Lively discussion today that I thought I'd bring here.

Should women be assigned to combat duty? Should there be restrictions on how close to combat they should be permitted/required to go?

I don't know anything about the current rules and regs, but I think the topic is intriguing.

Right now, in the Army, the only branches closed to women are Infantry, Armor, and Special Forces.

So, since they are now flying attack helicopters, manning Patriot missile battery's, and re-supplying forces on the front lines, they basically are already assigned to combat duties.

All I can say is they have more balls than I have I don't consider myself too soft but I would not like to do any of the jobs in the military over there at the moment and having a @#?£ doesn't change that. Sheese even in the lorry divers and chefs who supply the fighting troops are in great danger as the POW's have proved.

Yes.



No.

Adult human beings should be free to make their own decisions.

I support the ERA and that means yes women should have the right and obligation to participate in combat when either word is appropriate.

I don't see why women can't drive a tank or shoot a gun.

Nothing saying that some can't.
We still have the social stigma of women in down and dirty front line combat that keeps them from Infantry, Armor and SF (speaking for the Army). I think the other services are similar in this respect.

Right now, we have two sets of physical fitness standards between males and females. The line of thought here is that for jobs as physically demanding as Infantry, the majority of females would not be able to meet the physical requirements as that of males. And when you have someone that can't pull the same weight, it could cost lives.

My wife was an active duty officer in the Army, and is now in the Reserves, she supports this policy from the female standpoint. She knows the dual standards, and the requirements of Infantrymen (of which I am one).

This is not to say that some women could not rise to the standard and even outperform some men. But the services are not in the mindset of opening these last few jobs that are currently closed to women, to only a few that can qualify. Maybe someday soon.

The physical side is one issue. I think combat soldiers carry up to 40-60 pounds of gear or more. If your buddy is hurt, you need to pull him out of there...Of course, many women would be well suited, but some would not. They do currently have different standards of physical fitness. There are some pros and cons.

The other side is : what if a woman is captured? I believe woman are tougher when interrogated, but what about such things as rape?

I don't think the US public is prepared for women in combat.

I would never be in favor of differing standards if there were the remotest possibility of being in combat. This goes for men as well as women. And just as importantly, I would never be in favor of adjusting those standards either.

Allowing women into the infantry or SF, would be more of a political move than anything else. Like that woman who tried to get into the citadel a few years ago. I think eventually it would be a failure.

Standards would be adjusted to compensate, resentment would boil... not a good idea...especially in a time of war.

I honestly wouldn't care if we did let women into the infantry. Provided:

1) They are held to the same standards (physical or otherwise) as everyone else.
2) They're ugly so as not to distract the men
3) Joking about #2

--cheers

A woman is being held as a prisoner of war right now and she was assigned to a maintainence unit. My first thought when I heard she had been captured was that she would be sexually assaulted. We already know this is a tool Saddam's sons use frequently.

If they're qualified, I don't see an issue. Just as there are those men in the infantry that can drag a fellow soldier out, there will be those men who can't. Just because a 160 lbs. soldier is fit doesn't mean he can lug his 210 lbs. comrade out of a combat zone. Same with the women.

I'm not sure how the Israeli army differs from ours specifically, but they don't seem to have too many issues with women in their units.

As for the rape thing, history seems to show that while women may be raped by captors, men are no more protected from terrible acts of sodomy. I was reading about two weeks ago where Kurdish civilians have spoken about both Iraqi and Turkish soldiers who have special sticks set aside for sodomization. I would image they are equally terrible experiences with the only differing horror being that of possible pregnancy following a rape.

At any rate, my stance is as stated from the beginning: as long as they're qualified, give 'em their chance.

I agree that women and men are equally at risk of being raped if captured as a prisoner of war.

There were three women in the maintenance unit that encountered the enemy and two are now MIA. Apparently, they are among the dead bodies on the tape; however, they can't be officially taken off the MIA list until the bodies are identified. Out of the three women, one of them become a prisoner of war.

From the video of the prisoners, it's obvious to me that she is terrified. I'm sure the men are terrified also but the female is not hiding her terror as well as the male prisoners. My heart aches for all of them.

I believe that women should be permitted to hold combat positions if they meet the same physical requirements of the men. The safety of everyone depends on the entire unit being comprised of qualified individuals.

