It was widely believed in the 1990s that women athletes were "closing the gap" with men athletes. (Look how fast Flo-Jo is!) In turn, this assumption of equalizing athletic performance was used to justify sending women into combat: obviously, prejudices about women warriors not being able to carry their fair share of their platoon's equipment were outdated.
So, the 12/31/1997 article "Track and Battlefield" in National Review by sports physiologist Stephen Seiler and myself was kind of a bombshell. We demonstrated that, contrary to nearly universal assumptions, the performance gap between male and female runners in the Olympics was widening. This was because the Fall of the Berlin Wall exposed the East German doping program and the Ben Johnson scandal at the 1988 Olympics slowed Western cheaters. In other words, the narrowing of the gap after 1976 had been largely due to women runners taking artificial male hormones. (This was published, by the way, the year before the McGwire-Sosa home run fiasco.)
Here's the last section of our article:
In conclusion, studying sports' gender gaps offers new perspectives on a host of contemporary issues seemingly far removed from athletics, such as women in the military. Ironically, feminists in sports have successfully campaigned for the funding of thousands of sexually segregated, female-only teams, while feminists in the media and Congress have compelled the Armed Forces (outside of the defiant Marines) to sexually integrate basic training and many operating units, even including some combat teams.
Who's right? Female college coaches have some powerful reasons for believing that coed competition would badly damage their mission of turning girls into strong, take-charge women. For example, they fear that female athletes would inevitably be sexually harassed. Even more distracting to their mission than the unwanted sexual advances from male teammates, however, would be the wanted ones. This opinion is based on more than just lesbian jealousy: research on single sex vs. coed schools shows that teenage girls are more likely to develop into leaders in all-female groups, whereas in coed settings young females tend to compete with each other in coyly deferring to good-looking guys. Any hard-headed female basketball coach could tell you that merging her team with the school's men's team would simply turn two dedicated squads now focused on beating their respective opponents into one all-consuming soap opera of lust, betrayal, jealousy, and revenge. (Does this remind you of the current state of any superpower's military?) Yet, feminists utterly forget to apply their own hard-earned wisdom to the armed forces: on the whole, deploying young women in cramped quarters alongside young fighting men does not make the women into better warriors, it make them into moms. For example, the Washington Times reports that for every year a coed warship is at sea, the Navy has to airlift out 16% of the female sailors as their pregnancies become advanced.
Reorganizing the military along the lines of the sexually segregated teams characteristic of contemporary college sports will do much both to more fully use the potential of women in uniform and to quell the endless sexual brouhahas currently bedeviling our coed military. Yet, the crucial issue remains: Should women fight? The main justification feminists give for a coed-izing the military is that lack of combat experience unfairly hampers female officers' chances for promotion.
We can again turn for guidance to female coaches. The main reason they favor sexual apartheid on the playing fields is that in open competition males would slaughter females. It seems reasonable to conclude the same would happen on the battlefields. This may sound alarmist. After all, running's gender gap is a rather marginal-sounding 1/8th; surely, many women are faster than the average man, and, by the same logic, many would make better soldiers.
First, though, as economists have long pointed out, competition occurs at the margins: runners don't race against the average Joe, but against other runners. And soldiers fight other soldiers. Second, while the moderate width of track's gender gap is representative of many simple sports that test primarily a single physical skill (the main exceptions are tests of upper body strength like shotputting, where the top men are as much as twice as strong as the top women), in free-flowing multidimensional sports like basketball where many skills must be combined, overall gender gaps tend to be so imposing that after puberty females almost never compete with males. Consider what traits help just in enabling you to dunk a basketball: height, vertical leaping ability, footspeed (to generate horizontal momentum that can be diverted into vertical liftoff), and hand size and hand strength (to dunk one-handed). Not one of these five individual gender gaps is enormous, but they combine to create a huge difference in results: almost everybody in the NBA can dunk compared to almost nobody in the WNBA. Basketball, however, is far more than slam and jam. Throw in the need for massiveness and upper body strength in rebounding and defense, wrist strength in jumpshooting, etc., and multiply all these male advantages together, and the resulting gender gap in basketball ability is so vast that despite the WNBA's state of the art marketing, it's actual product resembles an all white high school boys' game from a few decades ago.
