Women in Australia’s military: On the frontline of the gender war

I'm an ex-soldier, ex-Commando to be precise. Women are already valued in the roles they already do, and during my time I met some female soldiers who could possibly pass selection, but not many; indeed it's rare among men at their peak.

The main fear in the Infantry, and SF in particular, is not women fighting beside you (women have been fighting with men for generations) but the very real prospect that standards will drop to make sure that women make the cut (as a political feel-good tool) - as happened when Vic Police wanted more women in the force.

Infantry selection standards are high, very high. They're high for a reason, if you lower the standards people die. You mention US infantry soldiers; well the Australian Infantry is a very different beast from that of US. In Australia the Infantry is a position for the fittest, hardest and most committed - in the US the Infantry is where the dross ends up.

If a woman successfully meets the grade then she'll be respected and accepted into the regiment, if she got through because they lowered the standards for women then she will not be accepted (and nor should she).

I would be happy to fight beside any women who makes or exceeds the passing grade as it stands today; lower those standards and I don't want them anywhere near me when the chips are down.

This is the most ill-informed article and set of comments on this subject that I have yet seen. It seems that the author's argument in favour of gender integrated combat units is founded on on the enlightening observation that Girl Guides performed acts of bravery in WWII. The premise appears to be that if women can "individually" perform to the required physical and psychological standard then they are qualified to become part of an Infantry or Armoured combat arms unit. Nowhere does the article address the complex issues of group dynamic's, team building and cohesion, inter-personal relationships, privacy and hygiene in an Army combat arms unit that is operating 24/7 in the field for weeks on end. These are units where Armoured Fighting Vehicle (AFV) crews live check-by-jowl and do all their ablutions inside their vehicle for weeks on end or Infantry Observation Posts (OPs) operate within a whisper of each other for a month or more. Sadly the article fails to even obliquely address how gender integration may impact on the military capability of these units.

I am at an absolute loss to understand why women academics (and Jennifer De Goursat) persist in arguing that this is a "nature/nuture" issue when nobody in the Government, the ADF, or society in general propounds it! (Almost) every Australian embraces Nancy Wake as a heroine for slitting the throats of Nazis in occupied France during WWII. We have accepted women in frontline combat roles, including Naval Gunnery Officers and RAAF Fighter Ground Attack pilots where, for over 20 years, they have been able to barrage, bomb and strafe the enemy to their heart's content without a murmur of disapproval from the Australian public! For goodness sake, stop addressing issues that the ADF, the Government and the public have long ago dismissed by accepting women into 93% of the ADF's combat occupations. Stop this intellectual sloppiness and instead address the specific issues that are relevant to the integration of women into the remaining 7% of ADF combat roles. Did you not think there may be some reason why this 7% has been gender specific for so long?

This article has no arguments backed by evidence or common sense.
And evidence abounds.
All you need to do is point to the White Mouse and the activities of the OSS.
Plenty of women in history have done extra ordinary things in combat.
They are most uncommon.
A small objection:
"The recent plan to see women take on frontline combat roles in the Australian military from 2016 removes one of the last formal barriers to women’s participation in all realms of work."
Shooting and killing and being killed or wounded - isn't work. It isn't painting your hair purple and collecting political doctorates for political activism.
It's a little bit more serious than that.
Your correspondent, doesn't appear to acknowledge the privations of front line combat, the physical demands involved and why it would be at all necessary for physically inferior specimens to take on the roles of those who could do it better. Is it a power play by political academics? They can pontificate on and congratulate themselves how effective their activist "research" has been...
So, all you need to do is say this:
"All roles will be decided upon a common, comparative evaluation of physical and psychological characteristics, with the non political goal of creating the most capable and the most lethal, armed forces possible. The most important, overriding objective, is to create the most effective armed forces possible."
Have any taxpayer funds been expended on this person's opinions?

The "best" soldiers are tough, strong, killing machines trained to follow orders without question and conscience. Mindless soldiers are what makes military power, and the abuse of it, possible. I was always secretly relieved that I could attribute the insanity of war to a predominantly male agenda. Blame it on men! I silently shouted in my head. But soon I won't be able to.

As with any major sociological change: time will tell. And it is to be expected that at this early stage of change, the old ideas and the familiar comfort of the common and known norms, will continue to effect ideological resistance to the concept of women as active combatants on the front line.

