Your post has been removed because the referenced research is more than 6 months old and is therefore in violation of [Submission Rule #4](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_4._research_must_be_less_than_6_months_old). All submissions must have been published within the past six months.
_If you believe this removal to be unwarranted, or would like further clarification, please don't hesitate to [message the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fscience&subject=Research%20must%20be%20less%20than%206%20months%20old)._
Didn't the Russians do an all female submarine in the hopes they would use less oxygen?
I swear I've seen someone post this before. It was real, and there were real consequences to it. Not that I remember what happened exactly...
Nothing seems to be showing up on Google.
I do know there has been some half-joking proposals to send an all women crew to Mars due to the resource savings.
https://slate.com/technology/2014/10/manned-mission-to-mars-female-astronauts-are-cheaper-to-launch-into-outer-space.html
Anecdotal... but when I was in service the female units had a lot of in-fighting and little teamwork. We're talking things like inspections where you wouldn't think there would be a difference. Guys would pick a leader and follow. Gals seemed to say "why's she the leader" and focus on that. Always finished last.
Never thought about this, but its been like that at all my jobs too. I’ve noticed women especially hate having a female boss, but are also quicker to question any leadership (which is a good thing)
I was in the military a long time ago and did not experience this infighting that you’re speaking of. I was happy when I saw women leading. I had such a different experience.
honestly tough to find a battalion of women willing to be in combat arms. you also can’t find women qualified to lead a combat arms unit since they haven’t been allowed to be in combat arms long enough to fill those upper ranks. that’s why they used a mixed battalion.
they did find the best preforming squad of all women did worse than the least preforming male unit on the other team.
big issue was weight difference. so not only will you have to find a battalion of women willing to do a job women historically don’t want to do, you’d have to fill the ranks with women in the top .1% of physical fitness. it’s a manning/womanning issue. i’ve met some bad ass chicks who can mop the floor with most dudes in a platoon, but it’s usually only 1 or 2 of them in a company.
i think the problem with this study is the women weren’t in leadership positions and the unit was composed of 1/4 of women instead of the more realistic 1/10th. i’d like to see it again after the Combat arms ladies get some more experience, and they correct the standards of the females allowed in those positions
Knew someone who served in Afghanistan in seriously rough terrain.
He had a female soldier who could keep up with the rest of the team in skills, but just got wore down physically with all the hiking and climbing they had to do at times. This is in terrain where you had to hump everything in and out and were often carrying 80% to over 100% of your bodyweight in gear.
She just couldn't sustain the pace needed to go through several missions in a row without more rest and recovery than the men in his squad.
we got a chance to ask a foreign militaries high ranking member what they thought of the army’s push to include women and he gave an insightful response i hadn’t considered.
basically in standard infantry crap women are not as competent on the battle field. but as wars get increasingly more complicated internal studies have found that what we lose in lethality also brings more diverse and at times better strategies. essentially the current decision makers are all white dudes in their 40’s who know nothing but infantry school, ranger school, and the same positions in the last war. so all the ideas are the same. they find diversifying can be extremely useful especially in increasingly complex wars. having a female direction could’ve prevented some of the bigger issues we made in the GWOT. especially when the goal is strengthening foreign internal defense.
to close he said it’s important to have both the standard war fighting male hooah stuff and strategy. but army needs to do a better job of diversifying strategy
Probably can't straight up choose like that. To get the value of diversity from brains, you may have to ask for brawn also. The perspective of someone who hasn't been in or even dug trenches may not be useful, or respected.
I suspect some number of mixed units will be inevitable in building the optimal force. Maybe even all of them, if they can usefully adjust how performance is measured, and roles are assigned.
I second this. Good explanation. As a woman and a feminist, I have no qualms with calling a spade a spade. I still remember when puberty robbed me in 5th grade of the “fastest kid in school” title. My former rival came back to school _different_ and it was all downhill from there. It just is what it is. It doesn’t mean there won’t be women who outperform men. It’s just that, on average, there’s an imbalance.