One question that should be raised here is one not generally thought about by the public.

How would placing women in the Infatry or Armor, or for the matter of the Navy, on submarines, affect the morale and readiness of those units?

Speaking as an Infanryman, there are elements in my field that would have serious issues with females in the foxhole. I'm not talking about peers alone, but also superior officers and NCO's. Granted, if this were made the law of the land, they would be in violation if they treated women unfairly. But we are still dealing with some elements of racial discrimination to this day. Any type of discriminatory attitudes within a unit seriously degrade the morale, cohesion, and combat readiness of that unit.

So, how to transition women to combat specific roles without harming the readiness? I would have to say slowly, as we are already doing by introducing more jobs to women, thereby letting the male dominated military over some time 'get used' to working with them.

The other problem I see in the Army as we speak is the traditional role of male protector for females. Although both genders are equal and expected to fulfill their duties, there have been instances that I have witnessed of males coming to the aid of females, simply because of the fact that they are the supposed 'weaker sex'. This obviously could present problems in combat, and may already have.

Being raised to treat women good and protecting them,most of my younger years i usually thought of women as the weaker sex, However, upon arriving home late one night and hearing a violent fight next door, I, being the protector of women went over and seen a man my size beating up neighbor woman,well I went in and decked him with two punches. Feeling good about myself i turned to find out if the woman was all right, next thing i know i am spitting a couple teeth out. The woman decked me and gave me a real quick lesson on the finer aspects of not letting her take care of herself. Women on the front lines and in artillery? Heck Ya.

I think women should be allowed to go into all parts of the military branches. They are humans too. America needs good fighters and so forth http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/ heres a nice link abou t women in the military

If women fulfill the same requirements for the same positions, they should be eligible. This is not currently the case. Of course, if the above standard would hold true of all military positions, there would not be many women in the military.

I think women should be able to fight in the same areas of war that men do. Let them fight in units like the 101st Airborne, etc.

I believe in equality in women

As long as they don't complain about chipping nails in the middle of a firefight

The standards for men and women should be the same. I don't think most women (or men) are qualified to do certain things in the military.

Right now the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs is grappling with the issue of women in the armed services. Seems that forced sex (rape) has been going on in the Academy. This has become a political hornets' nest.

Some of the actions taken so far: A motto, "Give Me Men," has been removed from a building. The commander has been under fire. Segregated by gender dorms have been proposed. Investigations are going on. Heads will roll.

Having been in coed dorms in college, I suspect the reason coed works in civilian life and maybe not in military life is the hierarchy of command. Upperclass folks can command lowerclass folks. This never happens in civilian colleges. The notion of dominance is actually more like professor over student, but I don't think forced sex happens very often--if at all. I know sex happens, and maybe some of it is coerced through the grading system, and maybe that can be classified as rape.

Granted, this is not a combat role issue as much as a dominance/sex issue--but it points to another level of the question: Are women at risk in a command hierarchy? How will this play in extended combat operations?

There--I got back on the tracks

I don't think the academy is a true reflection of the Airforce as a whole. They have a very strange environment over there. Enrollment is based more on political appointment than merit, which is often reflected in their behavior, both inside the academy and in the outside world. They don't refer to this place as 'the Zoo' for nothing. I hope heads do roll!

I think there is an obvious special nature to the relationship between soldiers. Sexual tensions would be (and are) inevitable, and have a negative impact on morale. This was one of the key arguments against homosexuals in the military, as well as the anti-adultery rules. A person is less likely to put their life on the line for someone with whom they've lost respect (or hold animosity) due to personal relations. Obviously, there is also the potential for abuse of authority which no amount of sensitivity training with circumvent. I am not sure that I want our warriors 'sensitized' anyway, it's an oxymoron at best.

Also, you know...It works both ways. Women are now in positions of power in the military with the potential to subjugate men under them. I know a few Jags who've dealt with those issues in the court system.

I think it is also important to state that (as we all know) "War is Hell". War puts commanders in a position where they may have to order their troops into a situation where survival is unlikely. I think the introduction of female combat troops sets up a situation where a commander may hesitate to order a woman into a probable deadly situation as opposed to a man. There may also be other such macho reactions that would endanger a combat mission.
I think we would all like to believe that the US armed forces can be just like Starship Troopers (coed showers and all ) but I don't believe that is the reality of the matter.

