity,” religious scholar Julie Ingersoll told Salon. The church’s leader, Doug Wilson, recently gave an interview to CNN in which he argued that women shouldn’t have the right to vote and have no place outside the home. “Women are the kind of people that people come out of,” he said, making it clear he didn’t think they had much value beyond procreation. Hegseth posted the video on X, adding, “”All of Christ for All of Life.”

The Pentagon later clarified that Hegseth doesn’t oppose women’s suffrage. But with anyone serving in the Trump administration, it’s necessary to look at what they do — not what they say. And the defense secretary’s behavior strongly suggests he’s at least intrigued by Wilson’s opposition to the 19th Amendment.

This all makes it very surprising — and confounding — that Hegseth’s top adviser appears to be Jennifer Hegseth, his current wife and a former Fox News producer. Press coverage of this marital-work arrangement leans on euphemisms like “unorthodox” or that it “draws scrutiny,” but that underplays how frankly weird it is for the defense secretary to have his wife constantly at his side, managing his affairs and advising him on military matters, even though she is not on the Pentagon payroll and she has no experience with the military. Jennifer Hegseth was even part of last spring’s Signal scandal, which revealed she is looped in on top secret military meetings that are supposed to only be available to people with the highest level of security clearances.

The absurdity of her role only compounds the larger clown show that is her husband’s tenure at Defense. It’s bad enough that Trump appointed a wholly unqualified Fox News weekend host who is more worried about fighting phantom “woke” than protecting national security. That he relies on his wife for advice instead of experienced professionals — who he seems to view with loathing — only shows how terrifyingly bad Hegseth is at even the most basic of his job requirements.

But the arrangement is also confusing from a political point of view. Hegseth and his church leaders are adamant that women are incapable of handling “men’s” work. His belief system holds that his wife isn’t even capable of being a soldier. Why, then, is it okay for her to be a top military adviser? The reason is both simple and stupid: Because her work is unpaid. As it turns out, all this contempt that leaders of the religious right have for a woman’s capabilities miraculously dries up the second her intelligence can be used to serve a man and not herself.

“Women’s intelligence and competence isn’t a problem as long as it is used to support men and remains safely contained in dependent roles (such as the pastor’s wife),” Beth Allison Barr, a history professor at Baylor University, told Salon. “It only becomes a problem when it threatens male authority.”

In her book “Becoming the Pastor’s Wife,” Barr lays out the historical context for conservative churches shoehorning women into this wifely role, where they handle much of their husbands’ work without attaining the status or pay for doing so. In May, Barr wrote an op-ed for the Dallas Morning News arguing that the Hegseth’s unusual arrangement draws on this “pastor’s wife” model. “Men like Hegseth and Vance and denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention and Doug Wilson’s church don’t have a problem with using women’s expertise behind the scenes; they only have a problem when their authority is challenged by women,” she told Salon.

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This, though, is far from the only way that the Hegseths live that seems to contradict their rigid Christian right ideology. Jennifer Hegseth is the secretary’s third wife. The couple met at Fox News, and they began hooking up despite both being married to other people. This remained the situation when their first daughter was born in 2017. Pete Hegseth didn’t even bother to file for divorce from his second wife until after the baby’s birth. He and Jennifer Hegseth didn’t marry until 2019, two full years after their baby was born.

If this were a biography of a non-white person or a cosmopolitan liberal, Hegseth would no doubt use it as evidence of the decadence that progressivism has wrought on America, and a reason that his Christian nationalist yearnings are justified. But when white evangelicals do this sort of thing, it’s all okay — and they justify it by using the very same reasons they are okay with women working, as long as they don’t get paid. As long as male dominance isn’t threatened, nothing else matters, including the extensive trauma that witnesses, including Hegseth’s own mother, say he’s inflicted on the past women in his life.

The recent surge in reactionary politics has been accompanied by a tidal wave of “trad” propaganda, which argues that feminism is bad for women and they would be happier in circumvented roles at home. Most of the pundits and influencers making this argument frame housewifery as an escape from the stress of modern working life. Yes, you may lose a paycheck, the argument goes, but you gain so much more, such as free time and freedom from the responsibilities endured by working men and women. But the Hegseths’ hypocrisy reveals the ugly truth: Women in submissive roles aren’t just expected to work, they’re often required to quietly handle much of their husbands’ professional duties, free help that allows him to climb the career ladder while his wife is consigned to the shadows.

Perhaps it’s working out for Jennifer Hegseth. After all, she’s a powerful person at the Pentagon — and she may even be the most powerful woman, especially now that her husband has fired so many female leaders who actually earned their positions.

For most women, though, it’s a raw deal. They use their college degrees to help their husbands dispense with menial tasks so he can focus on the more exciting — and visible — parts of his job. They are expected to handle thankless work, like managing a social calendar and his wardrobe, so that he can benefit from the networking opportunities that open up. Wives of politicians and pastors alike both have to juggle diplomacy work, serving dinners and soothing egos, so that their husbands can swoop in and close deals. It’s a vision straight out of “Mad Men.”

It makes sense why men would want all this unpaid labor directed toward their professional ambitions. But most women who sign up for this would have better lives if they used their talents for their own careers. A paycheck and recognition for your work is worth more than being reduced to a mere helpmeet.