
The United States Military is known for being the most elite and precise fighting force in the world. Yet just like any other job in the United States, the military is under fire for not giving females equal opportunity to get into combat arms positions below the brigade level. Obtaining equal rights has always been an uphill battle since the country was founded. Even to this day people are stopped from doing what they want because of their sex, color, creed, etc. One problem that is a major topic in politics today is, should women be allowed to serve in combat units under the brigade level? This is a devastating problem to have for the United States, being a country that promises more freedoms than any other country in the world, yet someone cannot protect their country in a combat role simply because of their sex.  Differences in standards between men and women in the military, unit cohesion, and the differences in structure of the male body versus the female body are all reasons why women are having issues getting into these positions. So, if women are held to the same standards as men should they be allowed to serve in combat positions just like their male counterparts? If equality can be achieved, then there should be no reason that females cannot join men in combat positions.

Women have been working with the military throughout U.S. history. They mainly served as nurses and caretakers up until World War II. During World War II, “about 350,000 women participated in the war effort, and they began to take on new auxiliary roles so that more men could fight in combat” (Schaefer 7). This would become a vital stepping stone into letting more women join the ranks and serve their country. During this time period, most men were being shipped off to serve in the war effort and fight in combat. While the men were away, women had to step up in the factories and any jobs that were mainly male dominated since there was a lack of men in the country. This would show that women could handle working in the same conditions that men were working in even with a needed increase in factory production. In 1948, the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act formally gave all women regular and reserve status in the Armed Forces. While this seems like a win for females, there were certain limitations put into place by this act. “Women could not make up more than two percent of each branch and they had to have different enlistment standards and dependency entitlements that were set for men and women” (Ibid). Once a difference in standards is made between males and females it causes issues for multiple parties. It would not be until January of 2014 when combat positions would become open for women by an act repealed by Congress to let them do so. Even after this effort, women are still having a hard time getting into the combat arms positions. 

Combat Arms positions are jobs that are mainly located on the front lines where most of the fighting occurs. They are some of the most dangerous and physically demanding jobs that the military has to offer. These troops are constantly on the move from hole to hole or from street to street, depending on the theatre of war that the troops are serving in. Troops in these positions need to be ready to go at a moment’s notice. In the height of war, a solider would have to go months at a time pushing into enemy territory on little to no sleep, a very small amount of food, and would go weeks at a time without bathing. In the military, males and females have to have separate sleeping areas and separate showering areas. This problem could be seen in every position throughout the military, regardless of being deployed overseas or in field training exercises in the United States. This becomes a major problem for infantry troops that are constantly pushing into enemy territory. They may not have the time, supplies, or space to accommodate female and male sleeping areas and showers. Pulitzer winner Mark Thompson, a national-security analyst at the nonprofit project on Government Oversight, has spent forty years writing about the U.S. military. He conducted an interview with, Captain Jennifer Mlocek, an Army transportation officer who spent 2004-05 in Iraq. In which she stated, “When the new leadership came in, we were told that females would not stay in the same tents as male soldiers; they would be in a female tent” (Thompson). While a few women might not have a problem at doing so, this cannot be promised for all women who want to serve in the infantry.  A privacy issue comes into play, but what people fail to realize is that in the military you do not have privacy. It is also no surprise that these jobs have the highest injury rate. These troops carry the largest gear loadouts compared to other troops, the average loadout comes out to be about one hundred pounds of gear. All of this gear is put on the back and the chest of the troops and had long term damage on the back and knees of the troops. This is just that soldiers gear alone, should the need arise, soldiers are expected to get fallen comrades and their gear out of the area. Doing so could add an extra hundred pounds of gear plus however much that person might weigh. This is a task that most men have a hard time lifting, women would have a harder time in those conditions. 

