[Dragon]

Please provide source or get out. Being pessimistic about women's chances does not count.

My own experience, experience of people I met and some psychology. Maybe it's different in America, but I've only met a few women (less than 10) in my entire life that would be interested in the military. Most girls consider my interest in military strange. This isn't about chances, this is about psychology. Also, there's a matter of combat being traditionally a man's role. Say what you will, but everybody has trouble breaking such stupid stereotypes. Of course, plenty of people try (and I have a feeling that America is more accepting towards such behavior than Poland), but at first, it's a handful of people somehow different from the rest. Add rejection rates to that (as combat requires physical fitness, regardless of gender) and you end up with a small number. I'm pretty sure I've read an article on that subject somewhere, but it was in a Polish paperback newspaper, so I'm afraid it wouldn't do us much good.

That said, I haven't met a lot of Americans. In Poland, a girl interested in military (for example) and open about it would have trouble finding friends. Same goes for boys with "unmanly" interests. Polish people in general have a hard time accepting somebody being different. I've heard it's not that bad in America, so maybe I'm mistaken and this process will be quicker than I though.

[The E]

Dragon, the plural of anecdote isn't data.

Also, what point are you making, exactly? Just because a proportionately smaller number of women think of the military as a good career does not mean that there should be arbitrary barriers for those who do want to serve; After all, we do not discriminate against men who want to be Nurses, Teachers, or social workers to the same extent.

[Mika]

There are a couple of things that I'd like to mention here.

From physiology point of view, women will always have a much harder catch-up job to do when it comes to tasks that simply require strength. I do recall seeing numbers like 40-50 % of raw physical strength advantage for equally trained men which is very difficult to reach no matter what you do. For this reason only, the women that enter service are more likely to have exercised a lot, and represent the average male. Endurance wise, I don't know, what I recall from Reserve Officer School was that we did not want to give any extra weight (like mines, machine guns or RPGs) for women since while they were able to sustain rather well with normal combat load, the effect of the additional 10 kgs was more visible on them than on men.

There were some additional things as well. I do recall that women shouting orders had difficulty in having reach due to higher pitch of the voice. For some reason, gun shots and other middle-in- there noise tended to cancel out theirs more effectively than men.

Then you have a couple of psychological effects here that are really hard to overcome. Men will react more quickly on requests of a woman, which is a bad thing if the woman is wounded, or looks to be in other sort of trouble. I did not see this in actuality since I did not participate in combat, but I do recall men taking gear from women more eagerly than from men in the exercises and believe that this is still well grounded.

Lastly, my grandfather seemingly had a great trauma of witnessing a woman sniper being executed by close range head shot. He later said something like "She was so beautiful, why she had to die?". Apparently, seeing men die did not leave such a trace.

Personally, I wouldn't like having women in heavy assault roles, but support roles, why not?

[General Battuta]

About half of your post consists of problems with men that they need to get over, the other half is stuff already covered - extensively, and with citations! - on the first page of the thread.

[The E]

Personally, I wouldn't like having women in heavy assault roles, but support roles, why not?

Yeah, let me just go ahead and say that I think that's bull****. Complete and utter bull**** of the finest caliber.

Point 1: What you would or wouldn't like is completely irrelevant.
Point 2: Prior to the policy change under discussion here, a female soldier with the same training marks, the same aptitudes, the same skills as a male soldier would have been barred from being deployed into the same situations purely because someone "doesn't like women in assault roles". Not because she was fundamentally incapable of functioning in the role, but just because someone somewhere thought that that job needs to be done by a man.

Now, will we suddenly see a big influx of female soldiers into front-line operations? No. Partially because there aren't that many female soldiers to begin with, partially because they have to pass the same training (which is more difficult due to the old "in order to be accepted, a woman has to be twice as good" thing than any physiological differences).

There aren't that many people who can go into modern combat again and again. A country would do well to get as many of these people into the right places. If a country deprives itself of a pool of candidates for some bull**** reason like the ones you cited, they are weakening their military.