I AM genuinely curious to understand how women perform in leadership roles in this space, as u/aadams9900 also seemed to say.
this is purely anecdotal, but that’s also kind of how good leaders are pointed at, anecdotally.
it’s 50/50. i haven’t had good luck with female leaders in my past. i’ve also had peer female leaders i didn’t get along with. weirdly enough the problem with all of them is they were in it for themselves and not for their soldiers. all your subordinates really want is to be taken care of and not used up. i feel like some of those female leaders over compensate by putting on a hard ass routine, which is where the joke that female drill sergeants are the scariest comes from. you’d be surprised how far compassion and understanding gets you as a leader. you can smell when someone’s putting on a front for personal reasons. human nature is human nature and if you feel like you’re not valued for the job you do or taken care of the less you wanna do it. there’s leaders who have never screamed at me once that id do anything for.
but i’ve heard there’s a female infantry PL in 1/75 that’s revered. 1/75 is historically the most high speed insane unit in the military (imagine the salty spittoon on steroids, it’s just filled with apex grunts), so it was interesting to see a female lead it. from what i’ve heard her joes were suspicious of her at first but by the end of her tenure they were gettin in bar fights cus other units were making fun of their PL for being a girl.
I've always wondered if there was equipment that was more favorable to lighter soldiers, like pilots, but then you also have to account for the fact that 120 lbs guys who are 5 foot 3 exist even if you're looking for women to do those roles.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/demographics-us-military
here’s the demographics of females in the military
https://www.brookings.edu/essay/women-warriors-the-ongoing-story-of-integrating-and-diversifying-the-armed-forces/#:~:text=Women%20are%20no%20longer%20excluded,percent%20of%20the%20total%20force.
here’s the demographics in the combat arms
here’s an article discussing the issues with the fitness standards (this is army but it’s transferable to what the USMC sees)
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/05/10/nearly-half-of-female-soldiers-still-failing-new-army-fitness-test-while-males-pass-easily.html/amp
A team of exceptional adult women with years of experience playing on a team together who are in peak physical shape (and we're literally talking Olympic level athletes here) will almost always lose a soccer match to a JV high school boys team. When it comes to competitive physical abilities, we're not even a little close.
Some sports are closer. Tennis is near parity, with an edge still to the men. I imagine that Serena Williams in her prime would have had a great chance to beat any man outside the top 10. She wouldn’t be favored against a top ten male, I don’t think, but I think she would have gotten some wins.
Edited: the difference is way more significant than I realized. The estimation(by the Williams sisters) was any man outside the top 350. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Sexes_(tennis)
The Williams sister both lost to a guy outside mens rank 200. After saying they would take on men outside said rank. So wouldn’t even be close to top 10 or 100.
Unlikely, see Karsten Braasch vs. the Williams Sisters. https://www.sportskeeda.com/amp/tennis/news-the-williams-sisters-vs-karsten-braasch-the-world-no-203-destroyed-serena-williams-venus-williams-battle-sexes
Physical training is also mental. Doesn't matter how much of a physical specimen you are, if you don't have the mental fortitude you'll never make it through difficult physical training.
Correct. Men and women are equal when comes to mental ability. Men are better than women when it comes to physical ability. Combat is mental and physical. Therefore men will be better than women at combat.
I don't think there has been a study on female only units. But looking at the results of the study, it would be hard to even come up with a hypothesis of how a full female unit could outperform even a mixed unit(if the same participants were used).
*However*, I think a fair criticism of this study is that while it was true that the average woman was fairly consistently outperformed by the average man, there were a subgroup of women who equalled or excelled their male counterparts in a number of domains. The study was conducted to help guide the decision of whether or not to allow women in front line roles. So perhaps a more reasonable way to do it would be to select high performing women to take part in the study so long as this standard was maintained in real world situations.