The first major issue of allowing females into combat roles is the way female bodies differ from male bodies. Kingsley Browne, a professor at Wayne State University, reported that “Males are more aggressive, which can be beneficial in combat, however that trait has led to twice the amount of accidents and injuries as well as suicides throughout the military”. Yet over half of the number of female troops that are hospitalized, are done so due to pregnancy, causing the military to lose time, training, and money which overall hurts mission readiness. It was reported that “from January 2003 to December 2011, 50,634 troops had to be flown out of Afghanistan and Iraq for medical reasons, of that, females accounted for less than thirteen percent of those evacuated” (Ibid). It was found that men are physically stronger than women on average. It was reported that “men have an average of twenty-six more pounds of skeletal muscle mass than women” (Ghose).  This skeletal muscle plays a large role when soldiers are tasked with carrying their gear over a certain amount of time. In basic combat training, soldiers must complete a twelve-mile ruck march with all of their gear on in just the first steps of becoming a soldier let alone maintaining and building the strength of current soldiers. Women also have about forty percent less upper body strength and thirty three percent less lower body strength than men. With normal gear loads weighing over one hundred pounds, it is a struggle for anyone to train and do drills with let alone to have to combat enemies in. Training in these gear loads causes a great number of injuries, such as stress fractures, which takes troops out of combat and hurts readiness. Michael Hoffman, the executive director at Tandem National Security Innovation, is currently conducting a study on soldiers and their gear loads. The goal of this study is “to look at how the upper body, trunk, and head coordinate in a soldier who is burdened by a heavy load”. In general, men are also faster than women. The fastest women in the world, Florence Griffith Joyner, ran the 100-meter dash in just 10.49 seconds in 1988. Yet her faster time would not have even qualified her for the men’s 2016 Olympic competition which requires men to run the 100-meter dash in 10.16 seconds or less.  While women are usually at a disadvantage physically they do have an edge in some physical tasks. Live science reported that “Women usually have more body fat and may be better at burning fat as energy early on in exertion giving them better endurance than men” (Ghose). According to a 2003 study in the Journal of Applied Physiology, men’s muscles tend to fatigue more easily than women’s, because women recruit muscle groups to share the load more effectively. If female soldiers can get into these positions and train extensively while maintaining to meet all standards to be mission capable then there is no reason that females should be excluded from combat arms positions.  

The second major reason why women are not being allowed to serve in combat positions is because they are not being held to the same training standards that men are being held to. While both men and women must score a sixty in all three portions of the Physical Readiness Test (PRT), what they need to do to get their sixty differs. In the Army to get a minimum of sixty points a male must do forty-two push-ups, fifty-three sit ups, and run two miles in under fifteen minutes and fifty-four seconds. While women have to do fifty-three sit ups as well, they only need to do nineteen push-ups, and run two miles in under eighteen minutes and forty-eight seconds. Whitfield East, a professor at West Point, stated that “…the Army has endeavored with little success to establish … physical readiness training doctrine that enables all soldiers to develop and maintain the level of physical fitness required for combat readiness” (197). All men and women soldiers complete the same training regardless of sex, holding women to lower standards does nothing but put them in the risk of higher danger. Expecting a female soldier who only needs to do nineteen push-ups for her PT test, pick up a fallen soldier who could possibly outweigh her by over one hundred pounds, she is putting herself in danger of hurting her back. Kaite Petronio, a Captain in the Marine Corps, claimed after her deployment with the infantry that “I went from setting school records to being broken”. She came back from her deployment seventeen pounds lighter, had muscle atrophy, and stopped producing estrogen. In January of 2014, the Marine Corps started to hold all marines, male or female, to the same standard. This was great, a huge step forward into getting women into combat arms positions. The problem was that “over fifty percent of women were unable to meet the new standard” (Smith). This report was conducted by Amber Smith, a retired U.S. Army helicopter pilot, and military advisor for ‘Concerned Veterans for America’. What this means is those women who can pass the standard will be able to join combat arms positions, those who do not will have to move into another position where they do meet the standard. When it comes to our nation’s defense, we want the best and most qualified personnel defending our freedoms and way of life and eliminating all difference in standards will do so. The military’s purpose cannot be skewed by attempts at social engineering. Physical demands can and have been reduced in training so that anyone can pass, but combat will impose the demands without regard to sex. It makes no sense to have two people train the same way but not hold both of them to the same standard, enemies of the United States will not fight as hard because they are fighting against a woman. The editors of Women in Combat and the Armed Forces: Policies and Perceptions, Vaughn Mills and Redmond Hunt claimed “properly trained women would be able to fight successfully and exempting them from combat is not fair to men”. The destruction of different standards for different sexes will help women get to the positions that they wish to be in. 