Strange as it seems today, back in 1997 the media acted as if the WNBA was cool.
Although the unique ease of our Gulf War victory encouraged the fantasy that technology has made fighting almost effortless, the chaos of combat will continue to demand a wide diversity of both physical aptitudes (like being able to hump a load of depleted-uranium ammunition) and mental attitudes (like the urge to kill) that interact to create a huge gender gap in fighting ability.
While in theory it might be nice if we could accommodate ambitious female officers' need for combat experience by negotiating during wars with our enemies to set up separate all-female battles between our Amazon units and their Amazon units, this is where the analogy with sports finally breaks down: opponents in war don't have to play by the rules ... causing our women to be defeated, captured, raped, and killed. Still, if (as, in effect, so many feminists insist) female officers' right to equal promotion opportunities requires that they be furnished with female cannon fodder, there is one proven formula for narrowing the gender gap to give our enlisted women more of a fighting chance. Feminist logic implies that just as our military once imported ex-Nazi German rocket scientists, it should now import ex-Communist German steroid pushers.
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47 comments:
'Navy has to airlift out 16% of the female sailors as their pregnancies become advanced. '
That can't be cheap..
Women should be allowed to do anything that men do as long as standards are not lowered, and no one receives special treatment. Why should this be so radical?
What's interesting is the dismal performance of female race drivers. Theoretically, in modern open wheel race cars, women should be at no disadvantage, but in fact few are successful at any form of professional auto racing. The few successes have all been in cases where the women had access to new, game changing tech early in its deployment, i.e., Michele Mouton in the Audi Quattro rally car at Pikes Peak.
In old style TSD rallying, women were often successful, but the modern form of rally cars has put them out of competition pretty much over the long haul.
What makes successful race drivers makes successful fighter pilots: the correlation is huge. You can train a woman to fly a fighter-the two Jackies proved that a half century ago-but can she use it effectively as a combat weapon? No evidence exists to assert that. And with a modern jet fighter costing a hundred million dollars that would be a reasonably important question.
Recent history suggests that standards will be lowered for women in order to keep America's driving narrative alive. However, in the case of the combat infantry, I don't get how this approach would work. Will women not wear the heavy body armor or carry their own weapons and ammunition? Granted, when you see a roadside crew, the men are always doing the shoveling while the woman in the hardhat holds the traffic sign. Will that approach work for the military?
Here is an excerpt from a 2011 article in the Army Times describing the amount of weight soldiers carry and the toll it takes on them:
"The heavy loads contributed to rising numbers of Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans retiring with degenerative arthritis, cervical strains and other musculoskeletal injuries. The newspaper estimated that disability benefits for these injuries exceed $500 million annually.
"Since returning to western Washington 2½ years ago after serving in Iraq, Spc. Joseph Chroniger has been diagnosed with bone spurs in the vertebrae of his neck caused by a degenerative arthritic condition. While on patrol in Iraq, Chroniger carried about 70 to 80 pounds, including his body armor, his M14 rifle, radio batteries, food and ammunition.
“'This is ridiculous,' Chroniger said. 'I’m only 25 years old. Arthritis is supposed to happen when you get old. What’s it going to be like when I’m 50 or 60?'
"An Army Science Board study in 2001 recommended that no soldiers carry more than 50 pounds. Yet the Times said a 2003 Army study found that soldiers on extended foot patrols carry an average load ranging from 87 to 127 pounds."
What's going to happen if in three or four years it turns out that not a single woman has been able to make it as a combat infantryman? Will we have a national nervous breakdown?