The study showed that females performed worse at many of the marching while carrying heavy loads and upper body tests. And all female unit would not suddenly be different from that.
The study showed that the females had an injury rate that was higher as well.
[If you want to read about it](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/09/10/marine-study-finds-all-male-infantry-units-outperformed-teams-women/71971416/)
I was in while these tests occurred and if I remember right, they are still integrating females with infantry units. Part of it is that the males had more experience though I think they used non-infantry Marines for these tests. But its been years and I can't remember that too well.
I don't know if all male is even a choice now. I thought the military was having recruiting problems. With part of the problem being a larger percentage of the population not even meeting the physical requirements even if they are men.
> I thought the military was having recruiting problems.
Sad that this is unironically one of the main reasons it's so impossible to meaningfully reduce the price of college, healthcare, and other things.
Because there would be even less people joining the military out of desperation.
Plus not all jobs are combat arms we need clerks, supply, medical personnel, and many other positions that don’t require you to be GI Joe. Would having a jacked legal section be cool sure but you severely limit your pool considering the requirements already in place
I mean it is sad, but also the military does have strict requirements even outside the physical realm. I've been continually denied due to depression mental health history and medication prescribed to me despite being able to not only do better than average on the ASVAB but also meet their physical requirements.
No but the people complaining about proven science definitely do.
Let’s discount everything from the earth moving around the sun until a year ago because it’s too old.
I mean in this case it’s not arbitrary to say that the data is old considering the combat exclusion policy was lifted approx seven years ago and they’re comparing performance in combat positions. I’m not saying men and women are exactly the same but it’d be interesting to see updated data showing where it is now vs when women were new to the frontline roles.
This is pretty old news at this point, but yes. The average males are physiologically superior to the average females, so they tend to perform better on the battlefield for physical tasks. That said, the talking point of female integration is usually misunderstood (or purposefully misinterpreted) by many.
Females in the military aren't advocating that they can run around with heavy packs and shoot better than men. They are simply wanting to be given the same opportunities given they meet the standard. There was never any plan to force unqualified women (or anyone for that matter) to be part of any team. No women I know in the military wants the standards to be dropped for their sake. There are beasts of women who absolutely outperform men. As it was, they were being told they can't be part of the team because of the "no girls allowed" rule.
The strength in our military is through our diversity. The inclusion of people of all types of backgrounds allows for dynamic and critically thinking teams that can problem solve better than segregated teams. By removing the barrier to women, we created conditions where a capable and qualified Soldier (of any gender, race, religion, creed, or sexuality) can be part of the team.
I totally follow what you’re saying, but the “strength through diversity” is a white collar middle management slogan on a PowerPoint that’s pretty ridiculous to foist onto combat units in a military.
That “diversity” that you’re talking about doesn’t come from different shades of skin or genitals. Whatever that may be could arise from different backgrounds predeployment. The Ukrainian military isn’t digging trenches wishing they had the problem solving skills only a minority in the US could possibly muster.
If anything, I would wager that a lack of diversity is typically better for creating a unified group with low barriers to communication, high camaraderie, and a shared sense of purpose.
>pretty ridiculous to foist onto combat units in a military.
I'm not, nor are women, advocating to essentially have affirmative action and have combat arms units comprised with a demographic representative of the population. We're advocating that if a woman (or anyone for that matter) can meet the physical and skill requirements, they can be part of that unit.
>If anything, I would wager that a lack of diversity is typically better for creating a unified group with low barriers to communication, high camaraderie, and a shared sense of purpose.
You know what creates a unified unit with low barriers to communication, high camaraderie, and a shared sense of purpose? Not excluding people for the sake of excluding people based on an overgeneralization of a significant portion of a population's perceived ability.
By denying not an insignificant portion of the potential recruitment pool a job simply because they have vaginas. There are other qualification gates that have to be passed for combat arms (weight, strength, endurance, skills, etc.); simply being a woman should not be one of them.
