Women in Military Service & Combat (not just USA)

[Stan]

Dusty,
Although I somewhat disagree with using a source outside of the Army channels (starts to sound like we're in a scandal cover-up and worse, who knows what it means to be a woman in the Army, better than the Army ?), there are indeed several good pages on female veterans that cover those bases where doubt exists.

Such as: http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/

There's more than enough opinion out there and I think we could use a female's perspective herein. Do we have any ?

In my 23 years, I never saw such Bravo Sierra. Where did our discipline go ?

Regards, Stan

[SWJED]

... when I ran the Urban Operations Journal webpage and it has carried over to here. Both sites attracted / attract serious students and practitioners of urban operations and small wars. So... how come our site visitor demographics and SWC membership are overwhelmingly male? Food for thought or maybe ammunition for a food fight...

[Bill Moore]

Women are not interested in warfighting for the most part, these are foolish ventures that would never happen if women were in charge, at least that is the world according to my wife.

Are women less competitive than men? Are they more interested in getting along than dominating? If true, does this translate into a problem solving methodology focused on co-opting rather than fighting? I haven't a clue, and of course if any us understood the psychology of a woman, we would a book on it and retire rich. Part of the beauty is the mystery.

In all seriousness I think women played an important role in Vietnam (on the other side), and in other conflicts in a variety of roles, but I'm not aware of any women who are or have been noted strategic military thinkers, are you guys?

[120mm]

I'm particularly fond of Dr. Mary Habeck, and Dr. Jacqueline K. (I forget her name) who wrote the "Long War" paper seems to have some firm opinions on military strategy, but other than that, I don't know of many.

[120mm]

Davis. That's the name of Dr. Jacqueline K.

I beg to differ that women are natural compromisers. I think if women ruled the world, the first conflict post-nuclear age would've resulted in a general nuclear exchange. IMO, women do not have the natural "break-points" in a disagreement that men do. They are also completely and utterly incapable of enduring honest feedback in social terms.

[BPowell]

I honestly did not go searching for this thread--it just happened to be at the top of the list!

As a female officer in the Air Force, I will be the first to admit that my experiences are miles away from an enlisted female in the Army, so I won't even add to that debate. What I did want to comment on is the idea of women as strategic (and I think "military" is implied) thinkers.

All cliches aside, I believe part of the reason that there are so few women who are known as strategic thinkers has more to do with time than anything else. It's only been, what, about 40 years that women have even started to be accepted in military ranks? And as all of you well know, it takes time, experience,and education to grow strategic thinkers.

Some may argue that only those who experience direct combat action qualify to bill themselves as strategic thinkers; however, I think with a little thought we can all identify great writers/historians who fall closer to the category of armchair quarterbacks.

Those are just my thoughts--I'm certainly glad I found this web page! Just as a side note, I found the site while preparing for the Strategic Art lesson I have to teach next week at the staff college where I'm an instructor.

Thanks for the opportunity to respond.

r/Bridget

[120mm]

Thanks for "stopping in". We hope you will read through the site more thoroughly and make as many posts as you like.... We are also trying to get our minds around "how the Air Force can be more involved" in COIN, in a meaningful fashion.

[marct]

Hi Bridget,

Welcome to the SWC!

All cliches aside, I believe part of the reason that there are so few women who are known as strategic thinkers has more to do with time than anything else. It's only been, what, about 40 years that women have even started to be accepted in military ranks? And as all of you well know, it takes time, experience,and education to grow strategic thinkers.

I suspect that that is certainly a part of it. I keep thinking about Elizabeth I who had a pretty good Grand Strategic vision, and certainly enough time has passed in the corporate world to see a number of women reaching CEO status and being very good strategic thinkers. I know that's not "military", but it is an indicator against the genetic difference argument which is at the root of a lot of the "women can't do X" arguments.

Those are just my thoughts--I'm certainly glad I found this web page! Just as a side note, I found the site while preparing for the Strategic Art lesson I have to teach next week at the staff college where I'm an instructor.

Pardon my ignorance, but what is "Strategic Art"? I'm an Anthropologist, not in the military, and trying to parse that phrase is giving me some very weird visions (mass produced copies of the Mona Lisa dropping on Taliban bunkers, etc. ).

Marc

[goesh]

I think we can safely rule out Bodicus and Hillary as strategic military thinkers. That's a start on the short list anyway. Regarding the gist of the Originator's post, my hunch is that sexual harassment and assault are no more prevalent in the military than they are in the civilian sector. At least the Military doesn't have a need for domestic violence shelters. I would propose that said domestic violence shelters in the civilian sector are filled to capacity with waiting lists. Any CO can confine a man to Post on-the-spot and throw his a** in the brig if that man so much as sets foot off post if DV issues are at play. I would take issue with the Originator's assertion that, "..the NYT is the lead ship in the US media convoy. It sets the agenda..." The Gray Lady has some gaping credibility wounds that are far from healed.