[Dragon]

Dragon, the plural of anecdote isn't data.

I know, but unless you can read Polish, the particular piece of data I theoretically could give you (assuming nobody threw this particular issue of this magazine into trash or the fireplace...) isn't going to help much. You could look at men to women ratios in other branches. See below though.

Also, what point are you making, exactly?

This and not much more:

...a proportionately smaller number of women think of the military as a good career...

Now, will we suddenly see a big influx of female soldiers into front-line operations? No. Partially because there aren't that many female soldiers to begin with, partially because they have to pass the same training (which is more difficult due to the old "in order to be accepted, a woman has to be twice as good" thing than any physiological differences).

You managed to state my point, and better, before I even had a chance to respond.
I'm not saying whether this is good or bad, but pointing out that Pentagon's decision alone isn't going to make women in combat units common, at least not quickly. Hopefully we'll get there eventually, but for the reasons you mentioned, it isn't going to be a fast process. Note that in no place did I argue against this decision, quite the contrary. Note that I was talking about how it is, not about how it should be. Arbitrary restrictions pretty much lead to some degree of inefficiency. It would be the best if the only things that counted in all occupations were one's capabilities. I think "how it should be" is a matter for another thread though.

[Pred the Penguin]

Don't you suppose why many women do not have interest in serving in the military might be because of the prejudices they may face?

[Mika]

Well well, this seems to be then about women who have the same physical capability as men. The thing is, I haven't met a lot of women who actually could approach an average man in the strength or endurance department (and I was in assault riflemen). All your argumentation starts from "equal capability". Stop right there; that's the thing I was saying. There simply aren't many women on "equal capability", even in the army. Which is why I said I personally wouldn't like to have women in my squadron - you open up a bit too many unknowns by that. If I was leading a squadron that works in a combat support role, it would be different, but for heavy assault, no.

And given there are such a small number of women who could take part in such a role, one is left to wonder what's all the fuzz about this then? However, if I get assigned a woman in my squadron, I can live with the fact. If a woman becomes the commander of the battalion I'm stationed in, I can live with that fact as well.

[The E]

Mika, I think you do not understand the issue under discussion. If you want to deploy Soldiers into combat, you need to make sure they're all trained to the same standard, both in terms of physical ability and mental skills. Doing anything else endangers the unit as a whole, because that's what introduces those unknowns you're talking about.

That being the case, we're not talking about holding women who want into frontline assignments to a different standard than the Soldiers we're deploying there now. In other words, the only people that are affected by this are the women who are already capable of operating at the same level as the men.
If you have people available who can do the job and are motivated to do it, would it not be better to train them and give them the jobs they want, rather than barring them from doing the job because they lack dangly bits between their legs?

[Mika]

Mika, I think you do not understand the issue under discussion. If you want to deploy Soldiers into combat, you need to make sure they're all trained to the same standard, both in terms of physical ability and mental skills. Doing anything else endangers the unit as a whole, because that's what introduces those unknowns you're talking about.

That being the case, we're not talking about holding women who want into frontline assignments to a different standard than the Soldiers we're deploying there now. In other words, the only people that are affected by this are the women who are already capable of operating at the same level as the men.
If you have people available who can do the job and are motivated to do it, would it not be better to train them and give them the jobs they want, rather than barring them from doing the job because they lack dangly bits between their legs?

"Already capable of operating at the same level as the men"? And how do you know that? How do you exactly close the possibility that their squaddies did not help them with their assignments? This is exactly what I witnessed, and the reason is pretty simple: you don't typically screw up as a single person in the army (it's nowadays almost forbidden to single out personnel), but you screw up as a squad. And since most of the squad members don't want to be punished for something they didn't do, they'll opt to help instead! And of course, this happens equally with men, but the point is, this happened routinely with the women candidates that I saw and served with.

I'm not saying there aren't women who are not fit to front line duty. I know a couple of one that are and one who was more than capable. But they never went through the army, and that's my point. As a squadron leader, I don't want to think the possibility that this woman under my command might or might not be capable.