Randall Parker: "By lifting the ban on women in combat the Obama Administration will invoke instinctual desires to protect women. This will reduce popular support for foolish war ideas put forth by the neocons. What's not to like?
File this under: stupid liberal ideas that accidentally deliver big benefits."
Women should be allowed to do anything that men do as long as standards are not lowered, and no one receives special treatment. Why should this be so radical?
Ah, poor soul. You're being reasonable about the whole thing. You fail to realize you're dealing with zealous fanatics.
As for women being slaughtered in competition with men, I was surprised to learn that even male college players can whip the top ranked professional women's tennis stars. I was a bit disappointed, too, actually. I like the idea that good tactics and a deft touch can best brute strength. It's not always the case though.
"What's going to happen if in three or four years it turns out that not a single woman has been able to make it as a combat infantryman? Will we have a national nervous breakdown? "
What happens? The policy gets quietly consigned to the crapper, or blamed on the military's old boys network. If it were the failure of a bold new conservative policy it would get all kinds of press. When lefty
What's going to happen if in three or four years it turns out that not a single woman has been able to make it as a combat infantryman? Will we have a national nervous breakdown?
The standards will be lowered.
I foresee this scenario. At first they will tell the drill sergeants that they want no special favors for the women. They want them held to the same standard as the men. Then after a while when few or no females have graduated from the Infantry School at Ft. Benning, the entire cadre from the school's commander to the drill sergeants will be asked why the women are not graduating.
Feeling pressure, the instructors will ensure some women graduate lest they be accused of discrimination which would kill their shot at a promotion.
Then an unwritten quota of sorts will come into play, where a certain percentage of females are expected to pass each class. Any training cycle that fails to hit this this unwritten number immediately becomes suspect for discrimination.
It's really not hard to see the wheels coming off. These graduates will then filter out to our frontline infantry battalions and then the problems will really start.
Of course outsiders won't really know there is a problem at the unit level until and unless we fight a real war against a real enemy. Only the guys in the unit, who must now carry more weight to make up for the females who can't carry their own load, will know.
As a former infantryman I know how bad it can get when you have a few malingering males going on sick call to get out of the field. Just because they stayed in garrison did not mean their load did not have to be carried. On paper an infantry squad has a certain amount of firepower and equipment. To the chain of command that squad must go to the field fully capable. Whether that means 9 guys or 6 guys will carry that load is immaterial to the higher ups. I'm afraid women in the infantry is going to be hell on the diligent guys.
"Strange as it seems today, back in 1997 the media acted as if the WNBA was cool."
whereas today they act as if NCAA women's basketball is cool. attention television sports media: please get women playing basketball badly off my television. thank you.
women can actually play tennis and volleyball somewhat well, and look about a hundred times better doing it.
speaking of gender equality, now that professional tennis has equalized pay, women tennis players are BY FAR the highest paid women athletes in the world. the winner of the australian open gets about 2.5 million US dollars. this is more than 20 seasons worth of pay for the highest paid WNBA player.
funny though. even here, the women have to do less work. they play 3 set matches whereas the men have to play 5 set matches for the same amount of money. so female professional athletes can't even be expected to display the same level of endurance and stamina as men, let alone strength.
"What's interesting is the dismal performance of female race drivers."
if you think they're bad at driving race cars, imagine how bad they are at flying fighter jets or combat helicopters.
Way to sabotage the armed services. Anti neocons must be thrilled.
