The Military Has a Man Problem

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/women-in-combat-119118.html#ixzz3eCaHn9NH

"The Military Has A Man Problem"

From: Politico.com
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Army Specialist Laura Naylor, a Wisconsin native, spent a year in Baghdad with the 32nd Military Police Company in 2003 and 2004. During that time, she—like all of the more than quarter-million women deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan—was officially banned from ground combat. That technicality didn’t slow down Naylor when an IED hit her convoy and it began to take fire from a nearby building. “We had to search this house nearby, thinking they were the ones doing the shooting, and I was the lead person the whole way. I had a flashlight in one hand, a pistol in the other, and I’d kick the door open with my foot, look both ways, give the all clear, go to the next room, do the same thing,” she recounted to me a few years later. “We were interchangeable with the infantry.”

A friend in her unit, Specialist Caryle Garcia, was wounded when a roadside bomb went off beside her Humvee. Garcia was her team’s gunner, her body exposed from the chest up above the Humvee’s roof. Their close friend, 20-year-old Specialist Michelle Witmer, became the first National Guardswoman ever killed in action after being shot during another ambush. Witmer’s death was a grim marker in a steady march that has seen one woman after another achieve milestones in military service since the September 11, 2001, attacks that would have been unimaginable just a generation ago. During the Vietnam War, female soldiers were not even allowed to carry guns.

In early 2013, outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, with the backing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, finally lifted the ban on women serving in ground combat, belatedly admitting they had already been doing so. “Women have shown great courage and sacrifice on and off the battlefield,” he said, “and proven their ability to serve in an expanding number of roles.” President Barack Obama heralded the move, which remains politically controversial on Capitol Hill, saying, “Valor knows no gender.” Since Panetta’s decree, the debate has centered on whether, now that women can serve in previously all-male combat units, they have the ability to actually do it. The Marine Corps, Army and Special Forces have all been busily, and publicly, putting women to the test, running them through training courses and assessments, and announcing gravely how many have passed or failed.

Yet to many female soldiers and the men who have witnessed their competence in battle over the past 13-plus years, this debate seems like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted—ignoring that the distinction between “rear echelon” and “front line” in these wars is obsolete. Of the roughly 300,000 American women who have deployed to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars since 2001, at least 800 have been wounded, and, as of last count, at least 144 have been killed. Two women have earned Silver Stars, the military’s third-highest award.

For generations now, the debate over women in combat has put the onus on women to prove they can handle the infantry and other traditionally all-male units. Yet today’s wars have made it clear that the military’s problem lies not with its women, their ability or their courage. The military’s problem, instead, is with some of its men—and a deeply ingrained macho culture that denigrates, insults and abuses women.

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In eight years of covering women at war, I have noticed a pattern in attitudes toward women in the military: The men who have served with women are more than satisfied with their work, while the men who are most resistant to serving alongside women have never done it.

“Oh, it’s too rough for women,” such men tend to say. Others complain, “Women would ruin our camaraderie” or “We’d be competing for women instead of looking out for ourselves.” As retired Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, a former Army chief of staff, wrote, lifting the combat ban against women would be “confusing” and “detrimental to units.”

These attitudes reveal deeply patriarchal, condescending and creaky stereotypes about women, as if they are capable of being nothing more than soft, sexy objects of romance—or sexual prey.

Some of the very same types of prejudiced objections were once raised against black and gay men entering the military, even though they had demonstrated their military prowess long before they were openly welcomed into the ranks. As former chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. John Shalikashvili wrote in 2007, many within the military were originally concerned that “letting people who were openly gay serve would lower morale, harm recruitment and undermine unit cohesion.”

And yet, even after President Harry Truman forced the racial integration of the military in 1948 and even after the fall of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in 2011, the military is still standing. And nobody questions any longer whether black or gay people can serve as well as straight white men.

Canada, Denmark and Norway have allowed women to serve in combat since the 1980s. Canadian commanders found no “negative effect on operational performance or team cohesion,” according to one report; neither did military leaders in Norway. Israel, which added women to combat units years ago, has found that they “exhibit superior skills” in discipline, shooting and weapons use.