Women in U.S. infantry (USMC, Rangers, etc. - merged)

[tomahawk6]

Combat experience is a plus but command at battalion and brigade is critical to attaining a star. With the drawdown beginning at some point we wont be deployed except at home.

 

[cupper]

Seen.

 

[daftandbarmy]

An interesting article (from 1989) that suggests a few things need to be figured out in order to get it right:

For example, current policy does not restrict females from any career
field or position because of physical requirements. Although the 1982 Policy
Review recommended "matching the soldier to the job" on a gender-neutral
basis using physical demands analysis during medical screening, such testing
is conducted on an "advisory" basis only-leaving final determination of
acceptability to recruiters already pressed to fill recruiting quotas:"
[Physical capacity] testing is done at the MEPS (Military Entrance and Processing
Station) and we don't even get involved. The same test is given regardless
of the MOS ... [and] in two years I've never had a recommendation for a
rejection yet. The bottom line is, if they have the minimum smarts and can pass
the physical, I sign them up. That's what I get paid for."

In 1976, the General Accounting Office notified Congress of emerging
concerns that women were being assigned to positions "without regard to
their ability to satisfy the specialties' strength, stamina, and operational
requirements. ,,53 Company-grade commanders of integrated units report identical
problems in the force today-13 years later:"

Although I had upwards of seventy women in my unit I could not employ many
in the MOSs they held due to their inability to perform the heavy physical tasks
required. So I used them in headquarters or administrative jobs .... Complaining
to higher headquarters wasn't really an option. These things were considered
"leadership" problems. 55

Assignment of female soldiers without regard to their physical ability to do
the job can only degrade unit readiness and damage both self-esteem and
successful integration of the female soldiers affected.


http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA528506

 

[Jarnhamar]

A comment I found interesting (can't remember where from) was that a male soldier would be kicked out of the military for meeting the same physical  standard that is a pass for females. Question being is there a case for discrimination.

 

[tomahawk6]

The weight policy will be tougher for women to adhere to in my opinion.Overweight soldiers are administratively discharged if they are not able to meet the standard..

http://www.military.com/military-fitness/army-fitness-requirements/weight-control-program

 

[FJAG]

An officer doesnt need to be in the combat arms to attain general officer. Ann Dunwoody is a logistics officer and attained the rank of General.She is now retired. Other fields that have seen female general officers is Intelligence,Medical and artillery to name a few.When asked if she thought that she would ever be a general officer.Its a great example of her humor.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the commonwealth countries have always considered armour, infantry, artillery and combat engineers to be combat arms. For whatever value Wikipedia has it states that in the US combat arms also includes special forces, ADA and Army Aviation.

That said, I don't think that there is much doubt that having been a commander of a combat arms battalion or  brigade opens up greatly the number of general officer billets that are available for any given candidate.

 

[MikeL]

Sgt Maj of the USMC response
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAy7eDS8JY0

 

[FJAG]

An interesting article (from 1989) that suggests a few things need to be figured out in order to get it right:
...
Although I had upwards of seventy women in my unit I could not employ many
in the MOSs they held due to their inability to perform the heavy physical tasks
required. So I used them in headquarters or administrative jobs .... Complaining
to higher headquarters wasn't really an option. These things were considered
"leadership" problems. 55
...

That's always been an issue.

Back in the day when we were dealing with taking women into the artillery, a big argument being made against them being so employed was that they were physically incapable of lifting 155mm rounds which weighed in at just under 100 lbs. At the same time however we had a lot of short young guys who could easily pass the PT tests (which had no weight lifting component) but were incapable of or had great problems in lifting 155 ammo. In some cases remedial weight lifting regimes helped but mostly those guys became drivers, signallers or arty techs where ammo lifting wasn't an issue but they were still up where the gun battery action was.

Today the requirement for many soldiers to have the ability to hump heavy loads has increased dramatically. The problem of physical requirements that go beyond mere physical fitness to an individual achieving beast of burden status has probably already gone beyond the critical point. We are seeing dramatic reductions in the pool of male soldiers who can meet these demanding standards.

All that said, adding females to the pool of eligible candidates can only be a good thing as it increases the pool we can draw from. Many will meet the standards required.

Perhaps more importantly we need to reassess just what we can reasonable demand from the average individual and still have him remain effective in combat and not a burden on his/her team mates. Once that is evaluated, then build the equipment and support systems to make that possible. Up to this point we have just been throwing ever increasing piles of armour and gear on the individual without any formal after action evaluation on effectiveness.

:2c:

 

[dimsum]

The NY Times directly uses the CF as an example of how women in combat trades can be a non-issue:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/world/americas/armed-forces-in-canada-resolved-issue-long-ago.html

 

[Jarnhamar]

The NY Times directly uses the CF as an example of how women in combat trades can be a non-issue:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/world/americas/armed-forces-in-canada-resolved-issue-long-ago.html

The numbers of female infantry soldiers serving in CF light infantry battalions would be interesting to know.