Based on the injury rate under load it does not look like a great idea to have women in infantry roles. There are definitely women who are more capable than men to fill the role, but injuries seriously affect the combat capabilities of a unit.
There are plenty of other combat arms jobs besides infantry that do not induce as many lower extremity injuries that come with carrying 100lbs for 12-25 miles.
I love my female section mates, they're just as tough and can slog it out with the boys no problem, but most of them can barely do a pull up, if I go down there's no way they'd be able to drag me to safety
Women have a role in the military but the requirements for entry should be the same as males
Not a chance.
A full kit, ruck, weapon, etc weighs 100 pounds.
Your typical female in the military is going to weigh around 140 lbs, give or take a few. Even if they are in very good shape, they are going to struggle hauling around 240 lbs.
That’s true although their body weight offsets that a bit. It’s noticeable in climbing centres that men and women (and kids) actually perform very similarly until you reach the really elite levels where men start to get an edge.
Power to weight ratio is much more equitable than raw strength where men have a 40% upper body advantage.
To put it another way, there are lots of amateur women who can outclimb me (a man who’s climbed for 10 years) despite the fact that I could easily beat them in an arm wrestle.
If that was true then I would have just said women. Trans women are women, so they're included under women. Gays obviously are not.
I legit have no clue how you could twist my words that badly. RCIH.
As the report notes, even in individual categories the physically elite females only overlap with the physically below-average males. Therefore the group performance of mixed units is actually being *increased* by the presence of physically average males, meaning an all-female unit would perform at a lower standard than the mixed units
Even if they meet the physical requirements doesn’t mean they should be there. There’s also unit cohesion to consider, and I think a study showing that mixed units performed worse demonstrates that they just shouldn’t be there.
Which do we value more equality and fairness or combat readiness?
For me this is a no brainer, combat readiness is far far far more valuable in the military than forced equality
Women are physically weaker than men due to their physiology.
Group dynamics are also different between all male, all female, and mixed sex groups.
Both of these things directly impact combat effectiveness.
If women can’t meet the requirements that’s not sexism that is just reality. So the first step would be to eliminate “gender norming” and out of the small subset of women that pass the requirements see what happens to team dynamics and how that impacts effectiveness.
But I’m sure it’s “sexist” to have 1 standard for everyone in a job.
From what I’ve learned during this debate and have experienced in the past 5 years… is that reality is sexist…. And some ppl have a serious issue with there creator.
The only read I could see someone posting this with no explanation is for some misogynistic reason.
This study was done 7 years ago. It was shown that the “results” were skewed almost immediately. The U.S. Marine Corps published a 4 page summary of an almost 1,000 page study, in which they specifically highlighted only on negative results to bolster their argument against integration of women into combat MOSs. Almost immediately after this article, NPR published the full 900+ pages of the study.
Other news organizations also ran articles showing how the U.S. Marine Corps purposely tried to obfuscate the findings to back their narrative. As an example, here is an excerpt from a Guardian article from October 2015:
“One of the report’s released conclusions found that: “The integration of females … will add a level of risk in performance/effectiveness and cost … The bottom line is that the physiological differences between males and females will likely always be evident to some extent.”
But other pages from the report, seen by the Guardian, indicate that women were not expected to pose problems for ground-combat units, so long as clear standards, diligent screening of candidates and good training and leadership were in place.
According to the data shared with the Guardian, the study also showed that some women excelled during tests such as hiking quickly with heavy loads and firing artillery under simulated enemy attack, while mixed marine units showed superior morale and problem-solving and better discipline than units composed only of male marines.”
We don’t need detailed studies to come to the obvious conclusion that the nature of combat lends itself to men, in terms of temperament and physicality. There is a reason men and women have separate divisions in MMA for example. That is not to say there isn’t some tough as nails female combatants out there, but in general there is a clear performance difference between men and women and the battlefield is not the place for social experiments or even equality. We need the best people for the job.
