If you’re not in the fairness business, you have no business fighting wars. What the hell would you be fighting for?
This is, pretty much, exactly what they do. For the men too. First Female Marines Take Combat Leadership Test : NPR
And they don’t just let anybody in. The minimum requirements get you into the course. You still have to pass it.
The second of the first two women to try has now washed out. But she outlasted a LOT of guys. I don’t see where “very big changes” have to be made in order for women to try; let them meet the requirements, and let them stay in or wash out on their own merits. Same as the men.
That’s Infantry Officer Course…IOC is an extremely hard course, and you’re correct that there are plenty of men who don’t pass.
For an elisted infantryman…er…infantryperson, the “equivalent” is School of Infantry. If you wash out of SOI, you don’t get assigned another MOS…you’re simply out. It doesn’t happen very often, because effort-wise it’s just a continuation of boot camp.
Huge waste of time an money to train somebody who will fail to complete their first 12-mile hike in SOI, though.
In a way it’s exactly like professional (American) football, in that infantry is one of the few lines of work where brute physical capability is an absolutely key feature of the job.
In the same way that an NFL team wouldn’t get a lot of joy from putting a woman in as nose tackle, I don’t think there the average infantry squad would see a lot of success in loading a woman up with 50+kg of body armour, ammunition, rifle, bayonet and whatnot and going out into extended combat engagements on a frequent basis. One of the major difference obviously being that in the infantry not being able to keep up physically can get you and your colleagues killed fairly easily. Plus training and combat related over-exertion injuries (torn ligaments, ruptured disks, etc.) are already a huge problem for all-male infantry organisations.
But then on the other hand so is a shortage of suitable recruits, which is often worse for officers. Maybe the solution is to induct women contingent on them having steroid implants for 18 months beforehand to reduce some of the physical gap?
I agree with MOIDALIZE, the real issue is that our infantry soldiers are expected to lug too much shit around. There are other armies (Canada, Greece, and India IIRC) that take a leaner/meaner approach to logistics and who also don’t have this ongoing debate over whether women should be in their combat infantry units.
That is definitely an important angle to look at.
I’m a college-age Canadian and women have been allowed to serve in any and all roles men have here since before I was born.
I will have to google how much weight a Marine carries and compare to how much various types of Canadian combat roles carry.
I think what she’s arguing against is the integration of women into infantry. That implies lots of women getting assigned to that field, and getting broken, in order to advance equally with the men, towards eventual general officer ranks. It’s kind of setting women up for failure.
Better, in her opinion, is to let women perform and distinguish themselves in combat roles they can sustain.
According to a Naval Research Advisory Committee report, the average Marine carries 97 to 135 pounds in combat loads. This includes body armor. I believe the avg Canadian forces infantry kit weighs around 58lbs, although I’m having trouble finding a cite for it online.
Set one standard and leave it at that. Women who can hack it with the guys should be allowed, no lower standards.
I have no idea what you are trying to say.
There is no shortage of recruits. Or officer candidates. In fact there is a draw down and they are getting rid of good people. There is no need except politics.
Agreed. One single standard that applies to all. If you meet the standard and can maintain it, you’re in. If you can’t, you’re not.
If you have been part of today’s military, acronyms and anecdotes are the way you tell your story. It’s what establishes your credibility.
But from reading the article, it sounds like she’s saying she could have met the current standards to enter/complete infantry officer training, but wouldn’t have been able to be an effective officer because of long-term endurance issues. How do you test ahead of time whether someone will be able to hump a 100 lb. pack for months on end?
Whether that’s purely or mainly gender-related, I don’t know. She seems to think it is, but also admits there isn’t much long term data on it.
You can’t test for that at all. You can test physical endurance, and mental strengths and take an educated guess. What we we CAN do is set a high physical standard that ensures the highest level of success in those categories. The result of that my be that 99% of women are eliminated from participation while only, say, 75% of men fail. That is the disparity of biology acting, and I see no reason to adjust artificially for that. A woman who can perform at the elite level that the men are performing at has the same statistical chances as the males. Bone is bone, muscle is muscle. There is no reason to assume a difference unless we can get a far-ranging, fairly long term study to demonstrate that elite performing females are still failing at some level, and the only difference is gender.
As was pointed out earlier, the target audience of the article is other Marines in a Marine publication. Its simply the language that is spoken. There is no need to dumb it down or provide translation for an audience who already knows exactly what you are saying. And for that audience it is a lot simpler and efficient to speak in their language.
I started seeing a personal trainer after basically never being in shape and in less than a month I could bench 150 pounds and squat 200. I’d bet there’s not a single male high school athlete who can’t easily do those numbers.
I agree, but good luck getting either side of the battle of the sexes to agree to that.
And testosterone is testosterone, which is the part that you are forgetting. Why do you think so much sport doping revolves around this? What that article mentioned was a lot of accumulating over-exertion injuries that eventually became nearly crippling. More androgens means faster recovery/healing as well as more (and differently distributed/textured) muscle.
I have no difficulty believing that men and women might hit the same physical benchmark in one-off testing but cope very differently with sustaining that level continuously for long periods.