-Kisov

I think that we should leave *most* women in the support role in the millitary. I say this for two reasons:

1. I have heard alot of story about women who are not treated like their male counter parts ie they do 1 pull up the guy does 12, okay it isn't in those porportions but I have heard of females in the military who take advantage of their steriotypes.

2. I haven't seen combat before, maybe someone here has. However I have seen some pretty realistic movies like Saving Private Ryan. Go watch that movie and when the US soldiers start getting riped into on the beaches of normady imagine that man being a women, sounds like it would be pretty bad on morale to me. (I know I wouldn't be able to handle it!)

I think, in a nutshell, women tend to have a 'civilizing' influence on men. This is a GOOD thing, but not in the middle of a war zone.

This is an interesting, short letter which I thought was worth bringing up on this old thread:
single pregnant airmen

Women are only prohibited from combat roles in armies with patriarchal, chauvinistic ideologies. Women have always fought successfully in combat roles in Communist armies from the French Communards of the 19th century to the Nepali Maoists of the 21st century.

The Soviet Red Army used women to fight the (all male) Fascists in world war 2 on the Eastern Front, fighting that was far more intense, bloody and brutal than anything the male only army of the Western Front saw during the war. Mao’s army included women. The guerrilla army of Che and Castro that overthrew the American backed dictatorship’s (all-male) army had a very good balance of men and women both as guerrilla’s and as officers, as was the army Che used to crush the American invasion at the Bay of Pigs. Ho Chi Minh’s National Liberation Army that drove the American (all-male) conscript army out of indo-china used female soliders (and remember, guerrilla war is in the jungle, in the mud, with a rifle, its not the nice clean war Americans fight today from the safty of their planes or their ships).

Today the FARC in Colombia are more than 40% female in their military (including an all female combat division) and they don’t have any problems outperforming their male counterparts in the fascist Colombian army (also, in the jungle, with a rifle, not in a high-tech war machine two miles from the battlefield).

The only reason not to include women isn’t for lack of marshal ability, its because women have been oppressed by a society with male privilege. Ruling class men have a certain amount invested in the belief that women are weaker and have to be taken care of, it gives them a rationalization for keeping women out of power to protect their male privilege.

Interesting. Many have offered very sound reasons why women should not be in combat, and you dismiss them all with a patriarchal chat. The armies you mention used children as well. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but you’ve given nothing to indicate that women’s performance, as a whole, was optimal in those combat positions, aside from the fact that ‘they were there’. I must assume, since you tout the Red army’s “anti-patriarchal non-chauvinist policies", that you believe Stalin along with his army, held women in a high or at least equal regard. This is not the case.

Stalin’s antichauvinist policies

There is actually nothing to indicate that the Red army considered their women soldiers to be much more than fodder in a warzone. A bit more history….An actual woman’s only unit was attempted during WWI, led by Maria Bochkareva. It started out with 2000, of which 250 women were still alive three months later.
Russian woman’s battalion


I also think it’s also noteworthy that women comprise less than one percent of the Russian military today. Why would they get rid of their highest performers?

Pretty much everything else has already been addressed. It is a fact that women do not have the same physical requirements as men. This is because few could pass even the lowest standards. During basic training, women make up a larger percentage of abscentees due to illness. Women are often disqualified from combat duty because of pregnancy, sometimes becoming pregnant in the warzones themselves. Could you offer any hard evidence which suggests otherwise, or is so compelling as to override these drawbacks?

You want some historical information on women in combat roles, hmmm?
---
Genpei War (Japan, 1215-1287)
The Taira family, in fighting the Minimoto on the rubble that had been Heian-kyo (Kyoto), had roughly 60% of their army composed of female naginataka. These troops were incredibly devastating in the mass melee combat: one naginataka would often take down 20 or more of the Minimoto ashigaru forces with her. They were feared.
The undoing of the Taira was a combination of political stupidity and disadvantage in numbers: In the final battles in 1286-1287, they had been caught off guard, with most of the militia disbanded. The naginataka had been done away with, and the samurai and ashigaru who served them fell disturbingly quickly.
(More Later!)