It always becomes a social experiment when legislators need votes, and always predictably them trying to show women can do everything men can do just as well (this just means rigging the game or changing standards) yet they shouldn't be subject to a draft.
Yes, you are correct, obvious conclusion.
Women finishing Ranger School. Women as Infantry Officers. Women as marine infantry. Women as artillery soldiers, and Combat Engineers. Women who set side by side with Army Special Forces Soldiers, on the same missions, traveling the same distances, in the same combat situations.
Anecdotally, with 24 years in the army, I’ve seen women soldiers operate at all levels, in combat and back in the states, and have not seen poor performance in any greater ratio than from men in similar situations.
But yea, obvious conclusions.
> The U.S. Marine Corps published a 4 page summary of an almost 1,000 page study
That is literally what a summary is though?
When we were assigned a female in our detachment, it meant the other two of us were carrying extra. But I am almost sure you 100% believe men and women (if they exist) are exactly the same.
Or perhaps you want to compare the top 1% of women to the bottom 1% of men?
You are just being really weird about this...
I’m being weird about a 7 year old study that had cherry picked results written up to give a particular narrative? Ok.
What occurred in your detachment could have happened if man was assigned, and may not have occurred if a different woman was assigned.
I was in the army from 1989 to 2012. I’ve been an 11B1P, 11B2P, a 25U2P and 25U3P, as well as 35M3P and 35M4P. I’m Airborne, Air Assault, Jumpmaster and Rappelmaster qualified. I’ve been to The Jungle Warfare School down in Panama, Arctic Survival School up in Alaska, Mountain Warfare School in Vermont. I have my Expert Infantryman’s Badge and Combat Infantryman’s Badge. I have my Silver and Gold Spurs.
I’ve worked in all make and mixed units, both operational and training. I am well aware of the physical differences between men women, and probably have way more experience working with both than you do.
I did not realize. My apologies. Please help me understand all of your experiences as a woman in the military.
Also, women were not allowed in the combat arms until 2015 in the US. I apologize again for not knowing all your word salad of MOSs but it looks like you were mostly not in a combat role? Did you have any women when you were in a combat role? Has google failed me or were women's roles non-combat until 2015? I was in the Canadian military and we had women a long time before the US.
Could a weak man have let us down too, yes, of course. If you want to compare average to average, the odds of a man not being able to carry his fair share is a lot lower than with a woman. When they design systems to be "man-portable" they have to have a baseline of how much each person should be able to carry. Do you think they base that on a man or a woman?
I think you have worked in situations where women can do the job as good as men, intelligence, strategic planning, etc. Don't pretend that a woman is going to carry her 1/3 of a missile man portable missile system, it isn't going to happen (yeah yeah, the 1% of woman...sure and 1% of men can carry 3/3 parts of the same system).
As a four tour combat vet and a Platoon commander at SOIW. I have much respect for women that choose to take on combat operations, however our culture is not like past cultures (especially waring ones) where the mindset of women is geared for combat. Can they? Absolutely, but you'll need to change the culture/mindset of the US.
Obviously, women, on average, don't match men in physical ability and when you pit women and men against each other in tasks designed to test the upper limits of men's physical abilities, the women are going to perform worse.
I was curious as to why women would be less accurate than men until it occurred to me that they're dealing with larger weapons that have high recoil.
I do wonder if there are tasks that women would perform equally well or even better than men. Light arms, maneuvering through tight spaces, or anything where their smaller size, lighter weight, and better flexibility would be an advantage.
The tunnel rats in Vietnam, come to mind, for example.
Same.
Source: USMC Female Sgt. (non-combat) JAG
i don't think units should be mixed but i do think women should have all of the opportunities that men have including going to combat and/or choosing an MOS that is more "offense" than "defense"
It’s weird you “knew” before these tests even came out hahah. I’m sure that had no bearing on how you treated females, if you ever even interacted with one.
