Sisters in Arms

November 21, 2005 2:20 PM

Women are prohibited from being assigned to combat roles, but some still find themselves on the front lines. "Before this war, people only imagined how women would react in combat roles and thought that they couldn't handle it ... Now we see that women are bonding with the men and not going to pieces." Also, an interview with Kayla Williams, author of 'Love My Rifle More Than You'.
posted by Alison (40 comments total)

Previously...
posted by Alison at 2:20 PM on November 21, 2005

I heard that interview -- it was great, but too short. It was part of a longer series of talks with veterans and people in situations of war that was broadcast Nov. 11. I found it compelling. Wish we were hearing more of this brought to us -- it's there if you seek it out, but it's not often brought to us so directly. As the daughter of a veteran, I believe it's important for the general public to understand what war is,as opposed to what we think it is based on movies, TV, and novels, and how it changes the people who fight it forever.
posted by Miko at 2:28 PM on November 21, 2005

Also, see "Females are essential", "I Was Shell Shocked"
posted by Alison at 2:30 PM on November 21, 2005

a little WTF moment from the NYT:

Her hair is neatly braided into cornrows and tied at the nape of her neck. Her face is smooth and clean. She doesn't fuss with her looks; in this heat she has resigned herself to being just one of the boys.

Gods! A woman who isn't "fussing with her looks"? Certainly newsworthy! Thanks NYT!

Yuck.
posted by poweredbybeard at 2:36 PM on November 21, 2005

I love how this is always brought up as a "new" thing. Its not. During the Second World War, thousands of Soviet women went straight to the front lines. What's the record for most kills by a female fighter pilot? Lilya Litvyak, 12 German kills in World War II. Mind you, this is with second rate aircraft.

And other women? Most kills by a female sniper? Lyudmila M. Pavlichenko, 309 enemy soldiers killed.

How about Zoya Smirnova-Medvedeva, a machine gun company commander in the Great Patriotic War.


Some women can fight just fine. Others can't. Same goes for men. The question really is whether they should fight side by side or in segregated units.
posted by Ironmouth at 2:37 PM on November 21, 2005

I had no idea about Soviet women in combat. Thanks for the links!
posted by Alison at 2:42 PM on November 21, 2005

The justification I always heard was that men would go out of their way to help their female counterparts, and put their own lives in danger more then they normally would for their fellow male solders. I'm not really sure that's a very good reason, though.
posted by delmoi at 2:44 PM on November 21, 2005

chicks with guns are *hawt*
posted by keswick at 2:45 PM on November 21, 2005

The question really is whether they should fight side by side or in segregated units.

Um, why? Seriously.

Why stop there? Let's segregate black and white. And then the darker skinned white soldiers from the paler ones. And then the ones with glasses from the ones without glasses. Moustachio'd and non. Etc.
posted by poweredbybeard at 2:56 PM on November 21, 2005

I see two variables. Some people are just naturally "warriors", and they really stand out as such. Without high tech, non-warriors really stand little chance fighting them. Warriors will just be better at any martial art they try. They thrive on conflict.

The other variable is "preparation", not training. Training is the notion that anyone can be picked off the street and taught to be a warrior. Preparation is motivational indoctrination that comes from parents, teachers, peers, trainers and experience. While a trained warrior is good, a prepared and trained warrior is the best.

While more and more women are being trained to be warriors, still only a small number are being raised with the zeitgeist of being a warrior. In our society, perhaps the first real popular role model of a female warrior for girls to emulate was "Xena". Literally that recently.

But even if and when women are brought up prepared to be warriors, much like boys are today, still only a handful will be real warriors. The vast majority, as with men, will perform support roles for real warriors.
posted by kablam at 2:58 PM on November 21, 2005

Wait, if men and women fight side by side in the same unit, what justification will we be able to use to kick homosexuals out of our armed forces?
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:15 PM on November 21, 2005

Xena? Dude, ever hear of She-Ra?
posted by TheGoldenOne at 3:36 PM on November 21, 2005

More from the not-new thing:

Women have been flying combat aircraft for the US for several years.

Also, Israel, for a long while now.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:45 PM on November 21, 2005

Xena? Dude, ever hear of She-Ra?

Princess of Power!
posted by kosher_jenny at 3:50 PM on November 21, 2005

First, it's combat, and the next thing you know, they'll be demanding the right to vote, own property, have orgasms, etc. Society as we know it will go to straight to hell.
posted by Gamblor at 3:57 PM on November 21, 2005

Question: if it is ok for women to be in military and serving side by side with men, why is it out of place for gays to be serving side by side with men?