Thankyou.
Actually, what I am looking for specifically are examples of women soldiers enhancing (or, at very least, not reducing) combat effectiveness for military engagements. There are times throughout history when women engaged in warfare…almost always alongside children, and as a last resort. If I were living in Italy during the 400s, and Attila the Hun came to take over our village, I would certainly put up a good fight and die before I let his forces drive nails into the heads of my sons. I am a pretty tough person (physically and emotionally) in general. That doesn’t really explain how combat effectiveness in an overall military operation would be enhanced by my participation today.

There is no doubt that in some roles women do perform very well- In fact, physiologically better than men. That would be sniper and g- force capability. Women have (generally) lower blood pressure, which offers them an advantage. They also have physiological shortcomings which offer a significant disadvantage in other areas. The first would have to be extraordinary to offset the other.

As it stands today, in the United States, the combat effectiveness of women soldiers (and the military as a whole), is impeded by a number of inherent factors.
Primarily, they have total privilege when it comes to family planning. If a woman who goes through a pilot training course, and subsequent F16 training, costing the government in excess of a 7 million dollars, decides she wants to start a family…she will be inactive for the duration of that pregnancy and lactation. Other pilots must compensate by working overtime and deploying longer to make up the disparity she produces. Afterwards, that female pilot must be retrained at taxpayer expense to be current once again in that jet. There is no limit to the amount of time, or number of times, such a career pilot woman might choose bear children. It is her ‘right’ to bear and breastfeed as many as she might decide, at both the expense of taxpayers and other pilots.

I bring that one example up simply because it is the one with which I am the most familiar, and women have the strongest physiological advantage. The disparity becomes greater as we delve into the area of ground combat in general, where women are catastrophically weaker. To offset the drawbacks, women's general capabilities would have to be extraordinary, and they aren’t.

The age-old argument is, "If women perform as well, they should be able to serve in combat." This belies the reality that they don't. Special measures are made to ensure that women have the opportunity to serve. Requirements are adjusted to suit their capabilities, for which a man would be ousted under the same circumstances.

When I was in the first time (trying to get back in now)- I felt quite a bit of animosity towards the old and the female that did not have to have thier head shaved or do as many pushups as I. I was especially disdainful of the older male officers and NCOs that did not have to perform physically as well in the PT test as myself, and could wiegh more and have more fat. To this day, I do not agree with that, I am working hard at 38 to make sure I can max the PT test for a 17 year old, which is how it should be. Same with women, if they can not meet the same minimum physical standards as the men, then they should not be allowed to serve in any capacity, and if they can, then serve in any capacity. The Army kicked out a great deal of men for continually failing the PT test that were not in combat MOSes. The women should have been held to the same standard. 40 pushups, 40 situps and the 2 mile run in 15 minutes can be accomplished by anyone that is in reasonable physical condition, regardless of age or gender. Everything else is mental and can be overcome regardless of gender or age. Troops need to follow orders, if they have a problem with gays, women or race or religion, and do not follow rules, then they need to go to the stockade and then out, period. If you have a problem with a gay or female in your foxhole, then you should be ousted from the military, period, because you have the inability to follow orders.

I agree with this. If the standards are exactly the same for each job, women should be able to serve. This would eliminate a vast number, however.

I would also include a clause which eliminates the option to have children during the extent of a combat commitment. If the military pays to have a soldier, they should have a soldier (barring catastrophic illness or debilitation). The airforce requires a ten year initial pilot commitment because of the costs incurred to the taxpayers. Anything less would not make it worth the training expense. A woman should not be able to opt out of that commitment due to pregnancy. If she gets pregnant, her commitment should be extended accordingly.

Anything less than the above is a social experiment at the risk of our national security, and that's the way it exists now.

Actually I just pointed out that women where used successfully in infantry combat roles, but since you bring it up, the Soviet Union, while still limited by its time, was more socially progressive than any other country in its time. The Bolshevik revolution had a larger female participation on every level than any political movement up until that point. There where prominant female political leaders in the Soviet Union like Alexandra Kollantai at a time when women couldn't even vote in the United States. The German Communists leader, Rosa Luxemburg, was female. The Soviet Union advocated a type of female independence that didn't come to the West until the 1960s, women in the Soviet Union where unapologetically their own people. In the west the only politically significant women where those married to heads of state, and they weren't even significant until far later. There is simply no comparison.