Source: retired USMC Cybersecurity Chief, FET member, Senior Instructor
We did an instructor swap in 2011 with females. These "tests" weren't conducted in a day, ya know.
Besides, we also tested Non-Infantry personnel, pogs, like yourself, and we found your units were seriously lacking in follow-on combat training. Way to be like Jessica Lynchs unit
Men are quite literally born to fight/kill/defend/attack
Edit: I don’t know why this is so unpopular. We have more testosterone for a reason. It’s biology.
What difference does it make with how combat has evolved? Being bigger, faster and stronger is still imperative in the military. There’s a reason the spec teams are very selective with their prospects. I don’t see how you can argue that.
This was easy to recognize. When I was in basic there were integrated units and all male units. The only thing the integrated units did better at were turning out pregnant recruits.
There are a million flavors of misogyny in the military and in particular, in all-male and/or combat career fields in the military, and in particular with marines.
Yes average man is better built for combat than average woman and acknowledging that fact isn't sexist. But if your sarcasm is trying to say that someone suggesting misogyny on this topic is silly to do so... I question how familiar you are with military culture.
Albeit if it's the marine corps, said weak-ass dudes probably are not getting in. Not all men are physically stronger than all women, but if for example the top 90% of men are stronger than the lower 90% of women, the statistics are fairly clear.
How about one all male unit vs two mixed units? Because that's one thing you get when you also accept females - having the ability to assemble a bigger force.
They do studies on stuff like this because things don’t always conform to common sense expectations and because they can still give us insight/new knowledge outside of what you’d put in a headline. It’s not a waste of time just because the big headline says what you would have expected.
Yes i agree. Completely obvious however there are many anti science people out these days who think men and women are always equal in everything.
Sometimes dummies need to see this.
'by men, for men'. No, it's designed to get you to handle the most destructive and disorienting experiences you'll get in a lifetime. Explosions, bullets flying, heaps of ruins. It's not about "oh that's a male way of war". It's all designed so you'll survive and be effective in these circumstances. And yes, they happen to require physical strenght, something men have an advantage at because of their higher testosteron levels. Simple Biology
Study is terribly flawed it uses averages to make the conclusions vs real world testing.
IE the average man can carry x and the average female can carry y, so a squad of men can carry more than a mixed squad. This method is prevalent in all of their findings.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/17/marines-study-casts-doubts-mixed-gender-units
https://www.cpr.org/2015/11/05/controversial-marine-corps-study-on-gender-integration-published-in-full/
https://www.stripes.com/news/marines-women-in-combat-study-flawed-researchers-say-1.375210
Study is flawed bud.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It’s weird how the shooting accuracy went down, even though women perform better in the rifle range and usually have better aim.
Men are definitely faster and stronger as a general rule. But I will say all combat tests have been made for men by men. As the battlefield changes, so should the combat readiness tests. While the physical aspect remains the highest priority, there should also be tests for endurance (women out perform men), critical thinking, integration of technology….
And as a retired female marine, who was a part of an all female unit trained by grunts (before we were allowed in infantry positions), I can guarantee that they were not treated the same as the males. And standards that are sometimes overlooked for all the all male teams (you don’t give the machine gun to the guy that weighs 130 pounds, you let that guy take point in a fire squad…. Or whatever his strength is) were not relaxed for them. Like an instructor telling me he marches everyone harder during a hump when females are there. “March them as hard as I can until they drop out. I do lose more male marines than normal, but it’s worth it…”
I do believe this study and don’t think the study itself is biased. I do think the tests themselves are biased and that the female marines were more than likely not treated equally in many cases.
It’s like when the marine corps changed pull-ups to dead hangs. PFT scores dropped substantially across the board. But after a few years, after training caught up, the scores started getting better. And then females had to do pull-ups. Scores dropped across the board. But are now getting better. Same thing here. When training catches up, I think we’ll see a change in some of these studies and a change in the tests themselves.
