Women In Combat

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.

Sweden may subject women to the draft

Yesterday the Christian Science Monitor reported (“Equality may mean Army service in Sweden“) that Sweden is considering extending its military draft to women. Israel is currently the only nation in the world that drafts women as well a men (although women are not drafted into combat positions).

Rather than maintain a standing professional army, as nations such as the United States does, Sweden tests all 18-year old men for military aptitude and then requires about 40 percent of them to undergo military training. After the training the men are part of the nation’s military reserve until age 47. Women can choose to join the military as well, but it is not required.

According to the Monitor, men in countries with military drafts are beginning to file lawsuits against military drafts that exclude women. In Germany, for example, men have filed a sex discrimination suit against that nation’s military policy. As a National Organization for Women spokesperson tells the newspaper, the United States’ male-only draft registration requirement would almost certainly be found unconstitutional by today’s Supreme Court.

Ironically, although Sweden is probably at the vanguard of governments creating programs to enforce sexual equality, many of them not very well thought out, most women are definitely not in favor of a gender-neutral draft. According to the Monitor, 70 percent of Swedish women oppose the measure. Apparently many women in Sweden share the view that military service is a uniquely masculine role.

I believe military drafts are immoral, in general, but military drafts that do exist should be gender neutral. Morever, gender should not be used to exclude women from combat positions. If a person meet the objective qualifications to fulfill a military position, whether or not that person is male or female should never enter into the equation. The military should set a single standard that have to be met for positions and ignore irrelevant characteristics such as race and sex when making personnel decisions. Unfortunately, this is a position even too radical for NOW which, like many feminist thinkers and organizations, maintains that men and women need to have “separate but equal standards” for physical fitness and other criteria used to evaluate a soldier’s fitness.