[Lilabeth]

Hasn't anyone on this website heard of COL Heidi V Brown?
She is 100% Army and proud of it.
Might want to check her out!

[Cavguy]

Hasn't anyone on this website heard of COL Heidi V Brown?
She is 100% Army and proud of it.
Might want to check her out!

I googled her.

OK, so she's an ADA COL. A great American. And? Lots of women have achieved lots more. I'm sure they're all 100% army and proud of it to.

Would be nice to see an intro posted on you and some more on why you think her career in particular brings something new to the discussion. As it is, I'm confused. No one here would stipulate that there have not been successful, extremely competent females who have achieved high rank.

[Fuchs]

Here's something funny
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BuoZGTMykI

The tragic: She made lieutenant later.


Personnel should be selected for the job, it's that simple.
If someone fails or hasn't the qualities anyway - why employ him or her in an unsuitable position?

[Tom Odom]

Women are not interested in warfighting for the most part, these are foolish ventures that would never happen if women were in charge, at least that is the world according to my wife.

Are women less competitive than men? Are they more interested in getting along than dominating? If true, does this translate into a problem solving methodology focused on co-opting rather than fighting? I haven't a clue, and of course if any us understood the psychology of a woman, we would a book on it and retire rich. Part of the beauty is the mystery.

In all seriousness I think women played an important role in Vietnam (on the other side), and in other conflicts in a variety of roles, but I'm not aware of any women who are or have been noted strategic military thinkers, are you guys?

I believe that if you look at the British queens of note--Elzabeth and Victoria--there you will find strategists of the first order. Interestingly enough some of the inner circle of the Rwandan Patriotic Front as rebels and later victors were women; they played key roles in aligning the RPF's agenda to build greater support. That became especially important after genocide when there was a fundamental shift forward for womens' roles in Rwandan society based on pure necessity.

I would also offer that the "Dark Queen" of the genocide and leader of the hardline faction most likely to have decided to shoot down the Rwandan President's aircraft was his wife, Madame Agathe. The leader of the organized rape campaign built into the genocide (250,000 rapes reported) was Pauline Nyiramasuhuko , the first woman charged with genocide and using rape as a crime against humanity. She was the former Rwandan Minister of Family and Womens Affairs.

She was not alone: women played an active role as scouts for the killers and sometimes did the killing. My ambassador's driver--a Tutsi--had his wife--A Hutu hardliner--go get the Presidential Guard to kill her husband and sons (because the Tutsis are patrilineal). Her husband and 2 boys escaped; she went into exile in Goma.

best

Tom

[Maximus]

Great discussion. Have been grappling with this topic for the past few months and would appreciate any feedback on some thoughts running through my head...

If the people are the center of gravity in Iraq and in COIN in general, how can we succeed if we almost never interact with the women, who are more than 50% of the Iraqi population? More specifically, if succeeding in COIN has historically taken 10 years or so, who do we need to believe in our and the host nation cause? I think part of the "who" are the children and teenagers, who while maybe age 15 now, will be the 20-25 year olds leading security forces, creating businesses, going into politics, etc. as the COIN campaign continues. How do you influence this group? I think the answer is in large measure through their mothers. I'm not an anthropologist or otherwise cultural expert on Islamic and/or Iraqi culture, but based on leading well over 500 patrols in Iraq, I think Iraqi mothers play just as important a role in raising their kids as do American mothers, IF NOT MORE (most don't work outside the home). For example, I'm a USMC infantry officer that's in the field or in another state training roughly 50% of the year (I'm 3000 miles from my family as I write this). When not in the field, I'm preparing for training, PTing, studying, etc. I'm probably home with my daughter and wife maybe 20-30% of their lives. My wife is with my daughter almost 100% of the time. The same will apply when our son is born within the next 3 weeks. That said, if you want to influence my daughter's views on the world, you'd better convince my wife of your cause. Using a similar train of thought for Iraq, if we're trying to sway 5-20 year old boys not to join the insurgency now or over the next 10 years, not to plant or dig holes for IEDs, not to wear suicide vests, not to serve as look-outs, not to tolerate insurgents, etc. I think we need to convince their mothers that this is a bad idea, or at least not in her family's long-term interest.

