It always amazes me that the issue of whether or not women should serve in combat positions is still an active debate. Women who are up to the challenge and can handle the physical tasks entailed by combat should certainly be allowed to become part of combat units. Instead the debate typically ends up with those opposed and those in favor both offering sexist excuses for their position.
Great Britain is currently studying whether women should be allowed to serve in frontline combat units and some are charging that the armed forces are engaging in one of the forms of sexism — downgrading the physical requirements so that more women can pass. The British Army recently conducted field trials that were supposed to be gender neutral — men and women were supposed to do the same tasks — but the UK Daily Telegraph reports that the field tests simply dropped tasks that some women would have found difficult.
The exercises, for example, didn’t include heavy weapons or tanks and apparently found many women were incapable of carrying out physically strenuous tasks such as digging themselves into hard ground. The Telegraph reports that one of the findings was that women’s bodies had to work about 25 percent harder to achieve the same level of physical exertion as men.
If this is true, this is a pointless exercise in sexism. The military should set objective standards for minimum physical capabilities of combat soldiers, and then enforce those standards regardless of sex. If a woman can meet those standards, then she should be allowed to serve in a combat unit. If not, then she shouldn’t. End of story.
On the other hand, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce displayed the sexism commonly found on the other side of this debate by wondering whether or not women would be aggressive enough in hand to hand combat, saying that aggression was not “a natural female trait.” Give me a break. I’ve known plenty of women who had no problem with being aggressive.
Even if we assume that, on average, women as a group tend to be less aggressive than men as a group, this tells us little about whether or not any given man or woman is aggressive enough to be a combat soldier (and, in fact, even supposedly “naturally aggressive” men have to be subjected to intense training to overcome their long-conditioned responses against killing people. Far from being part of a natural trait, many men who have killed others in combat have reported any number of psychological problems from the shock and guilt at taking a human life).
Put men and women on a balanced field with objective standards and allow the qualified soldiers into combat units regardless of sex.
Source:
Combat tests ‘watered down for women.’ Michael Smith, The Daily Telegraph, March 26, 2001.