Another concern about integrating females into combat arms positions is the effect of unit cohesion. Males have always dominated the military especially combat positions. Cohesion has a direct relationship with group performance and job satisfaction. While research is still being conducted whether integrating females into combat positions will have an impact on unit cohesion, gender integration has shown negatively effects on group cohesion. To understand cohesion, it must be understood that it is the resultant of all the forces acting on the members to remain in the group. When a soldier starts their training in the military they are broken down as an individual and built back up as a team. They no longer worry about themselves but make sure that the team always comes first. “The Army’s plan…include opening closed units to women, and then opening all closed military occupational specialties (MOS) to women” (Lopez). Another win for female integration, but when these new members show up to these units and are held to lower standards, things will not sit well with the veteran troops and will cause a disruption in unit cohesion. I have personally witnessed unit cohesion drop to an all-time low while training the with 941st transportation company in the Army Reserves, one person will seem like they are getting better treatment compared to others and as soon as that happens, tempers flare and simple conversations can turn into heated debates quickly. During my time in the National Training Center out in the desert of Fort Irwin located in California, after spending up to sixteen hours out on mission in the hot sun the last thing anyone wanted to come back to was a guard duty shift. Numerous times soldiers would come back after a long day and were greeted with this duty while a soldier who did not go out on mission was able to stay in their bunk all day. When preparing for battle, the last thing on your mind should be sex; but when you put men and women in close quarters while they have downtime relationships tend to spur up. This first came out when the Navy started allowing women on ships. Sailors were having sex and getting pregnant. This ruins unit cohesion and operations because that pregnant sailor must be removed off the ship so the ship might have to change course to do so. Marine Corps veteran Jude Eden stated “When I was deployed, we’d hardly been in country a few weeks before one of our females had to be sent home because she’d gotten pregnant”. Then relationships come into play and takes serious tolls on unit cohesion. Consensual relationships, unwanted advances, and sexual assaults all destroy unit cohesion. Relationships can cause jealousy and cause favoritism. A solider in a relationship with another in a combat zone is dangerous. A soldier in charge could make a decision in which someone gets hurt in because of a relationship within the command. This would cause soldiers to wonder if their chain of command is actually looking out for them. A trust that is needed for a solider when they are sent to a combat zone and their life is on the line. Unfortunately, there is no real solution to this except deterring troops not to hold any type of relations other than what is needed to conduct their job. In most cases soldiers will be reprimanded for holding any type of serious relationship by their company commander. 

With marches for female equality on the rise, the United States should push for equality for everyone across the board. The definition of equality is the state of being equal, especially in status, rights, and opportunities, and the definition of equal opportunity is the policy of treating employees without discrimination, especially on the basis of their sex, race, or age. Allowing women into combat roles should not be as large of a problem as politics has made it today. Fixing this problem should be a simple task especially with the population pressing more and more for equal opportunity and equal rights. Holding everyone to the same standards regardless of their sex and making a physical fitness test where soldiers are graded based on their performances, depending on their performances is what job position that they can enter. Soldiers who do not perform as well will be able to enter jobs that do not require as much physical fitness as other jobs such as supply and administration jobs. Soldiers who are more physically fit will have the opportunity to serve in combat positions or whatever job of their choice. Military leaders must stand firm on equality and not buckle to the pressures of meeting a female quota at the expense of creating double standards of equality. Commentator Monica Crowley once said that “True equality means holding everyone accountable in the same way, regardless of race, gender, faith, ethnicity, or political ideology.” Holding men to higher standards causes a gap between the sexes, creates tension, and interferes with unit cohesion. The population of the United States will not be equal until every person is held to the same standards across the board not only where a select few want it.  