In WWII G.Is found God in foxholes. Now they can find foxes in god's holes.
posted by Postroad at 3:59 PM on November 21, 2005

Ba-dum-dum.
posted by Gamblor at 4:01 PM on November 21, 2005

Obviously women have been in war before, but generally it happens when a country is invaded and its citizens turn to total mobilization or guerrilla warfare to resist -- hence the women of the Red Army and the French Resistance. In peacetime, however, most countries resisted sending women to war, and even the IDF -- the first modern army to aggressively integrate women -- avoided placing them in front-line roles until recently. This is definitely a new experience for American soldiers and their families, both in the extent of the danger and the numbers of women affected. I don't think it's at all out of line for this to be covered.

The justification I always heard was that men would go out of their way to help their female counterparts, and put their own lives in danger more then they normally would for their fellow male solders.

That's just one reason typically cited. The other is the risk of sexual assault if captured. The justification the military generally uses tends to focus more on issues such as the near-impossibility of personal privacy in field combat. Past gaffes have included Congressional testimony about women's hygiene needs, and longstanding frustration over the automatic "out" granted by a pregnancy (many women in the military being of prime age for sexual activity and childbearing), even if the mother returns to active duty. I think these concerns are somewhat genuinely felt, but difficult to express in non-sexist ways even for the MeFite demographic, let alone your average jarhead.

Thankfully, however, the notion that women "can't handle it" seems to be one of the ideas that has fallen by the wayside, as has the idea that women automatically create dissension within a unit. The coed military has started to develop social protocols for this. The NYT article touched on them some, but I gather that many women prefer to have a sweetheart back home if only as a beard. There's a lot of frat-boy behavior, but a lot of protective older-brother behavior as well.
posted by dhartung at 4:09 PM on November 21, 2005

The other is the risk of sexual assault if captured

Allow me to point out that this is a risk also run by male POWs.
posted by Miko at 4:26 PM on November 21, 2005

Out of curiousity..how many of you have actually served in the military?
posted by tetsuo at 4:46 PM on November 21, 2005

Nix that extra "u" in curiosity if you please...
posted by tetsuo at 4:47 PM on November 21, 2005

I did. Yea! I served with females in the Gulf War. They weren't in combat exactly, but definitely on the front lines. One female who was driving a truck got lost was captured, raped, tortured and killed. Very sad loss. I don't want to hear any jokes about women drivers either! FTR, she was driving in black-out conditions. Which means no driving lights, at night, only tiny little markers so that trucks/vehicles can (barely) see and follow each other.
posted by snsranch at 5:00 PM on November 21, 2005

What Ironmouth said. Women generally have better spatial sense. They tend to be better shots. Also they eat less and tend to be smaller so they have better operational endurance. Excellent guerrillas, and usually better intelligence operatives than men.
That said I also second Ironmouth's point on separation. Boarding is a problem. You'd have to do away with current practices to be fair. Not that I have a problem with that. But currently you tend to put women with women and men with men in barracks, tents, what have you. But as dhartung pointed out, social protocols can cover most potential unpleasantness.
posted by Smedleyman at 5:27 PM on November 21, 2005

This brings to mind that movie, Courage Under Fire. One of my favorites.
posted by beth at 5:29 PM on November 21, 2005

"Women generally have better spatial sense." Really? When did that start?
posted by The Monkey at 5:52 PM on November 21, 2005

As a currently serving army officer, albeit not in the US military - what is the issue?
Not all people have the same aptitude for all jobs. If you can do the task (in its entirety), feel free to join the infantry. Not everyone is capable of serving in the infantry - male or female. Will the social dynamics change - probably but it is not the end of the world.

For what it is worth the Australian Defence Force doesn't have a problem with gays but has not opened up all (but 97% isn't too bad) of its positions to women (yet?).

Anyway, "Combat roles" is a largely redundant distinction in a counter-insurgency operations - every uniformed person in the AO should expect to be, and be capable of, combat no matter what their explicit job (ECN).
posted by dangerousdan at 6:02 PM on November 21, 2005

What Ironmouth said. Women generally have better spatial sense.

Huh, I've always heard the opposite.
posted by delmoi at 6:08 PM on November 21, 2005

Of course there's no reason for gays to be kept out of any part of the military. The only question regarding men and women together is the "protection question." Personally, I think it is a load, as the Soviets above didn't segregate the women from the men, except in the aircraft units.

As for women having better spatial sense, I have no idea. I do know that in Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlen claimed that women had faster reflexes and were the primary pilots of the spacecraft. Could be BS, though.

Basically, its only a matter of time before we see women in almost every single combat role.

Another question is "should women have lesser standards to get into combat arms?" My answer is no. This means that there will be fewer women in ground combat arms, but you bet there will be some. The purpose of a ground combat unit is, suprisingly, ground combat, so I think the standards should remain the same for whomever fights.
posted by Ironmouth at 6:21 PM on November 21, 2005

"The other is the risk of sexual assault if captured

Allow me to point out that this is a risk also run by male POWs."