For some reason, I think this Pentagon decision has more to do with running out of soldiers - or preparing towards it. Remember that we still have mandatory military service here, and we have enough of candidates to select from. Why we should enlist women who with massive amount of training can barely match men with a reasonable amount of training? That's the thing where I'm coming from.

[NGTM-1R]

How do you exactly close the possibility that their squaddies did not help them with their assignments? This is exactly what I witnessed, and the reason is pretty simple: you don't typically screw up as a single person in the army (it's nowadays almost forbidden to single out personnel), but you screw up as a squad.

Why are men magically exempt from this possibility, why can the same measures taken for this sort of thing for them not work for women, and why did you not bother to consider your argument at all?

For some reason, I think this Pentagon decision has more to do with running out of soldiers - or preparing towards it.

This is an excellent indicator of how painfully out of touch you are with current issues in the US armed forces.

[Apollo]

For some reason, I think this Pentagon decision has more to do with running out of soldiers - or preparing towards it.

This is an excellent indicator of how painfully out of touch you are with current issues in the US armed forces.

Yeah, the US has plenty of soldiers.

http://www.usa.gov/Federal-Employees/Active-Military-Records.shtml#Data_and_Statistics

http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/MILITARY/miltop.htm

"Already capable of operating at the same level as the men"? And how do you know that? How do you exactly close the possibility that their squaddies did not help them with their assignments? This is exactly what I witnessed, and the reason is pretty simple: you don't typically screw up as a single person in the army (it's nowadays almost forbidden to single out personnel), but you screw up as a squad. And since most of the squad members don't want to be punished for something they didn't do, they'll opt to help instead! And of course, this happens equally with men, but the point is, this happened routinely with the women candidates that I saw and served with.

I'm not saying there aren't women who are not fit to front line duty. I know a couple of one that are and one who was more than capable. But they never went through the army, and that's my point. As a squadron leader, I don't want to think the possibility that this woman under my command might or might not be capable.

For some reason, I think this Pentagon decision has more to do with running out of soldiers - or preparing towards it. Remember that we still have mandatory military service here, and we have enough of candidates to select from. Why we should enlist women who with massive amount of training can barely match men with a reasonable amount of training? That's the thing where I'm coming from.

"Why we should enlist women who with massive amount of training can barely match men with a reasonable amount of training?" Because equality is important, that's why. Anyway, you're seriously underestimating what woman are capable of. Most women don't care about their physical strength as much as men, which leads to less effort and lower ability. A woman who tries hard enough could be stronger than most men.

[Dilmah G]

Do you have some kind of an individual Combat Fitness Assessment to be undertaken by all those in an Arms Corps in Finland, Mika? I don't think any military would be caught letting a woman who could not pass the male standard (which should be the single standard) into a Battalion. In some senses I totally agree with you, men and women are not physically equal, not by a long shot when it comes their physiology and composition of testosterone in the body, etc, which I'm led to believe contributes to a large part of the physical disparities between them. But if you take a look at the OP, like Battuta hinted, militaries including my native Australian Defence Force have invested time and money into studying the ability of women to complete things like an Arms Corps CFA and found that there are women who can. They are not numerous, and will never be numerous, until, as I've said umpteen times this thread, we can re-engineer the human body, but they are there.

I have my doubts as to whether they could fill roles in units like yours (I assume it would be the equivalent of our Light Infantry?), but I believe Officers in New Zealand and Canada who've been female have filled billets in Mechanised Infantry units, and the late-Captain Nichola Goddard, whom I like to mention was a Field Artillery Officer, I believe. Dekker's posts were also good reads on women in Combat Engineers.

I think the onus should be on the training structure to ensure that capable women are adequately prepared. Unless we institute more hardcore minimum standards, women are going to need a supplementary training program before the commencement of Infantry specific training and after Basic training because of what we know about the differences between the average male or female when they rock up, and how long it will take a female to reach an acceptable physical standard for the duration of Infantry training.