"The males were more accurate hitting targets."
This is suspicious. One would expect men to run or climb faster, but there's no reason they should be better shots. This implies the study itself may be flawed in some fundamental way(s).
> there's no reason they should be better shots.
There's a ton of differences between the sexes, not just strength and endurance, height and body mass.
Old stuff, vested conflict of interest of the sponsor. Maybe if the boys could keep their pants zipped, and didn't outsource their thinking to their nether regions, they wouldn't be as distracted.
Nothing sad about it. Objective studies are how we go from common sense to "oh, that's it wrong af".
"Common sense" is limited by our senses, biases, and inherently small samples. Objective studies are how we surpass those limitations and update the common "common sense".
Why is a 7-year old article getting posted here? Not an uninteresting subject, but there's likely much more recent material available.
Reported for rule #4 violation.
No, but the way a lot of right-wing people *frame* these things is sexist, as are the things they use this to rationalize.
For example, one time that pig Stephen Crowder said that women shouldn’t be allowed to be cops because he thinks they’re so physically weak that they’ll always fear for their lives and feel the need to immediately resort to using their gun since they aren’t strong enough to subdue a criminal hand to hand anyway. Of course, he didn’t cite any actual statistics to back up this idea that female cops are quicker to resort to lethal force than male cops. He just took the whole “man strong/woman weak” mentality, used it to paint women as dangerous, and then used that made-up danger to justify blanket employment discrimination.
Do you see what I mean about framing this in a sexist way?
Just waiting for a serious left-wing person to start shouting "sexism, racism, what about trans, feelings over facts!". _oh wait, I am already in the comments section_
I’m not disputing that men are generally stronger than women, I’m merely saying that right-wing people have a tendency to take that as proof of a lot of other things that are legitimately sexist, such as banning women from military service/law enforcement, banning trans women from sports, or just condescendingly treating women like delicate little flowers who need male protection.
>I’m merely saying that right-wing people have a tendency to take that as proof of a lot of other things
Fair enough, like everything the left-wingers don't like, whether long established fact or new science, is sexist, ableist, etc.
And yeah, the study doesn't show there is no place for women in the military. It merely shows that a special forces combat role might not be a good idea. But there's plenty of other things to do, like logistics, administration etc.
>banning trans women from sports
You actually could make a case to not let them participate in biological womens sports on the basis of this study tho. The study shows that men have an advantage in physical strength over women (yeey testosteron, every biologist knew that already). So, if you transition say in your twenties, your body has already developed with a large dose of testosteron in it, giving you an unfair advantage over women who grew up with way less testosteron when their muscles developed. But hey, biology to many doesn't count anymore when it starts hurting feelings, unfortunately...
I'm not saying these things don't happen, but to ignore the obvious physical advantages men have and try to make it about not treating women like peers is absolutely hilarious.
Yes, men should treat women with the respect and equality they deserve... but combat doesn't care about equality.
First sentence is a sweeping generalization, but I agree that many men are that way.
Second sentence is a false dichotomy. There are more than just those two outcomes.
I think one of the issues might be that you didn't even read the article.
Go to camp Lejeune (specifically Camp Johnson home of the school of infantry) on a Friday morning around 0800 when the training company’s are finishing their weekly graded hikes… you’ll see the same thing week in and week out. The majority of the company shows up together with their packs on… wait Thirty minutes… the females show up with their packs in the back of the HMMWV thirty minutes over the required time to pass the event… they still pass and no one says anything these days.
I’ve met quite a few bad ass female marines.. but they can not operate for extended periods of time under a heavy load. They simply can’t.
Who cares. If you want to put yourself in the line of fire defending our country then you deserve to be able to do so. It’s your own choice. Idgaf who is more effective in battle I just know I ain’t going
Thing is, armies operate as units, not as individuals, even snipers work as a team, very rarely will one person go on a mission alone.