"However, in the case of the combat infantry, I don't get how this approach would work."
it won't, which is why i said they'll end up loading artillery shells or driving tanks. there's just no way any woman can carry 80 pounds for 30 days in a row for 15 miles marches a day, without taking a shower once, and getting 4 hours of sleep per day.
people overlook the long marches, the no showers, and the "you mean we don't get 8 hours of sleep in a bed?" thing. women can't do that for weeks on end. and those things have nothing to do with upper body strength.
i mean, very few women can throw a grenade far enough that they aren't in danger of getting hit with the blast when the grenade goes off. women can't throw.
even loading 155mm artillery shells is dicey. they're 100 pounds. loading them for sustained fire wears out men. and for tanks, a tank driver should always be able to load the gun too. i think there's a qualification, like load the gun in 4 seconds. not sure even a strong woman can load 50 pound 120mm shells in 4 seconds, and even if a few can, can they load 20 shells in a row?
this is aside from things like, WOMEN AREN'T KILLERS. psychologically they are so not right for combat. many men have trouble with the shooting and being shot at stuff. so
when in the HISTORY OF MANKIND have women been natural fighters, warriors, and killers? never, that's when. even if you have a motivated lesbian, she's still inferior to an average man at this stuff.
men have always been the hunters and the killers. they go out and kill the food for the family. or defend the family by killing the person or animal who is threatening them. or join a band of other men and go kill some other group of men in a raid to take their stuff and land. men have fight or flight response. women stay home and nurture the children. they heal and care for the sick and injured. women do not have fight or flight response. they tend to cower or stand still screaming - probably this is the behavior they evolved to alert the men to "come help me!" the screaming attracts men who fly in and take care of the problem.
these behaviors are integrated at the core of the human brain's neuron substrate and go back 50,000 years. no amount of year 2013 liberal indoctrination will change them. they are genetically locked in behaviors. women aren't natural born killers. exactly the opposite. and men instinctively protect them.
"This is ridiculous,' Chroniger said. 'I’m only 25 years old. Arthritis is supposed to happen when you get old. What’s it going to be like when I’m 50 or 60?"
you also go deaf in the infantry. see all those guys at gun ranges with their hearing protection? yeah. you don't wear hearing protection in a real shootout. what you actually do is hear dozens of rifles and machineguns fire right next to your head. for a few seconds. then it's so loud you just hear ringing. a few real shootouts and you start to have hearing loss. the weapons fire at 120 decibels to 130 decibels. in fact the US army measures your hearing loss every year when you're in the infantry. at least the artillery guys do get hearing protection.
"What's going to happen if in three or four years it turns out that not a single woman has been able to make it as a combat infantryman?"
they'll "make it" alright. the generals will force it to happen. give some army grunt woman a stripped down load out and send her on her way. 30 pounds of equipment. just her rifle, 4 magazines, helmet, and body armor. some guy in her unit can carry the rest of her stuff. if any shooting starts, her orders will be get behind us and keep your head down. this is how it will work.
"While on patrol in Iraq, Chroniger carried about 70 to 80 pounds, including his body armor, his M14 rifle, radio batteries, food and ammunition."
an M14 could have just as easily been used for any of these mass shootings, and they've been around since the 1950s. yet no politicians want to ban them. shrug. ban M16s, some guy will just come shooting up your school or movie theater with an M14 or a shotgun.
'Steve Sailer and Stephen Seiler', is this some kind of joke?
Jody,
You must have had a very sheltered life. Margaret Thatcher, for example, revelled in death,bloodshed and inflicting unspeakable cruelty onto the defnceless, in the same way as Elizabeth Bathory did.
"Taisey and Belzer argued frequently over the summer about women at the Academy. When the detail was over, Belzer marked Taisey deficient in a number of areas, giving him two Ds on his leadership evaluation. Taisey, who had an exemplary two-year enlisted career and is currently ranked first out of thirty midshipmen inside his own company, is amazed. "I'm going to frame the evaluation. She wrote that I would have scored higher if I could have gotten along better with women. Can you imagine what would have happened if things had been reversed, and I had written a chit like that on her for not being able to get along with men?"
Taisey is representative of, if perhaps more outspoken than, the majority of the men I talked to at the Academy. In fact, the men from the class of 1980 might have a theme song, I heard the quote so often: "I'd much rather have been in the last class with balls than the first class with women."