Stalin is probably the single most frequently misquoted individual in history. I don't know what he really thought about reports about barbarism in war (and, the war on the eastern front was barbaric, some people are always bound to act barbarically in barbaric situations, regardless of who or what they're fighting for). I do know that he was willing to appoint female ambassadors, coordinate an international with parties led by women, and respected women in public life, not as second class citizens confined to the home in the manner the societies of the western allies promoted.



You obviously didn't read the article you quoted from (or if you did, you didn't understand it). Maria Bochkareva's unit fought against the Communists on behalf of Kerensky's goverment. Her troops where being used as fodder in the White Army, not the Red Army.

Russian woman’s battalion


Do you even know who John Reed was? He was an American Communist. Notice the phrases "all sorts of sensational stories" and "anti-Bolshevik press." Comrade Reed was claiming that the reports of cruelty where false.

If you even read the rest of the article you quote from it reads:



The fact that an anti-Communist body, the Duma, could only find four instances where there was any truth in the reports (in the context of a large event involving thousands of people) just shows the extent to which the anti-communist propaganda of the time had no basis in reality. The use of the female battalion to defend the winter palace when they knew they where insufficent in size also shows the misogyny of the anti-Communist Russian goverment.

But, you didn't point out that women were successful. You pointed out that they participated. The Russian armies of WWI, the Revolution, and WWII, were an extremely inept and undisciplined bunch of rogues. They were also desperate for soldiers. The basis for the formation of the (three month long) women's battalion was to shame the men into fighting. It was a dismal failure. You assume that those women were outnumbered, and the anti-Communist Russians misogynists. Although I would agree it looks that way, there is nothing to indicate that to be the case. I looked for troop strength on the opposing side for which to base a comparison and found nothing.



John Reed traveled with Louise Bryant, a feminist who had a vested interest in observing the Women's Battalion and hoped for its success. If you scroll farther down to the last paragraph of that article it explains that the female soldiers imprisoned by the Bolsheviks were mistreated and tortured.

To quote your first post,"The only reason not to include women isn’t for lack of marshal ability, its because women have been oppressed by a society with male privilege."

That is simply false. There are many reasons to not include women in combat exercises, some of which I've addressed, as have others. I agree that some women are able to do an effective job. Bochkareva was definitely one of them. The vast majority, however, cannot and demonstrably do not.

Side note...True about the white army. I was misinformed. It's pretty much a blur between WWI, the white revolution and the red happening in the course of a couple of years and I wasn't up on my Russian history.

Boy, I go back and forth on this issue each time I think about it, but one thing that never changes is that women are the ones who have children and produce their food while they are infants/toddlers. A woman (generally speaking, of course) has the potential to get pregnant at any time (contraceptive methods, as we should all know, are not 100% effective), including during combat. There was recently a case of a female Marine who gave birth onboard a ship on a combat mission (there is a great deal of controversy surrounding this case - people not believing a woman could possibly not know she was pregnant for such and such amount of time, etc.)...that cannot possibly be a good thing! Yep, men have children, but they don't give birth to them and they don't provide nourishment for them, so their role is, naturally, secondary (in these early stages, that is). True, a mother does not HAVE to breastfeed her child, but a woman DOES have to be present to give birth to the child!

If a man is in a combat role and his wife is pregnant, he does not physically need to be present for the birth of the child. The same, obviously, cannot be said of a mother. If a woman becomes pregnant during combat, what possible good is served? I'm all for equal rights, believe me, but unless the woman has no possible way of becoming pregnant, I don't think it's appropriate to be in combat situations, for the welfare of both the mother, the child AND the safety of the unit as a whole.

There are a million reasons to be PRO women in combat, but that one reason seems to negate all those reasons, at least as I see it.

kmsouthern writes:


Just what are they doing in those foxholes?!?!?

Let's be honest, if a woman wants to be equal, she has to be willing to be equal in all ways, including being a grunt with a machine gun on the front lines. That might require her to have a little self-control and *NOT* have sex, or only have very well protected sex. *GASP* It isn't like you're supposed to be sleeping around on combat missions in the first place.

Its so insulting to exclude women from doing anything because "they might get pregnant" as if women are prevented by their biology from doing anything serious. I can't think of a more regressive reactionary attitude on gender roles.