"Why we should enlist women who with massive amount of training can barely match men with a reasonable amount of training?" Because equality is important, that's why. Anyway, you're seriously underestimating what woman are capable of. Most women don't care about their physical strength as much as men, which leads to less effort and lower ability. A woman who tries hard enough could be stronger than most men.

I think to some extent Mika has a legitimate point. There was an article written by a Marine Corps Infantry Officer (may have been recently retired) that I'm struggling to find that was in favour of women in combat units, but even he conceded that women would be taking the spots of the weaker males in the Platoon. Simply due to the way the female body is, they won't be your superstar soldiers who are running rings around the rest of the Platoon and it does seem counter-intuitive to introduce a whole population to Infantry that will never be able to rise as far as the existing population. But conversely, if a woman can earn her spot in a combat unit, I believe she should be able to serve in one. Especially if she's taking the place of some dropkick who doesn't want to be there.

Your last point though, I think needs some clarification. Yes, absolutely, men are not stronger than women when you compare the two populations because there are women who are stronger than some men. Even women who are stronger than a large number of untrained men. But it will in the vast majority of cases take a woman far longer than a comparable man to reach the same levels of physical strength. Just looking at the Olympics at which sports men and women can compete in at the same level, and in things like lifting competitions is a good illustration of just how big the disparity can get. A lot of people don't realise just how physical a job being in an Arms Corps is.

All this aside, there's enough evidence to suggest that women can at least hack the standards in things like the CFA. What I'm more concerned about is what the Marine Corps CPT in the article I've linked in the OP talks about, regarding the price of combat on her body, and whether female soldiers will be able to maintain their fitness in the field as long as men without compromising both their own and their unit's ability to function.

[Mika]

Why are men magically exempt from this possibility, why can the same measures taken for this sort of thing for them not work for women, and why did you not bother to consider your argument at all?

I think you missed it. It was on the next sentence. That happens with men as well, but for some reason, that also happened with ALL women candidates that I saw.

This is an excellent indicator of how painfully out of touch you are with current issues in the US armed forces.

Possibly

"Why we should enlist women who with massive amount of training can barely match men with a reasonable amount of training?" Because equality is important, that's why. Anyway, you're seriously underestimating what woman are capable of. Most women don't care about their physical strength as much as men, which leads to less effort and lower ability. A woman who tries hard enough could be stronger than most men.

Equality between genders does not mean that. True equality takes account also the differences when they really exist and lives with it. Of the record, I have done also martial arts for 15 years and dated a European Champion of a certain punch & kick art. I'm pretty well aware of the differences in a human body at this point, and do remember the massive amount of training she had to do which barely allowed her to go head to head with an average men. Wrestling then, well, that's another thing... I actually never did any wrestling when trying this with a female judoka who had been training a lot (not a black belt though). Surprisingly, I was able to hold my own. Yes, by training, a woman can get stronger than average men. But had that average man been training with the same rate, the woman simply does not stand a chance, and that is the reason why the genders are separated in sports. You want to try this kind of "equality"? Call for genderless sports first and see how far that goes.

For Dilmah G, I think the Battalions have their own standards that you need to fulfill. I do recall our running standard was around 2700 metres in 12 minutes, a comparatively easy target - most of us went over 2900 m. Other battalions had different limits IIRC. I do recall that it was a disgrace if you could not go over 3000 metres in the Reconnaissance company The requested amounts depended on what was perceived to be necessary - so it's no wonder that the Reconnaissance company required much faster people - they tended to run a lot . Air Force pilot screening was completely different of those, and wasn't that interested on how quick you can run...

We already do have women (in small numbers) serving in the combat support roles like Artillery, AAA, Engineering, Communications, and Air Force. And as I said, there's no problem filling these roles, as the stress factors there are different.

If you can find the Marine Corps Officer interview, I'm interested to read that to see whether it reflects mine. The long term endurance when physically tired is one of those key things, and the resistance against cold is another one specific to here.