 

[tomahawk6]

In my reference to Artillery being open to women I meant ADA. There are women in the Army aviation field as aircrew. Tammy Dunkworth lost both her legs in th crash of her chopper in Iraq. Being in harms way means that bad things can happen to you.Future females applying for these career fields need to reflect on the risk/rewards.

This assignment was announced a few days ago.The smart money feels that BG Laura Richardson will be the Army's first division commander when she returns from the sandbox. Her background is in aviation and will be one of the career paths for women to follow for selection to general officer. Her official bio:

http://pao.hood.army.mil/1stcavdiv/leaders/dcgs.aspx

" Brig. Gen. Laura J. Richardson, deputy commanding general (support), 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas, to deputy chief of staff, communications, Headquarters, International Security Assistance Force, Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan. "

 

[MikeL]

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/gen-dempsey-if-women-can-t-meet-military-standard-pentagon-will-ask-does-it-really-have

Gen. Dempsey: If Women Can’t Meet Military Standard, Pentagon Will Ask ‘Does It Really Have to Be That High?’
January 25, 2013
By Pete Winn

(CNSNews.com) - Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that with women now eligible to fill combat roles in the military, commanders must justify why any woman might be excluded – and, if women can’t meet any unit’s standard, the Pentagon will ask: “Does it really have to be that high?”

Dempsey’s comments came at a Pentagon news conference with Defense Sec. Leon Panetta Thursday, announcing the shift in Defense Department policy opening up all combat positions to women.

Dempsey, who is at the pinnacle of the military’s top brass, was asked by a reporter: “You indicated that -- well, at least it sounds like that there may be certain combat operational forays that women might be excluded from still. I mean, what would be the reasons for that? What sorts of operations?”

Dempsey replied: “No, I wouldn't put it in terms of operations, Jim. What I would say is that, as we look at the requirements for a spectrum of conflict, not just COIN, counterinsurgency, we really need to have standards that apply across all of those.”

He added: “Importantly, though, if we do decide that a particular standard is so high that a woman couldn't make it, the burden is now on the service to come back and explain to the secretary, why is it that high? Does it really have to be that high? With the direct combat exclusion provision in place, we never had to have that conversation.”

As CNSNews.com reported, the military acknowledges that women will not be able to fill every combat role:

But Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday that "everyone is entitled to a chance."

“If members of our military can meet the qualifications for a job--and let me be clear, we’re not talking about reducing the qualifications for a job--if they can meet the qualifications for the job then they should have the right to serve,” Panetta said at a Pentagon press conference.

The Defense Department announced Thursday that it would rescind its 1994 policy restricting women from serving in combat-focused positions such as infantry units, potentially opening up 230,000 positions to female service members.

 

[dimsum]

It could be just me, but this smacks of the DADT repeal a while back.  This time, it's as if the opposition thinks that all of a sudden, every female recruit will want to become an infanteer or SF operator and that "they'll take away our jobs!  Nooooo!!!!"  :

Perhaps the proponents are selling this the wrong way; more "give them a chance using the current standard" vice "thou shalt have female combat arms pers."

 

[Journeyman]

But Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday that "everyone is entitled to a chance."

I just had a flashback to all the Recruiting thread posts from the autistic, drug-addled, quadriplegic, still breast-feeding, Nintendo champs....

....."it's my right."  :tempertantrum:

 

[OYR_Pilot]

Here is an interesting video on a USMC female Captain sharing her experience on tour and about women serving in infantry :
http://video.foxnews.com/v/1821296256001/are-women-unfit-for-infantry-duty/

 

[Scoobie Newbie]

Are there female fire fighters and police in the USA and are the PT standards the same for men and women in each job?

 

[Good2Golf]

The NY Times directly uses the CF as an example of how women in combat trades can be a non-issue:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/world/americas/armed-forces-in-canada-resolved-issue-long-ago.html

Good, although I'm not personally sold on BGen (Ret'd) Hellstrom, based on a personal meeting with her and Lew McKenzie 23 years ago.  Unlike LCol Robinson and other operational leading-edge women in the CF like CF-18 pilots Deanna Brasseur and Jane Foster, I was less than impressed with Hellstrom's personal example in front of my platoon of OCdt recruits.

Nic exemplified all that is good about soldiers, where gender doesn't even come into play when considering one's capability.

In my reference to Artillery being open to women I meant ADA. There are women in the Army aviation field as aircrew. Tammy Dunkworth lost both her legs in th crash of her chopper in Iraq. Being in harms way means that bad things can happen to you.Future females applying for these career fields need to reflect on the risk/rewards.