No one is afraid that men will get drunk during battle? What if the male soliders get drunk and watch football so they can't fight? The idea of that is simply stupid, because soliders aren't permitted to do that, because it would interfere with their status. Similarly, women can't get pregnent if they're going to be in serious combat roles, and they can avoid it, its pretty easy to use protection.

If they can't avoid it, just have abortions made available for everyone demand and there is no problem.

Comparing getting pregnant to getting drunk is, IMO, insulting. Getting drunk does not last 9 months the last time I checked, nor does it (without other action) result in the creation of another human being - I'm not sure how women not being in combat is the same as trying to "exclude women from doing anything because they might get pregnant" either. Being in combat isn't something that can be easily compared to anything else. If a woman gets pregnant and her job happens to require her to do very heavy lifting, she has many options...early maternity leave, quitting (if the situation gets to that point), etc. on done the line. That is a HUGE difference between being in a combat role. My husband is active duty Army, and while he has never been in a combat situation, MANY of his friends have (many were in Afghanistan and others in smaller combat "Missions")...it's not like I'm talking about this from the perspective of your average person with no knowledge of what goes on "behind enemy lines" (so-to-speak).

Maybe it's because I am a mother and I believe that my role as a mother is superior to any other role I will ever have in my lifetime...maybe it's because I think women who become mothers, by "nature", SHOULD be there in those precious first weeks, months, etc. of their babies' lives so that they may give their babies the best possible nourishment (yep, I'm a firm believer that "breast is best" so that might cloud my judgment).

Also, I don't know how many mothers whose reproductive/pregnancy histories you know, but I happen to know a great deal (both from my relationships with my friends/family and from my interaction with other mothers on a pregnancy/parenting site where I'm an active participant). I'm not bringing this up to be insulting, rather to say that not getting pregnant is HARDLY as simple as using protection. The number of women I know who've gotten pregnant on birth control pills, Depo, IUD, using condoms, etc. is more than I can count on my fingers AND toes. It happens and it's obviously not something that's rare. Yes, obviously it's easy to not get pregnant if you don't have sex...but I can only begin to imagine how difficult abstaining would be in the "heat of the moment" with all of the emotions of war/combat/etc. We all have heard the stories of military men impregnating Vietnamese women during Vietnam, etc. - the difference is that a man can just forget about it and pretend as if it didn't happen because he is not carrying the child nor is there anything required of him (physically speaking) once that egg is fertilized.

I'm sorry, but I don't think recognizing that the potential for danger to the mother, child, and unit is insulting. As I said, the issue is a tough one for me because, as I said, there are a million reasons that women should be allowed in combat situations/positions...but the pregnancy issue keeps me undecided but leaning toward "no"...it is hard for me to explain fully though, so I apologize if it comes off as "insulting".

After reading the postings in this debate, I found the following article:

http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Paramet...mmer/simons.htm

It appeared in the Army War College Quarterly in Summer 2001 and was written by Anna Simons, who pulls no punches in addressing the issue.

A few excerpts that may elicit your interest (but I highly recommend reading the article in its entirety before coming to any conclusions):

No one is forcing women into combat positions. In fact, there are a lot of women who *WANT* to get into combat. Don't you think these people should simply have self-control and *NOT* get pregnant while they are on the front lines? They've figured out what causes pregnancy, it shouldn't be that hard to keep your pants on in foxholes.

I don't know what this whole debate is about, it seems pretty open and shut to me. You want to be in combat, don't get pregnant. Easy, see?

And that's pretty much the ONLY reason that I flip flop from one side to the other. As I was walking up my stairs to get my daughter up from bed this morning, I realized that since it likely would be a choice, I guess it's not as big of a deal. However, regardless of the choice, people will still be people and women will still get pregnant because most folks think that it's not common to get pregnant using contraceptive devices. I don't think there's truly a way to prevent pregnancy in combat if women are "allowed", if that makes sense...and what happens when it's NOT a choice anymore like for men. Men are forced into combat roles when they don't *want* to be (obviously don't join the army if you're really that against combat...one reason you'd never catch me in fatigues!) and I'm sure if women were allowed in combat positions in the future, there would come a time that women would be just as capable of being "sent to the front lines" as men (in the "right unit" of course).