[Apollo]

"Why we should enlist women who with massive amount of training can barely match men with a reasonable amount of training?" Because equality is important, that's why. Anyway, you're seriously underestimating what woman are capable of. Most women don't care about their physical strength as much as men, which leads to less effort and lower ability. A woman who tries hard enough could be stronger than most men.

Equality between genders does not mean that. True equality takes account also the differences when they really exist and lives with it. Of the record, I have done also martial arts for 15 years and dated a European Champion of a certain punch & kick art. I'm pretty well aware of the differences in a human body at this point, and do remember the massive amount of training she had to do which barely allowed her to go head to head with an average men. Wrestling then, well, that's another thing... I actually never did any wrestling when trying this with a female judoka who had been training a lot (not a black belt though). Surprisingly, I was able to hold my own. Yes, by training, a woman can get stronger than average men. But had that average man been training with the same rate, the woman simply does not stand a chance, and that is the reason why the genders are separated in sports. You want to try this kind of "equality"? Call for genderless sports first and see how far that goes.

For Dilmah G, I think the Battalions have their own standards that you need to fulfill. I do recall our running standard was around 2700 metres in 12 minutes, a comparatively easy target - most of us went over 2900 m. Other battalions had different limits IIRC. I do recall that it was a disgrace if you could not go over 3000 metres in the Reconnaissance company The requested amounts depended on what was perceived to be necessary - so it's no wonder that the Reconnaissance company required much faster people - they tended to run a lot . Air Force pilot screening was completely different of those, and wasn't that interested on how quick you can run...

We already do have women (in small numbers) serving in the combat support roles like Artillery, AAA, Engineering, Communications, and Air Force. And as I said, there's no problem filling these roles, as the stress factors there are different.

If you can find the Marine Corps Officer interview, I'm interested to read that to see whether it reflects mine. The long term endurance when physically tired is one of those key things, and the resistance against cold is another one specific to here.

Perhaps I was viewing this too simplistically. I still think women who can pass the standards designed for men should be allowed, though.

[newman]

I'm not saying whether this is good or bad, but pointing out that Pentagon's decision alone isn't going to make women in combat units common, at least not quickly. Hopefully we'll get there eventually, but for the reasons you mentioned, it isn't going to be a fast process.

That's kind of irrelevant, though. The point isn't to raise the number of women in combat roles; the point is to allow any person who wants to serve their country in that capacity to do so without stopping them because of gender or any other issues that have nothing to do with them being physically fit for those roles. If they can pass the physical aptitude tests and want to serve, gender or race should be completely irrelevant. This has absolutely nothing to do with some bull**** notion of artificially inflating the number of women in combat roles and everything to do with finally leaving the dark ages once and for all.

[redsniper]

The point isn't to raise the number of women in combat roles; the point is to allow any person who wants to serve their country in that capacity to do so without stopping them because of gender or any other issues that have nothing to do with them being physically fit for those roles. If they can pass the physical aptitude tests and want to serve, gender or race should be completely irrelevant. This has absolutely nothing to do with some bull**** notion of artificially inflating the number of women in combat roles and everything to do with finally leaving the dark ages once and for all.

[Lorric]

MIKA: "I have done also martial arts for 15 years and dated a European Champion of a certain punch & kick art. I'm pretty well aware of the differences in a human body at this point, and do remember the massive amount of training she had to do which barely allowed her to go head to head with an average men."

Surely this can't be true, unless you either mean average martial arts men or she was in one of the lighter weight classes. Surely a European martial arts champion should be able to wipe the floor up with your average Joe strolling down the street and barely even break a sweat?

[newman]

I'm fairly sure he meant the average male martial arts contestant. A female martial arts champion could indeed wipe the floor with your average beer-gut joe.

[Lorric]

I'm fairly sure he meant the average male martial arts contestant. A female martial arts champion could indeed wipe the floor with your average beer-gut joe.

If so I certainly agree with that.