This has been an ongoing debate in a couple units I have been in and I'd like to hear something other than: "that's a ridiculous idea", "If they can hack it, let them" and "the sexual harassment/assault rate will go up". I'd like to hear from other branches and females as well.
So, tell me, what's your take on it?
Note: Image added by RP Staff
Combat Arms
Women in the Military
Seems that the biggest hurdle when trying to integrate female soldiers into Combat Arms is their interaction with males and the possible consequences such as assualt/sexual assault/pregnancy and the non-traditional work/training environment that First Sergeant C. pointed out. But what if the standards were the same? What if the unit was all female? Female NCO's, female Officers, female grunts.
I wasn't Infantry so I don't know how you would integrate that unit with male units in a battlefield assessment. Just throwing it out there to see what others think.
I will admit that I am on the fence about this.
As an Engineer, I have seen some Sapper qualified females who were beyond the capability of meeting almost any standard. They were freakin' amazing Soldiers. Conversely, I have seen many who could not meet the standard. The exact same thing could be said for males.
Normally, I would have said that if they meet the same standard, then I have no problems with it. However, the USMC sent 20 females through SOI as 0311. 3 graduated on time, 1 was medically rolled to another class, and 80% failed. This has shifted my opinion just a bit. I feel that there must be a vetting process prior to accessions. If you assumed that 20% of an Infantry OSUT Company may be female, to have 80% of them fail would have a negative affect on assignments and strength. It could create major issues. So far, we only have one study to utilize for numbers so we can not assume that 80% would be the standard for failure....but I do think that it shows that we must be aware of the potential for such high numbers of failures and develop some vetting process prior to accessions.
The other issue I see is how to inject female leadership at all ranks that will be competent. Learning basic Infantry tasks can be more complex than many give it credit for. To become an expert and a leader at this while coming from a support MOS (since they could not pull female 19D's, 12B's, 13F's, etc...because they don't exist) would be a challenge for anyone. This is where we may have an even larger issue. Just getting competent, well-trained, Infantry-vetted, female leadership in the ranks would need to be addressed as well. I am not certain that reclass and NCOES could accomplish this task. I would not want to transfer into an Infantry Company as a Squad Leader or PSG if I did not have the experience to back it up.
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