So then, how do we do this? Given that my Marines almost never spoke to female Iraqis (same applies for every Marine/Soldier that I know) how do we deal with this significant problem? I think the answer is that during COIN/IW/4GW/Small Wars/Whatever you want to call what we're doing in Iraq now, we need women on our patrols. These women must be specially trained in Iraqi culture, language, understand the role of women in Islam, etc. Their mission should not be to persuade Iraqi women to be like American women. They should simple focus their efforts on why our cause is good for the average Iraqi family. My gut says creating a cadre of women PsyOps Marines/Soldiers for this purpose would definitely help our cause, both short and long term.

I understand this idea opens a whole series of questions about integration in infantry units, training, manpower, etc. That said, if fighting an enemy whose center of gravity is a regiment of T-72s, would we simply ignore 100-150 of these tanks because we ran out of ammo?

Thoughts?

[Sargent]

... when I ran the Urban Operations Journal webpage and it has carried over to here. Both sites attracted / attract serious students and practitioners of urban operations and small wars. So... how come our site visitor demographics and SWC membership are overwhelmingly male? Food for thought or maybe ammunition for a food fight...

Not so male as you might think.

Also, it's not necessarily the first thing I advertise about myself, because it's not the most important thing to me. It's not something I can avoid at a conference -- but then, being the prettiest person in any room full of military historians is great fun (that's mostly tongue in cheek) -- but I don't feel the need to make a big deal about it otherwise. And I've stayed out of the subject of women in the military as a professional matter because it's too trite for my taste. On the other hand, being of the female variety does help out when doing things like talking to veterans -- not so hard on the eyes, add a smile, and they'll talk to me forever, tell me everything I want to know.

Of course, there is a whole, strange demographic of men who fall for me because I can and will talk about war and combat with abandon -- it makes my husband chuckle -- I recall he noticed once, with this LtCol, he turned to me at the end of a social evening and said "He's totally sweet on you!" Of course, he can relate, because he fell for me during a field exercise. I was a civilian/student visitor, and I was super enthusiastic to learn, see, and do whatever was available to us. I was the only one to separate from the group and talk to the Marines in the units we were visiting, I was the first to volunteer to fire the howitzer -- oh, what a sweet joyous memory, pull string go boom -- and just generally mixed it up as much as possible. Anyway, it's a minor hazard of my profession.

As for the demographic that is attracted to the subject matter of this forum, well, a lot of it does dovetail out of professional experience of some sort, which would tend to dampen the female participation. I may just be strange. I like to joke that I was the son two fathers never had -- played sports with one, went off to work (carpentry) with the other -- so maybe that influenced my interests. On the other hand, I consciously chose not to do the military, because I never wanted to be part of something that, by the rules, would bar me from full participation. But I never would have joined expecting the military to be something it wasn't, like a sorority (but then I never wanted to be in a sorority), or a place where off-color was off-limits.*

I don't know if any of this answers the questions. It's just my perspective -- maybe you'll find it useful.

And FYI, the username is not poser -- it happens to be my middle name. There's a word for a person with a name that fits their profession, but I can't think of it now. Anyway, it's a family name, and it was a terrible burden as a child (you can imagine the teasing), but as an adult I've come to treasure it -- maybe because I had to earn it.




*Historian's hazard, but I can't help dropping a footnote here and there. Anyway, to the point -- obviously, I don't profile as the standard Mrs. Field Grade Officer. But that's not always obvious. When my husband was training up for his deployment in 29 Palms, I went up for a visit and to bring the team some treats. Anyway, at first the guys kept scampering by me, with their heads down, and nobody would really talk. It took me aback. My husband said, "Yeah, they were pretty scared of you, that they might offend you -- but then you dropped the f-bomb at some point, and they totally relaxed after that."

[SWJED]

Not so male as you might think.

... in all fairness I did not say 100%. Welcome to the board - very good first posts and they are appreciated. What is the subject of your dissertation?

[120mm]

Sargent: I know how you feel. My wife is a civilian pilot, and is quite attractive. When we go to various gatherings of (largely male) pilots, "we" lack for nothing. Especially the from older pilots who are completely and utterly exploitable for various "goodies" like free dual-time, etc..

[dusty]

Dusty,
Although I somewhat disagree with using a source outside of the Army channels (starts to sound like we're in a scandal cover-up and worse, who knows what it means to be a woman in the Army, better than the Army ?), there are indeed several good pages on female veterans that cover those bases where doubt exists.

Stan,

I see what you mean, but I was really aiming for the 'disinterested party', a business that would release the story for good or ill of the Army.
I don't have statistics or studies on this subject, so I'm left to personal experiences.
When I deployed into Afghanistan in DEC 01, we left the females in our platoon aboard ship. They weren't allowed ashore until a month or so later. As I haven't deployed to Iraq yet, I asked my SNCO about his experiences - if he ever saw females sexually harassed. He said no, but then added the caveat that if it was a National Guard unit, he would believe it, no problem.