This assignment was announced a few days ago.The smart money feels that BG Laura Richardson will be the Army's first division commander when she returns from the sandbox. Her background is in aviation and will be one of the career paths for women to follow for selection to general officer. Her official bio:  http://pao.hood.army.mil/1stcavdiv/leaders/dcgs.aspx

" Brig. Gen. Laura J. Richardson, deputy commanding general (support), 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas, to deputy chief of staff, communications, Headquarters, International Security Assistance Force, Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan. "

T6, BG Richardson is highly regarded by those across the Aviation branch.  :nod:

Regards
G2G

 

[armyvern]

War-experienced Canadian, Maj. Eleanor Taylor, advised U.S. brass on females in combat

Major Eleanor Taylor, of the Royal Canadian Regiment, was the only woman serving with NATO forces in Afghanistan to command a front line combat unit.

When the U.S. Marine Corps and army wanted advice about whether women should formally serve in combat units one of those whose expertise they sought was Maj. Eleanor Taylor of the Royal Canadian Regiment.

The 37-year-old Nova Scotian was uniquely qualified to speak to the senior American brass about this issue, which made front page news across the world last Thursday when U.S. defence secretary Leon Panetta announced a lifting of the ban on female service members in combat roles. Taylor was the only woman to lead a NATO combat unit in Afghanistan. She commanded an infantry company and attached units which frequently engaged in combat in 2010 while operating from a remote forward operating base in the notorious Taliban heartland to the west of Kandahar City.

"I think that it is fantastic that the policy has changed to reflect the reality that they (women) have earned through their hard work and blood. It is a very positive step," Taylor said in an email from Toronto, where she is taking a staff course that is the logical progression for a combat arms officer being considered for battalion command.

"Clearly I am in the camp that believes that these trades (combat arms) should be open to women. I've been enjoying my service in the infantry for over 15 years now, so it sometimes surprises me that it is still an issue."

Canada allowed women in combat units beginning in 1989. The first time they saw actual combat was in Afghanistan.

American women often served with distinction in combat during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet despite the fact that more than 800 of them were maimed and more than 130 of them were killed in firefights or by homemade landmines while on patrol, they did not technically serve in combat units because this was officially forbidden. Rather, they were deployed in supporting functions providing transport, logistics and medical care for combat units in the field.

"This restriction forced the U.S. army to do what any army would do - develop workarounds to get the job done," Taylor said. "In many cases women would be "posted" to a non-combat organization but "lent" to a combat unit. (However) the battlefields that soldiers fight on today are not the linear ones of the past. In conventional fighting, a person who was employed in a supporting role in the rear was really at much less risk than someone who was in a fighting unit forward. Today the concepts of forward and rear are less clear and some units filling supporting roles are at as much risk as combat ones."

...

As I wrote then, when Taylor took off her blast goggles and helmet, revealing her blue eyes and sandy hair, grizzled Afghan elders were taken aback at meeting the first woman to ever lead a Canadian infantry company in combat.

"I would be disingenuous if I did not acknowledge that they were often very surprised," Taylor said at the time. "There was shock on their faces and they would exchange words among themselves. I know the word for women in Pushto and I heard that word."

But the elders were always respectful as well as curious about Taylor, as were the troops from the Afghan National Army who were partners with her unit. So, as she said, "it turned out not to be a handicap at all. I honestly think that the notion that Afghan men won't deal with western women is a myth. Or that has been my experience, anyway.

"Certainly if an Afghan woman were to come and tell them the things that I asked them, they would receive an entirely different response. But as a western woman they see me as foreign and if they hold prejudice towards women, and I certainly suspect that some may, they don't show it. In fact, I have found they have been more open with me - certainly much more than I expected - than with some of my male counterparts."

What the elders told Taylor was that they believed that she was "easy to work with because I am a woman and they know that women are compassionate and here for peace whereas they think that the men are here to fight. Of course I am also here to fight, but when I speak with the locals, they don't need to know that."

A combat engineer attached to the outgoing Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry company died a few days after Taylor arrived in Panjwaii. Four of her own troops suffered serious injuries soon after that. The major's own "close call" came when a Taliban mortar hit the reinforced roof of her company's command post, exploding about one metre away from her head.

"They (the Taliban) were good. They had us accurately bracketed," she said, speaking like the career soldier that she is. "We got them later, did you know that?" she added, after remembering that I, too, had been close to that exploding mortar shell.

Of her tour of duty in such a hardscrabble, unforgiving environment, she said "the troops performed marvelously. I learned that they will do everything that is asked of them. They have an undying sense of humour that keeps us all going and they will do anything for each other. I knew this before, but they are incredibly perceptive and intelligent."

As for her gender, "I don't really consider it relevant. The fewer people in my organization who think about it, the better."

Although always interesting and fun to chat with, it took months to convince Taylor to agree to a formal interview because, she said, other male company commanders, who were not being singled out, faced similar challenges in Panjwaii. Moreover, she said that it was her soldiers, not her, who had done the fighting.

