Women in Military Service & Combat (not just USA)

[Norfolk]

Since 2002—when we acquired the larger, Victoria-class submarines that allowed for adequate berthing—the last restrictions on women in combat roles were lifted in the Canadian Armed Forces.

It is true that there are relatively few women serving in combat arms (about 2% of the total), due to the physical requirements, retention issues, and a degree of self-selection. But they are there, and they do fight and die with bravery and honour, like the guys.

There are, of course, some guys in the combat arms who continue to grouse about the effect of women on combat cohesion and performance, and those retrograde attitudes have contributed to retention problems. However, the question is essentially settled and closed both within the Armed Forces/DND and within society as a whole. No significant politician of any stripe in any party raises the issue.

I did my (brief) reserve service in a mixed gender unit, and I can honestly say I can't remember the issue of women in the military came up once. This may have been due, on reflection, to the most competent, efficient, and at times frankly terrifying NCO in the unit being a woman! (I also had a grandmother who served as an officer in the Free Dutch forces during WWII, who was also quite formidable.)

I think it was around '91 when the first women were permitted to go into the Royal Canadian Infantry Corps. I think the introduction of women into the Combat Arms in general, and the Infantry in particular, could and should have been done a lot differently. As one of the generals who was in charge of the CF's own study and planning group on the matter said, the Army could (theoretically) have had a few hundred women in battalions across the Corps if the Human Rights Commission and the courts hadn't directly intervened themselves and simply impposed it on the Military. The swift result of course was a few women in a few battalions who while, having passed the same standards of their male counterparts (theoretically at least, in my battalion all the females were given red medical chits, in effect an exemption, because they could't pass the battle fitness tests), those standards had been dropped considerably.

The old standard, for example, had been the 2x10: a 10-mile forced march ith full kit performed in under two hours followed immediately by a live shoot on a 300m range (Falling Plates), followed the next day by a 10-kilometre (little over 6 mile) jog (with webbing, helmet, rifle, etc.) in 1 hour, 6 minutes, and I think an assault course.

The new standard that both men and women came under had been a 13.2-km (8-mile) route march with full kit in 2 hours, 26 minutes, and a 3.2-km (2 mile) "forced march" in 22 minutes with webbing, helmet, rifle, etc. I've been out for some years now, but this year a friend of mine who is in a abattalion told me that the 2x10 was back.

The net result was a shoddy introduction both for the women entering the infantry, and the infantrymen who were receving them, and it tended to poison the units so affected. Aside from a fair bit of minor (so far as I know) sexual harassment, there was no rape or assaults. But there was was a serious break-down in discipline, as officers (and some NCOs) were pretty sensitive about something going wrong, and for any number of reasons. I saw at least one young women, with an entire rifle company present, talk back to and swear at an NCO, a chargeable offence and somethign that would have had a man doing the hatless dance in front of the CO.

With women in the battalion, the strict discipline that had previously existed quickly evapourated, men (including married ones) fooled around with a couple of the women, and generally those men who may have been otherwise favourably disposed towards integration of the sexes, were turned off. I have to admit being one of those. Of course, there were those who would not have accepted women under any circumstances, and they quietly made their views known and felt (especially after the battalion's displine unravelled). I think that had the officers not been afraid of repercussions from above, the women would not have been treated with kid gloves, and the men would not have loss respect for the women, the officers, and the Army. A lot of guys left; after my Platoon Warrant left (2 tours in Northern Ireland, was in the SAS in the Falklands), I began considering leaving myself -3 months later I was gone.

One other observation about women in the infantry, and I thought it was very strange, and this occurred ex after ex: none of the women in the battalion lasted for more than 3 days in the field before going "squirrely" and having to be sent to the infirmary for the rest of the ex; I had thought that maybe the women were just slackers, but the last one to invariably join them most definitely was not a slacker, and I saw at least one of the NCOs who would not accept women in the infantry give her a bit of a hard time once. I still have no clear answer as to why the women went "squirrely" after no more than 3 days in the bush.

Generally speaking, I strongly suspect that women in the infantry is not a good idea, even if proper standards are enforced; and it is a disaster waiting to happen if they are trained to lowered standards (even if those are the same for the men, that just makes things even worse), especially when the officers (and NCOs) are afraid to enforce discipline out of fear of political retaliation from above.

Interesting, perplexing topic.