However, the resistance has long shifted from the idea of women's ability to do; think, act; and achieve. Any historical deconstruction of mostly any time in history is surely testament to what women can do. Rather, the resistance is to the idea of women as soldiers actively engaged in killing. The shift required here is not only cultural or social; rather it requires a psychological recalibration of the embedded memes of our biological evolution.

So time, and time alone will tell.

I agree with Jay Jay. I wish to join the military after I have finished university. I was pleased to hear that the restriction have been lifted. However, women need to be able to pass the same tests as men have to pass. If they dont or the tests are lessened in difficulty, it puts the soliders that they are fighting alongside of at risk. Also I dont think women would like to be put in a postion that they are not physically or mentally capable of handling.

To everyone who persists in seeing this as a feminist issue- as I have said - look at history! I too am tired of feminists persisting in making the issue of women in war 'last bastion of equality' !

It is not about this- and my point has been conveniently overlooked; and this is that time will tell : meaning that in time the truth of how well men and women 'fight' together and how 'gender roles' that have at least on a superficial level- defined our roles for ions- will now be consciously and deliberately explicated.

I am not a soldier, but am aware of the 'roles' that women have played and do play on the defence forces. So this was never part of my argument: I was merely commenting on how society has ideas that are often unexamined and have themselves evolved from historical and biologically determined roles. Whilst at the same time, reality tells a different story.

As an ex -airforce officer told me; feminist arguments were 'then'; this is NOW. If anything, it could be that women in defence have always played varied roles that are highly skilled and valued. That bastion is gone.

But it is public attitude - my argument- that may take longer to topple.

Also consider if nothing else - that battle is different now; and frontline is not the sole place of battle. Technology now makes redundant the notion of physical strength as the arbiter of suitability. However, as has been commented by others, mental strength is probably the quality necessary. And as always - this is individual- and cannot be generalised.

Finally, to all who have commented, I think it is good to remember that this is a 'conversation' and it is about sharing knowledge and ideas. What knowledge is provided by the academics while different from the knowledge of experience - provides another perspective. And when I read from those with first hand knowledge - and discuss with my partner the same- my ideas and understanding in turn grow.

The conversation is not about one view decimating someone else's; not is it about a relativistic positioning- it is surely about building up knowledge by sharing of ideas and experiences in order to build a perspective borne of substantive ideas and experience.

And I for one have learnt much.

Another factor to consider is that the female structure is generally less robust than that of males. This is a separate issue from that of strength or endurance. Contributing factors to this include bone density, skeletal structure (male and female skeletons have differences in how they’re put together), and body mass (being important as as a soldier gets lighter the load they must carry becomes a larger proportion of their mass e.g. for a 65kg soldier a 65kg load is 100% of body mass, for a 90 kg soldier that same load is 'only' 72%ish).

When the WRAAC was discontinued and women were more fully integrated into the army there was a common recruit course and set of physical standards. It was discovered that the injury rates between men and women were very different, with that of females approaching 50% on occasion. The result of this was that a lower set of standards was introduced for women.
As an aside: From here the differing standards were done away with for recruit training as the majority of male recruits, and all female recruits, were going to non-arms corps. Here we have an example of the standards for all being dropped to accommodate the entry of women. We can just add this to the pile of other examples from police and fire services around the country that have seen the same thing over the last few decades. This is the reason why some are disbelieving of claims that ‘no one is suggesting different standards for women’. It has happened before. [/aside]

This suggests that even should women be capable of meeting the entry standards for infantry it is likely that they will sustain a far higher injury rate in the course of their duties than will their male counterparts. This is a problem for a combat arm as it takes 4 healthy soldiers to remove one injured soldier from the field. With a 10 man section its strength is immediately halved and it stops being an effective fighting unit. Of course injuries occur to male soldiers as well with the same consequences (I shouldn't have to make this point, but looking at some of the previous activist-driven argument that's been put forward I feel I should), but willingly increasing the rate at which Australian forces potentially stop being combat effective is madness.

The question that should be asked is 'Will this change enhance the fighting capability of the ADF to a significant degree?' If the answer is no, as I suspect it is, then we should avoid fiddling with something that currently works very well.

I am not against women serving in the ADF. What I am for is the application of common sense as opposed to dogma when the business at hand is quite literally life and death.

One last thought: I have yet to see a convincing response to the question of why we do not see women's rights activists clamouring to see women compete equally with men in contact and combat sports? Or, for that matter, even tennis? Why should we have female infantry soldiers but not female rugby players, boxers, wrestlers, mixed martial artists, etc. competing on a level playing field with men?