I've written about women at war previously; as I've said before, I don't think there are any good reasons for allowing women to serve in combat positions, and there are plenty of very compelling reasons not to.
I came across a post on a site called Equity Feminism that notes that when women recruits are held to the same physical requirements as men are, their injury rate increases by more than 100%.
Great Britain used to train men and women separately, with different requirements, but many women soldiers finished basic training without the abilities needed to perform their jobs. In 1998, the army began holding women to the same standards as men, and this change in policy resulted in the discharge rate due to training injury for women to rise from 4.5% to 11%, a jump of almost 150%. [Update: medical discharges for men were below 1.5%, according to the source BBC article.]
Regardless of anyone's opinions on the matter, women simply cannot attain and maintain the same physical abilities than men can, and as such they make inferior combatants. As I've written, in some circumstances (such as in Israel) every fighter is necessary -- perhaps because the population is small, or the war is particularly large. America is not in such a situation, and we have the luxury of keeping women out of combat roles in our armed forces. This policy improves the quality of our military in numerous ways (as I've outlined in my previous postings), and also serves a valuable social function.
If you're going to throw out stats like the discharge rate for women, could you get the rate for men as a comparison? The 150% jump is meaningless in a vacuum.
I would have been surprised if the injury rate didn't go up.
Examining the source BBC article reveals:
That is an important comparison number, you're right.There's that word again "allowing."
Individuals, Michael. If a woman isn't up to it, that's fine - cut her. If she is, don't take away the opportunity or ability to serve based on gender.
I do believe the physical standards should be the same. It will cut down on the women who are able to perform in combat. And able is very important in the military.
If it's 11.1%, it's 11.1%. You're not mentioning something because you can't know it, but how many women presented to boot camp in prime physical condition? What percentage of men. This almost certainly figures into the injury rate.
hln
It is most certainly a matter of "allowing", because the military isn't built around satisfying people's desire for achievement or fulfillment. It's sole purpose is to kill people and break things, as effectively and efficiently as possible.
If it can be demonstrated that allowing some individual or group to join the armed forces would in any way hinder that single objective, then that person or group should not be allowed to join. There is no "right" involved. Neither you nor I has a "right" to join the armed forces, regardless of our gender, religion, race, height, strength, intelligence, wealth, or any other factor. Every other consideration must be subsumed to the single overriding mission of the military -- to kill people and break things.
If you read the very compelling reasons I linked to, I think you may agree that even aside from physical fitness issues, there are a great many good reasons not to allow women into combat positions.
For instance, infantry soldiers often spend weeks at a time living in dirt, without showers and with poor hygiene. It would not be possible for a women to live in such circumstances, for what should be obvious health reasons. The added logistical cost of providing a female-healthy frontline would be enormous.
There are many other psychological, social, and practical reasons as well, and the entire case is very airtight, in my opinion.
There's the rub, the cost. According to the BBC article, you can bring women up to physical standards by putting them through six months of boot camp training instead of the men's 12 weeks. How expensive is that? Also, how much money will be poured down a rathole on women who wash out?
Nobody who advocates women in combat positions is coming up with hard numbers for the extra money necessary to accomplish this. You can spend more money to do this in a normal army. In emergency conditions you can throw women in anyway as a last ditch measure along with the old men and the boys and accept that they'll have far higher casualty rates.
What is unacceptable is to induct women into the force, not tell them about the higher likelihood of injury and death due to their biology, and act with shock and surprise when the feminists' pet scheme ends up costing lives and reducing military efficiency.
Even in the old british system of separate training the women were washing out at 3 times the male rate but were ending up insufficiently conditioned to do the jobs they were assigned to do in many cases. How much extra would we need to spend to do female combat soldiers right and can we pull that money from other military needs?
You do make a good argument, again, Michael. I just simply hate that word "allow" and such a sweeping generalization.
I am no feminist and certainly understand the reasons lurking behind the generalization.
hln
I understand what you're saying. I think generalizations are important -- it's not easy to make perfect generalizations, but it's not impossible to make good ones.
The military is a team. You cannot successfully conduct training and readiness for combat, and certainly not combat itself, by making any sort of individualized evaluations and allowances for common tasks and skills.
The issue of women in combat assignments is not really one of physical conditioning, it is one of physical ability. There's a difference.
One hundred male soldiers, selected at random, will always be much stronger and faster than any 100 randomly selected female soldiers, and have much greater endurance and stamina. Not only will this never change, it cannot change. Biology is indeed destiny in this case.
Civilians simply do not understand how supremely important physical ability is in combat operations. Mechanization has increased, not decreased the need for muscular strength and stamina. A mechanized infantryman's physical abilities are stressed today much more than those of an infantryman in, say, the Civil War.
(I am a retired Army artillery officer, BTW.)