Maybe you can offer some insight here, Maggie.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Maggie
I became a volunteer firefighter in 1977, the county involved had just hired the first professional firefighter in the US the year before. I can tell you with absolute certainty that this kind of behaviour does indeed "poison" the atmosphere and is entirely the wrong way to go about it.
In what way? Did they collapse physically?
Maggie
So true on the first point Maggie; there may be a place for political "influence" when it comes to various issues within the military, including gender ones. But is has to be limited and the civilians have to let the military work it out themselves, otherwise everyone loses, as well as any opportunities or benefits that may have arisen out of a measured, properly though-out and executed introduction of women to men in the infantry.
While there are a tiny proportion of women in Canadian infantry battalions, and the formal issue of gender integration is settled, I think the damage is done there, and many of the men, in their heart of hearts, will never really accept the women (even if on the surface it appears that they do). This leads to an unseen split within units between those men who are confortable with the women, and those who are not (and all the worse when the latter are discrete about it). I'm sure that I don't need to tell you about this. And I blame both the civilans masters and the military leadership for this. It didn't have to be this way. And I have to admit because of that experience I can't really bring myself to accept women in the infantry without real reservations.
As to the women going "squirrely", what I observed was that the women became disorientated, often dizzy, and simply couldn't keep up on the march. This "squirrely" condition invariably occurred within 3 days. I have never been able to identify an efficient cause for this; like I said in a previous post, for a while I thought that they were just slackers, but the last one to always join them was no slacker.
She was a good gal, and a lot of the lads felt comfortable with her because she was focused on the job at hand and did it well; the incident I witnessed where an NCO (who I took did not accept the women) gave her a hard time occurred during a run. She kept falling out of formation and the guys would try to carry her kit for her so she could stay with us (she was well liked), but the NCO wouldn't let us and just watched her as she fell out and we had to leave her behind (a truck was following some distance behind us and it picked her up).
Anyways, back to the matter at hand, I don't know what the reason for the "squirreliness" was, but the women were clearly somewhat out of it and had been unable to keep up with the men in the field, and subsequently sent back to MIR. Disorientation and dizziness were the main things that I noticed. Touch of hypothermia maybe?
My experiance was positive
The Female MP's in the MP company attached to my infantry company in Iraq did an excellent job under fire, returning fire, and living inside the wire. Camp Kalsu was nothing but a bombed radar station when we arrived with few generators and no plumbing. The females did not develop "feminine or Hygene" problems and remained fit to serve for the entire year, there were zero accounts of sexual assault or harrassmnt, and they performed very efectivly under fire. They earned my respect.
I am a counselor at the VA and talking with other GWOT combat vets, the women in forward deployed units that spent more time outside the wire had far fewer sexual harrasment or discipline problems then women in FOB units and the worse rates by far seemed to have come from Doha and Arifjan in Kuwait. Unfortunetly I have no studies or numbers to back this up, so take it for what it is worth
Reed
What's wrong with women in the military
Case in point: My former Battalion Commander was an African-American Female, and is the "poster-child" of what is wrong with the status quo with women in the military.
She is a double-minority, and it is my opinion that the only reason she is still in the military, an O-5 and a Battalion Commander, is because of the color of the skin and her plumbing.
She has a long and undistinguished history of failure in each and every leadership position she has held. It's a relatively small world, and I've had the opportunity to speak with several of her former subordinates who verify this. She is actively driving her current command into the ground, and they have consolidated the equivalent of another battalion under her due to reorg for her to destroy.
She is unable to qualify on her personal weapon. Her excuse is that the Army hasn't trained her properly, so she refuses to take efforts to train herself. "It's not my job to train myself, the Army needs to train me on my weapon" is what she has repeated told her subordinates, in public.
She has also repeatedly spoken in public and to her direct subordinates about how she's really not responsible for failures in her Battalion, "it's all on the Brigade Commander" is her response.
She repeatedly exhibits a lack of knowledge about how chain of command works, and is, frankly, a "dud". I have never met a male or caucasian officer who is this bad, who got promoted and had B.C., though some shot for close.
But she gets good OERs and has a decent shot at O-6.
On the other hand, I know several females between the ranks of E-1 and O-6 who have their stuff wired tight. Somebody, somewhere didn't do their duty vis-a-vis the aforementioned B.C.. And I suspect her gender and/or race influenced her continued promotion.