If you watch the firefighter training video, the most commonly shown scene was of the female recruit struggling to erect a ladder. When she needs assistance, the (male) training officer takes the ladder, then waits for a second (male) training officer to help him with the ladder. If it takes two men to handle the ladder safely, it seems unreasonable to criticize the woman who had difficulty.
My second comment relates more to police requirements, but is somewhat related. In a Law Enforcement class I took in college, we discussed in one class period the changing requirements for entry into police academies. One police department had been criticized for requiring a lower minimum number of push-ups for female recruits, which had caused complaints of discrimination by male recruits.
The instructor, a 20-year veteran of the Chicago PD, had this to say (a direct quote taken from a cassette recording of the lecture): “They’re missing the point here. Push-ups are a strength training technique, not a job skill. In more than 20 years on the street, I never once had to do a push-up in the line of duty.” And later on the same tape: “Strength plays a role only in unarmed physical confrontations. Any police officer who gets into a lot of situations like that is a poor officer.”
The point was that job requirements, physical and otherwise, should be defined solely in terms of job-related skills. For example, the ability to bench-press a certain amount of weight is not a job-related skill for anyone other than a competetive power-lifter. Being able to carry a full pack a certain distance is. If the issue is unarmed combat, then a test should be developed to test an applicant’s unarmed combat ability. Those who pass are qualified, those who don’t are not. Sex should not be an issue.
I read an article once that said, IIRC that the biggest problem with women in combat was not physical, but psychological, and not on the part of the women, but the men. Men in combat alongside women, as happened in the Russian Army during WWII, tend to get overprotective of their female compatriots to the point of being distracted from their other duties.
I also think the public acceptance is likely to lag behind. I saw at least a half-dozen different reports during the Gulf War about the sacrifice of mothers leaving behind young children or babies, but not one about the sacrifice of fathers leaving behind young children. I think the American puplic is not quite ready to accept young mothers dying in combat as being a necessary sacrifice in the same way that the death of young fathers is sometimes accepted as a necessary evil.