Taisey's objections are capsulized simply enough. "I used to look at officers who were Academy graduates and say, 'That man has been through hell. He's earned the right to lead me.' It's not true anymore. The whole place has been pulled down to the level of the women, and the most important area is grades.""
Jim Webb: Women Can't Fight
http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/people/jim-webb-women-cant-fight/index.php
a few years later, now Liz Semcken:
"when Rebecca was born, I knew I could never go back to sea"
"to the world being in the first class was probably the most significant thing I've done, But in my own life there's no question- it's Rebecca"
Women in the Military: Flirting With Disaster
By Brian P. Mitchell
high time for testosterone equality, juar look at the awesome results
http://www.muscleweek.com/board/index.php/topic,5019.0.html
no chance of patriarchy imposing its will upon women!
Backward me, I thought the whole point of going to war was to protect your women, children and land from the heathen foe.
The interesting thing for me is what happens if, say, a battalion or navy combat vessel is 1% female. Do we rig the entire submarine with men's and women's bathrooms and private bunks, losing precious space and spending millions in retrofit, so that one female ensign can change in private?
And pregnancy is a big deal. If a woman misses her period do you bring the sub up to the surface and call in a helicopter evac? What if you are in a FOB in Afghanistan? And if it becomes known that an easy way to get out of combat is to get pregnant, how many men would be willing to help that happen?
And men and women have different roles with their children. The vast majority of single parents are single mothers. Since many of them will now be eligible for combat rotations, that means more orphans and more kids raised without either parent. Simply stated young women (the kind who would be in combat) are most likely to get pregnant and then have infants/young childen whom the disproportionately take care of. Will we have lactation stations in combat areas where mothers can pump milk? Will we have two years of maternity leave for any special forces officer who becomes pregnant?
For what? So that 1/10th of 1% of women can enter combat? So that combatants can be comprised 1% of women? Or is it to prove a point?
If you really want to prove a point, expand Selective Service to women. If they don't want to be discriminated against in combat, then by God, they should be eligible for the draft.
tim henman looks positively emaciated comapred to the ball girl he hit with a ball back in 95 when he was 21.
http://news.ripley.za.net/wp-content/plugins/rss-poster/cache/d8b07_120618014635-henman-wimbledon-95-ball-girl-horizontal-gallery.jpg
In other words, the narrowing of the gap after 1976 had been largely due to women runners taking artificial male hormones.
Yes, I remember that 1976 National Lampoon Sports issue.
-meh
"Backward me, I thought the whole point of going to war was to protect your women, children and land from the heathen foe."
It is, but our elites don't expect to have a real war again, especially one of defense. So they feel free to use the military as a jobs program and for social engineering.
Besides the athletic aspect, it's an open question how videos of women soldiers being raped and murdered will affect the public and in consequence the politics. People in the Middle East are still very upset about Abu Ghraib.
I certainly sympathize with those on here that view the degradation of the US military as a long-term positive – weaken the beast, less foolish interventions, etc etc. But in terms of long-term policy it would seem that having a more capable military that is used wisely would be superior to having a weak, PC-ridden jobs program of a military that is used stupidly.
I am still naïve enough to think that one day our foreign policy won’t be run entirely by crazy people. I’d like to see our military about 1/3 its current size, but minus all the PC bs that leads to mediocrities like Colin Powell blathering on TV or Kara Hultgreen becoming a hero for incompetently crashing and killing herself in an F-14.
There is no reason whatsoever to have women in any physical job, whether military or police or firefighting. What part of “smaller and weaker” do people not understand? Women have been a complete disaster wherever they’ve been used in the military, outside of cooking and nursing roles. They stink as pilots (I flew F-4’s and F-16’s in the USAF and overlapped for about 2 years with the post-Tailhook nonsense that saw women integrated into fighter squadrons) yet are still promoted and inserted into elite units; are too weak to contribute in any way to combat support units yet are still promoted; in the Navy they get pregnant at alarming rates that coincide with deployments. They're an obvious failure to anyone casually paying attention.