Another thing is the issue of POWs and rape (as my husband just pointed out). Not only would women be FAR more susceptible to being raped by their captors, but that would be a HUGE morale problem for the other POWs, and a potential problem with wanting to offer information to stop a woman from being raped (most thoughtful men would, I'd like to think, do just about anything to stop a woman from being raped if he knew about it - it's one thing to be beaten to a bloody pulp and tortured in other physical ways, but rape is just something that most people would not tolerate (IMO and in my husband's opinion). The articles in the "Codes of Conduct" (most of them) stress the importance of not surrendering of your own free will, persons in command not surrendering their troops if they have the means to resist, etc. That is the basis od survival as a POW and my husband told me that were he a POW and knew that a fellow female solder (or Marine, what-have-you) were being raped by their captors, it would be nearly impossible for him to stand by and let that happen...I hadn't much thought of something like that until he mentioned it. Just another thing to think about.

The problems with troop pregnancy don't begin and end on the battlefield.

If men are deployed more often because women soldiers are pregnant, that is an unfair burden on them. This is currently happening. It isn't some theoretical potentiality.

I think it would be kind of bad to have women in combat because of morale. If a wman is very beautiful, she will be subjected to harassment, which would lead to a lot of complaints, which could drive down morale because this woman would basically turn you in if you even look at her, thus disturbing the morale of a unit

If you considered the weight of the equipment that our military carry into battle, the answer would be obvious. My understanding, please correct me if I'm wrong, is that the pack weighs about 125 pounds. The average woman couldn't carry that weight for any period of time nor should.

Personally, I don't believe women should be in any battle region whatsoever. The situation with Jessica Lynch never would have happened if that were the case.

Most Light Infantry rucksacks weigh about 75-130 lbs depending if you're in combat or not. Add to that a Kevlar helmet, protective mask, load bearing vest with water and ammo, night vision goggles, weapon and oppressive heat or cold...quite a few men can't hack it either.

I've met a few women who can hang with no problem, and more than a few men who couldn't. I would say generally speaking, in my experience, most women are not suited to a grueling combat environment in an infantry type role. Less upper body strength, less endurance and more susceptible to heat injury. Please don't think I'm lumping all women together, this is the trend I have witnessed of women in the Army.

I think a bigger fear is actually a weakness on behalf of men. Chivalry.
Men will instinctively come to the aid of, or go out of their way to protect a woman, especially if romantic feelings exist. This could easily lead to reckless acts in combat, endangering the lives of many more soldiers.

Female soldiers provide valuable services in the support role along with their male counterparts. With the nature of warfare today, even as combat supporters, women will be put in harms way from time to time. I also think there is a different dynamic between families their sons to fight and possibly return home in caskets, than their daughters.

I don't claim to have any good answers to the problem, but I will not for the time being advocate opening combat arms roles to women more than they already are.

In 1998 females in the US Army were nearly 4 times as likely to be hospitalized as their male conterparts. 53% of these hospitalizations were pregnancy related. Forced abortion is not an option in country that values the individual.

So injury rates among women are higher than men. So what? Doesn't mean they can not fight

True, it does not mean they can't fight.
However, if in combat, a higher rate of injuries leads to a higher demand on combat medical support, evacuation and less fighters in the foxhole.

Israel and Russia have made use of female soldiers in various positions, mostly snipers i think when it comes to combat. Most any humans and even small children and handicapped can shoot a weapon, simple aim procedures and pulling a trigger is all it requires.

Many nations allow females into combat arms, someone should put a list up.

[quote=Hugo,Sep 5 2003, 08:44 PM]
If they can't avoid it, just have abortions made available for everyone demand and there is no problem. [/QUOTE]
In 1998 females in the US Army were nearly 4 times as likely to be hospitalized as their male conterparts. 53% of these hospitalizations were pregnancy related. Forced abortion is not an option in country that values the individual. [/quote]
Forced abortion? I never suggested that. Just make abortions available, and people who get pregnent accidently can get abortions, and people who get pregnent and want to have a child can quit the military before it becomes an issue.

All military members incur a commitment when they sign on. It ranges from three to ten years. They cannot leave or simply quit on a whim. Sometimes they cannot even leave after that commitment expires. An example would be now when many have exceeded their commitments but are subject to stop-loss.