Another reason Taylor did not wish to draw attention to herself was that other Canadian women saw combat in Afghanistan.

Capt. Nichola Goddard led an artillery unit from Shilo, Manitoba, and was hugely admired by her troops. She died in 2006 when the armoured vehicle she was in was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade during an ambush.

Trooper Karine Blais, of the Quebec-based 12th Armoured Regiment, and Petawawa combat medic Master Corporal Kristal Giesebrecht, when she was attached to the Royal Canadian Regiment, also died during combat operations in Kandahar.

Another woman, Captain Ashley Collette of the Royal Canadian Regiment, received the Medal of Military Valour - Canada's third-highest military honour - for her leadership in Panjwaii in 2010. During "intense combat" that was considered "critical to defeating the enemy," infanteer Collette was praised for her "fortitude under fire," according to the citation read out when Governor General David Johnston presented the medal.

Nor was Taylor the top-ranked female Canadian combat officer to serve in Kandahar. Lt.-Col. Jennie Carignan, who is now a colonel, was Task Force Kandahar's senior combat engineer during 2009.

Like Carignan, who is from Quebec, Eleanor Taylor is a mother. The self-proclaimed army lifer from Antigonish, Nova Scotia, whose husband is a military intelligence officer, gave birth to a son 16 months ago.

Taylor praised the generals she met in the U.S. last summer, to discuss women in combat, for "getting it right." They had done this, she said, by collecting the experiences of other nations and applied them to ensure that some of the mistakes that had been made in formally integrating women into combat units could be avoided.

"My personal experience has been that the principals of leadership and team building apply equally to women as to men," she said in her email. "As long as you protect qualification standards and give no impression that anyone is getting a free ride, integration, while not without bumps, will be much less dramatic than people envision."

 

[cupper]

Now the next part of the debate opens up:

Can women be drafted? Selective Service question is revived.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/can-women-be-drafted-selective-service-question-is-revived/2013/01/26/414eeb18-6735-11e2-9e1b-07db1d2ccd5b_story.html

The Pentagon’s decision to allow women to join combat units is expected to reopen a legal debate the Supreme Court settled in 1981: Should women have to register with the government so it knows where to find them in the event of a new draft?

The Pentagon and the Selective Service, which keeps a roster of prospective male enlistees, say it’s too early to tell.

“Until Congress and the president make a change, we will continue doing what we’re doing,” Richard S. Flahavan, a Selective Service spokesman, said Friday. Namely, that means sticking to registering only male U.S. citizens and permanent residents ages 18 to 25.

Here’s a bit of history on women and the draft, from the Selective Service’s Web site. President Jimmy Carter reestablished the Selective Service in 1980 after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, raising the specter of a new global war. It was the most recent activation of a draft database established by Congress in 1917. Its resurgence spooked many Americans, coming seven years after the end of the draft triggered by the Vietnam War.

After a spirited debate, lawmakers decided to exempt women from the registration requirement. The Senate Armed Service Committee cited the Pentagon’s ban on women in combat as the main reason. A report by the committee mentioned “congressional concerns about the societal impact of the registration and possible induction of women,” according to the Selective Service’s summary of the debate.

A group of men sued the director of the Selective Service at the time, Bernard D. Rostker, arguing that the exclusion of women made the registration requirement unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment’s due-process clause. In a 6 to 3 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that it was acceptable to exclude women. Writing for the majority, Justice William H. Rehnquist determined that “the fact that Congress and the Executive have decided that women should not serve in combat fully justifies Congress in not authorizing their registration.”

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Thurgood Marshall chided the ruling, saying it “places its imprimatur on one of the most potent remaining public expressions of ‘ancient canards about the proper role of women.’ ”

Greg Jacob, the policy director of the Service Women’s Action Network, which advocated for the repeal of the ban on women in combat, said his organization thinks women ought to register with Selective Service.

“Part of equality means women have that shared responsibility,” he said.

Flahavan, the Selective Service spokesman, said the issue will have to be tackled by Congress.

“If the combat exclusion goes away, someone needs to be relooking at that now that [the Supreme Court] rationale no longer holds water,” he said.

Pentagon officials appear to have given little thought to the issue before they announced with great pomp that the military was ready to embrace female warriors in pretty much all corners of the military.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Thursday during a news conference that he doesn’t know who “controls Selective Service, if you want to know the truth. Whoever does, they’re going to have to exercise some judgment based on what we just did.”

For the record, the agency is run by Lawrence G. Romo, a presidential appointee.

 

[dimsum]

I'm of two minds about this, but leaning towards "yes".  If women are fighting to serve in all branches and "shoulder the responsibility", then they should have the same commitments.  If Sel Svc is one of them, then so be it.