Women in the Infantry?

It will take a  lot longer, if at all. You have to remember, the Marines are recruiting much higher quality candidates than we are, and their training is far more intensive. They are a smaller branch, so they can afford to do that. So the Average female Marine is going to generally be a superior specimen to your average female Soldier (sigh.. I know, here come the HEAT rounds). Will there be exceptions or deviations from the norms in both groups? Sure, but I am discussing averages.

I absolutely do not think women should be in the infantry the Army is already getting soft. It will happen, but what am I supposed to do other than brace for the incoming. 

Lets just leave this subject, I mean it is what it is.

Oh no you didn't start this conversation all over!  You about to get some corrective training there young buck.

I am notorious for my support for females in combat arms. 

I think we can look at how women in line combat units have worked for other countries to see what will work. I don't think that we should reduce standards to force equality, but we can look at countries like Israel to form a basis of how we should integrate women into combat roles, they don't have the luxury of giving people the option of not serving in the military but their decades of experience can be useful to us. The writing is already on the wall and regardless of how anyone feels about it, it is going to happen (we already have women on combat ships, women fighter pilots, and our recent experiences have shown us that no units are immune to combat). What we do need to do is make sure that we do bring women in ways that make sense and do not reduce effectiveness. With respect to my personal feelings I've never cared about he gender, orientation, religion or any other intangible of the people I served with, all I cared was that the people I served with were willing and capable of carrying out the mission (can't really say much about a combat role as my MOS was ground radio repair, and I served between wars). People make a big deal about addressing social issues through the military but there is a good chance that we can look and learn from the experiences of other countries in addressing those issues without having to reinvent the wheel and think it is something drastic and new.

It comes down to how their bodies are built, pure and simple. Speaking from an infantryman's perspective, your body gets destroyed quickly doing combat operations- carrying large amounts of weight over long distances.

The Army has done studies on this, and combat load operations destroy a woman's musculoskeletal system much quicker than a man's. This isn't sexist, it's biology. Angle and spread of hips, arch of the back, different pelvic structures, and lower bone density and iron content all are contributors. This is one of the most positive research papers on it, and it's still brutal.

https://jmvh.org/article/load-carriage-and-the-female-soldier/

Lest we all forget, the Army is not about inclusiveness, it's about efficiency. If you have the choice between a tool that generally breaks after 1 use, or one that generally breaks after 4 or 5, which is more economical to use until it's broken?

I say we should come up with minimum physical standards for each combat branch and test the females. There is no point in designated them Infantry if they can't carry 70 lbs. of gear on a march. If females can't load 50 lbs. Tank Heat rounds every 6-8 seconds then they become a liability.

They would be as effective as their training. If not, chapter them out the same as you'd chapter any other Gender/MOS for failure to perform