To those of you thinking “as long as they meet the standards” you are kidding yourselves. We already have over 20 years of data that they’re not meeting the standards in aircraft or on ships. None of this matters. Why do you think them not meeting the standards in other roles will make any difference? Our overlords will just lower the standards or blame women’s failure on sexism or whatever. They will also soon press for admittance to special forces – jobs that more than 99% of men couldn’t physically do, let alone any woman. Yet they’ll be admitted. And we’ll read about how they’re “just as good”.
"Anonymous Anonymous said...
Women should be allowed to do anything that men do as long as standards are not lowered, and no one receives special treatment. Why should this be so radical?"
It's radical because it ignores the realities of biology.
Mark Caplan said: the whole point of going to war was to protect your women, children and land.
Hunsdon: Our day is done, sir. It's a brave new world.
As a former collegiate athlete and coach, I’ve seen the athletic differences between men and women up close. In trying to demonstrate this to a friend in light of the women in combat question, I compared the 2012 women's Olympic gold medalist track and field results to the 2012 Ohio Boys High School Division I state championship final results.
I note what the female gold medalist would have placed in the boys meet and the variance to the winning time/height/distance in the boys event.
100m 1st +0.01 seconds
200m 4th -0.27 seconds
400m 10th -2.11 seconds
800m 8th -5.10 seconds
High Jump 1st +1.71 inches (odd # because meters vs. feet)
Long Jump 1st +3.57 inches
Pole Vault 4th -1 foot 6.99 inches
Ohio Division I is made up of 30% of the high schools and has 59% of the male students in the state (132k boys). So in summary, a population of 132k teenage boys in Ohio produces a set of athletes that are roughly the same or better than 3.5 billion women in the entire world.
When you say women in combat and women in sports, are you really talking lesbians?
"all-female battles between our Amazon units and their Amazon units"
Apparently the US military needs women to interact with local woman who may be part of the insurgency, so Amazon on Amazon might be the right idea. Hidden in this discussion is they are not thinking World War I, they are thinking the perpetual global war on terror.
Apparently the US military needs women to interact with local woman who may be part of the insurgency, so Amazon on Amazon might be the right idea. Hidden in this discussion is they are not thinking World War I, they are thinking the perpetual global war on terror.
So let them join the Peace Corps (or the CIA). Even fit them them out in full battle dress. The local desert women aren't going to know or care about the lack of authenticity so you can still enjoy the supposed 'Wow, women in the military - the possibilities in the west are endless! We've gotta become just like them asap!' effect taking place.
No, this stuff runs deeper. You're dealing with devout fanatics.
When I was in 9th grade my high school's JV boys soccer team, on which half of the guys had never played soccer before, scrimmaged the state champion girls varsity team from our school. We beat them handily and it wasn't even a fair fight. We just got to every loose ball faster than the girls did.
Because of this experience, I opined in several conversations last summer that a decent high school boys team could beat the USA women's olympic team. Surprisingly, most of the women I told this agreed and it was the men that rushed to defend the lady olympians' athleticism.
Consider this:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/122168587/Rifle-Platoon-Basic-Load-OEF-XII
Avg. paratrooper weight: 184 lbs
Avg. paratrooper load for 72-hr mission: 103.6 lbs
Given this weight, "When contact is made, maneuver is difficult. AWT [air weapons team,i.e. apache helicopters], CAS [close air support,i.e.,air force planes] and Indirect fires [mortars and artillery] are relied upon heavily to destroy the enemy."
I tend to suspect that a well-motivated combat team of American all-female infantry would be superior to the men of most nations; and with the usual superior US support and technology they would not often be defeated, captured, raped etc. So the gender gap in physical ability & aggression would not be as decisive as the article suggests. On the other hand, they would still take more casualties than the equivalent all-male combat team would.
