It's about time the Pentagon recognized this--fair is fair. If someone is best qualified to do a particular job, then let them have that job--I have zero tolerance for any sort of discrimination. I bid the Defense Department welcome to the 21st Century.
Great for air power and other things. However not understanding that the military discriminates for other good reasons.
That is, that more times than not, a woman will not be able to keep up as a member of a Marine platoon in continuous combat.
Women have been great in the miltiary...for years.
Carrying full kit and a rifle in a USMC platoon... different. And not worth the effort to make that platoon less combat effective because someone can't carry the load.
Another example? Why are women not in the NFL?
3 comments:
The physical problem is no problem if one becomes serious about physical problems with weak men, too.
Simply institute appropriate physical strength, dexterity and endurance requirements (same for all) and enforce them.
I'm more interested on the psychological difference (but again, there are also psychological issues with many men).
Wrong:
This is from when they first started sending women to the Academies:
From the report of the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces (report date November 15, 1992, published in book form by Brassey's in 1993):
"The average female Army recruit is 4.8 inches shorter, 31.7 pounds lighter, has 37.4 fewer pounds of muscle, and 5.7 more pounds of fat than the average male recruit. She has only 55 percent of the upper-body strength and 72 percent of the lower-body strength…
An Army study of 124 men and 186 women done in 1988 found that women are more than twice as likely to suffer leg injuries and nearly five times as likely to suffer [stress] fractures as men."
Further:
"The Commission heard an abundance of expert testimony about the physical differences between men and women that can be summarized as follows:"Women's aerobic capacity is significantly lower, meaning they cannot carry as much as far as fast as men, and they are more susceptible to fatigue."In terms of physical capability, the upper five percent of women are at the level of the male median. The average 20-to-30 year-old woman has the same aerobic capacity as a 50 year-old man."
From the same report:
"Lt Col. William Gregor, United States Army, testified before the Commission regarding a survey he conducted at an Army ROTC Advanced Summer Camp on 623 women and 3540 men. …Evidence Gregor presented to the Commission includes:"
(a) Using the standard Army Physical Fitness Test, he found that the upper quintile of women at West point achieved scores on the test equivalent to the bottom quintile of men."
(c) Only 21 women out of the initial 623 (3.4%) achieved a score equal to the male mean score of 260."
(d) On the push-up test, only seven percent of women can meet a score of 60, while 78 percent of men exceed it."
(e) Adopting a male standard of fitness at West Point would mean 70 percent of the women he studied would be separated as failures at the end of their junior year, only three percent would be eligible for the Recondo badge, and not one would receive the Army Physical Fitness badge…."
From Canada's recent experience with gender integration into the combat arms:
"After extensive research, Canada has found little evidence to support the integration of women into ground units. Of 103 Canadian women who volunteered to joint infantry units, only one graduated the initial training course. The Canadian experience corroborates the testimony of LTC Gregor, who said the odds of selecting a woman matching the physical size and strength of the average male are more than 130-to-1."
I just had a thought. How would this affect the moral sphere of warfare in certain countrys? Id imagine that this could generate a lot of hostility in some counries' populations. As much as Im against my countries addiction to getting itself stuck in Muslim countries, it might be more dangerous if we radicalize even more men in that part of the world by having women point guns at them. Wasnt the intersex dynamic part of what made the Iraqi prison scandals such a propagamda loss for us?
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