Or captured insurgents, or captured civilians, or captured children.
posted by Ironmouth at 6:23 PM on November 21, 2005

A bibliography on the topic from the U.S. Army Command and Staff College.

I got this by googling israel-women-combat, because, IIRC, the Israeli experience was not positive. The first thing I was told was men tended to forget the mission and move to protect the women if they got wounded. Later I heard no, the men would flip out and go into a sort of "berserker" mode.
posted by atchafalaya at 6:37 PM on November 21, 2005

Women have better spatial sense

It's been recognized in the education field for some time that on tests of such abilities, women generally do not perform as well as men on tasks requiring spatial skills. I won't get into the questions of test and observer bias, which are valid ones, but just point out that it's a statement supported by a lot of evidence. However, it doesn't mean they have no spatial skills, nor that there are not many individual women who outperform many individual men on said skills.

However, it's true that women are often better shots. In this page, the FBI explains why it wants to actively recruit more women.

In this day and age, I don't think there are really any objections to women in combat worth considering. The military will find ways to surmount logistical problems and social barriers, just as they did each time the service was integrated in some other way. My father's own training combat experience during 2 tours in Viet Nam turned him from a racist white Southern fundie to a social-justic activist. His objections to serving alongside black soldiers lasted about three minutes in the face of the Army's very definite decision that units were integrated.

Military organizations are increasingly able to condition all sorts of responses during training; they'll come up with programs to condition male and female soldiers to work together effectively, even synergistically, without worries. So much of it is already a done deal.
posted by Miko at 7:06 PM on November 21, 2005

That would be, in THIS page the FBI explains...
posted by Miko at 7:07 PM on November 21, 2005

Women generally have better spatial sense." Really? When did that start? - posted by The Monkey

Well, I shoulda clairified it. I wasn't talking about spatial orientation or spatial memory, but slow reaction visual spatial tasks, like shooting, piloting, etc - given slower periods. Men seem to react faster (ergo, better combat pilots), but women given the time are a bit more accurate.

To support Miko's point, Nature Neuroscience published an article that Matthias Riepe et.al (University of Ulm, Germany) established a neural correlate for the gender difference, by showing that men and women have different patterns of brain activation during navigation. Also New Scientist sez, gay men read maps like women do.

Some studies have said men do better with three-dimensional mental rotation but perhaps that's because they have larger inner ears.

I'm not a sociobiologist or a neuroscientist, but the women I've seen are generally better shots. Of course, that could be because they are more focused than most of the men and had to work harder to get there.

Anyway, this guy says the sex difference in spatial cognition is bullshit.
But, y'know, he's selling a book. So, really - I don't know for sure, but why wouldn't women have it?
I dunno. But given the choice between having a woman who's busted her ass and worked far and above what others had to do to get into sniper school looking over my shoulder, or someone who happens to be better wired for it (if that's the case), I'd take the woman.
Now, who I want hauling me out of the combat zone is a different story. But there are scrawny men too.
posted by Smedleyman at 8:00 PM on November 21, 2005

Ironmouth, you made the comment that I was coming in here to make. Lilya Litvyak is sort of a hero of mine.
posted by kayjay at 8:21 PM on November 21, 2005

Gods! A woman who isn't "fussing with her looks"? Certainly newsworthy! Thanks NYT!

Yuck.


I had the exact same reaction.

However, in all fairness, that article is in the "Fashion and Style" section of the NYT. It appears to be a "serious" piece, done to give the section a gloss of relevance, similar to Cosmo and its ilk.
posted by xthlc at 10:14 PM on November 21, 2005

Even the Pakistani Air Force is about to gain it's first female fighter pilot
posted by Azaadistani at 10:39 PM on November 21, 2005

Now we see that women are bonding with the men and not going to pieces."

I find it really sad that this is a shock to many people.
posted by agregoli at 7:27 AM on November 22, 2005

Smedleyman, I agree with you, I believe that the best person for a job should do it, whether male or female.

I also believe that it should be considered a right for a given person to defend their country, whatever the gender.

And lastly, barring edge cases, I still think men are more likely to be effective soldiers than women.

But what do I know about war? I'm from New Zealand. We're not really into that sort of thing.
posted by The Monkey at 3:13 PM on November 22, 2005

I still think men are more likely to be effective soldiers than women.
Sure. Depends on the task ultimately.
Count yourself lucky in NZ. We're all hung up on it here.
posted by Smedleyman at 4:07 PM on November 22, 2005

If the American government resorted to conscription now, would they include everyone in the target age bracket, or just males? I'm not entirely sure what to hope the answer is. I imagine that including young women in the draft would create more backlash against conscription quicker.
posted by raedyn at 6:47 AM on November 29, 2005