Cary's analogue nails it perfectly. Too, Jimmy Connors toyed with Navratilove in an exhibition and Chris Evert's kid brother would beat her in singles all the time.
When I was in the Marine Corps some 60 years ago, we had female Marines we called BAMS; they never fired a round in anger and did admin work which is where military women belong.
Mark Caplan said: the whole point of going to war was to protect your women, children and land.
Now we try and protect some other peoples in various disorderly capricious ways while are own are laid waste by a variety of enemies, foreign and domestic.
"By lifting the ban on women in combat the Obama Administration will invoke instinctual desires to protect women. This will reduce popular support for foolish war ideas put forth by the neocons."--great logic, kind of like the way we saved the environment by blocking that pipeline. That was awesome
"Simon in London said...
I tend to suspect that a well-motivated combat team of American all-female infantry would be superior to the men of most nations"
Fantasy
More evidence that we have no democracy.
Exactly who voted for this kind of crap?
What's interesting is the dismal performance of female race drivers. Theoretically, in modern open wheel race cars, women should be at no disadvantage,
Also, theoretically women should be at no disadvantage at chess.
But alas, they play in the women's division.
Amazing! They used to publish this in freaking National Review. Now I'm depressed and need a scotch...
Well I see that Danica Patrick is sleeping with the kid who won the minor-league NASCAR series for 2 straight years. Maybe she's hoping talent is transferable in bodily fluids.
"Margaret Thatcher, for example, revelled in death,bloodshed and inflicting unspeakable cruelty onto the defnceless, in the same way as Elizabeth Bathory did."
Is that a joke? If so it ain't funny. Mrs T had many negative features, but revelling in "D,B,aIUC" weren't among them.
"Then after a while when few or no females have graduated from the Infantry School at Ft. Benning, the entire cadre from the school's commander to the drill sergeants will be asked why the women are not graduating."
Bit like the administration's desire in The Right Stuff for A Black Astronaut.
"Simon in London said...
I tend to suspect that a well-motivated combat team of American all-female infantry would be superior to the men of most nations"
Anon:
"Fantasy"
I don't think so. The Russians used women combat units in WW2; they weren't so ineffective as not to be worth using - and they were fighting the Wehrmacht and SS. Who do the US army fight? Arabs, Afghans, probably Africans soon - not exactly the best led, trained, motivated or equipped of warriors. Thirty American women could probably handle thirty of them, with air support and the other advantages the US enjoys - just as ten American men can and do handle thirty of them.
I'm not saying that American female soldiers could handle the Russians or Chinese or another serious enemy; I'm saying the US is not likely to be fighting another serious enemy, and so could likely muddle through.
Part of the proof that Women were getting faster was Benita Fitzgerald's 12.84 in the 100 metres hurdles was given as being faster than Roger Kingdom's 13.20 in the 110 metres hurdles.
Once upon a time sports journalists understood what distances were.
Maybe there's some propaganda value in convincing Arabs that even our girls can stomp you?
I still hold out hope that this country like Israel will realize this policy will be unworkable in practice. Israel discovered in the War of Independence that males will jeopardize the mission to protect the females in their unit, it's human nature. If this happens for real in Afghanistan or Libya, maybe the PTB will give up this ludicrous notion. Any woman who could meet advanced infantry training levels is probably by female standards an elite athlete, so why would she want to be a grunt anyway when she could be in the Olympics or playing pro sports?
I seem to recall that the Canadian womens basketball team trained against grade 10 boys. Not varsity, just a pick up group. They could almost keep up with the boys at first but within 6 months not so much.
"I don't think so. The Russians used women combat units in WW2; they weren't so ineffective as not to be worth using - and they were fighting the Wehrmacht and SS. Who do the US army fight? Arabs, Afghans..."
The Afghans broke the Russian army, and it looks like they may do the same to us.
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