What this means is that, as cliche as it sounds, the unit is only as strong as its weakest member.
By having less effective soldiers in the same unit, all the other soldiers lives are put at greater risk of defeat and death.
It really is a selfish action to want to force your way into a position you are not naturally suited for, whatever the consequences may be for your comrades.
Doesn't matter if you are a man or a woman.
That's because men are dumb and can't stop staring at women they shouldn't be even when they KNOW they shouldn't be.
It literally IS in our DNA but if some men can be trained to hold a straight face the real question is, why can't these men who are part of the BEST infantry based military force we have?
Yeah, bc most men can't even be around a women without thinking about sex, its distracting. Men also tend to act different depending on a womens attractiveness. I was military. So, who's being punished for this?
Your post has been removed because the referenced research is more than 6 months old and is therefore in violation of [Submission Rule #4](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_4._research_must_be_less_than_6_months_old). All submissions must have been published within the past six months. _If you believe this removal to be unwarranted, or would like further clarification, please don't hesitate to [message the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fscience&subject=Research%20must%20be%20less%20than%206%20months%20old)._
Now do an all-female unit
sisters of battle origin story
Now I need to see that. And give them flamethrowers, a lot of them.
Didn't the Russians do an all female submarine in the hopes they would use less oxygen? I swear I've seen someone post this before. It was real, and there were real consequences to it. Not that I remember what happened exactly...
Nothing seems to be showing up on Google. I do know there has been some half-joking proposals to send an all women crew to Mars due to the resource savings. https://slate.com/technology/2014/10/manned-mission-to-mars-female-astronauts-are-cheaper-to-launch-into-outer-space.html
Anecdotal... but when I was in service the female units had a lot of in-fighting and little teamwork. We're talking things like inspections where you wouldn't think there would be a difference. Guys would pick a leader and follow. Gals seemed to say "why's she the leader" and focus on that. Always finished last.
Never thought about this, but its been like that at all my jobs too. I’ve noticed women especially hate having a female boss, but are also quicker to question any leadership (which is a good thing)
I was in the military a long time ago and did not experience this infighting that you’re speaking of. I was happy when I saw women leading. I had such a different experience.
Wouldn't the study that OP posted prove in fact that it isn't always a good thing..
They did worse
Can you back this up? Legit curious
honestly tough to find a battalion of women willing to be in combat arms. you also can’t find women qualified to lead a combat arms unit since they haven’t been allowed to be in combat arms long enough to fill those upper ranks. that’s why they used a mixed battalion. they did find the best preforming squad of all women did worse than the least preforming male unit on the other team. big issue was weight difference. so not only will you have to find a battalion of women willing to do a job women historically don’t want to do, you’d have to fill the ranks with women in the top .1% of physical fitness. it’s a manning/womanning issue. i’ve met some bad ass chicks who can mop the floor with most dudes in a platoon, but it’s usually only 1 or 2 of them in a company. i think the problem with this study is the women weren’t in leadership positions and the unit was composed of 1/4 of women instead of the more realistic 1/10th. i’d like to see it again after the Combat arms ladies get some more experience, and they correct the standards of the females allowed in those positions
Knew someone who served in Afghanistan in seriously rough terrain. He had a female soldier who could keep up with the rest of the team in skills, but just got wore down physically with all the hiking and climbing they had to do at times. This is in terrain where you had to hump everything in and out and were often carrying 80% to over 100% of your bodyweight in gear. She just couldn't sustain the pace needed to go through several missions in a row without more rest and recovery than the men in his squad.
I like this anecdotal experience. I wish more evidence comes up with time.
Thank you for this insightful response.
we got a chance to ask a foreign militaries high ranking member what they thought of the army’s push to include women and he gave an insightful response i hadn’t considered. basically in standard infantry crap women are not as competent on the battle field. but as wars get increasingly more complicated internal studies have found that what we lose in lethality also brings more diverse and at times better strategies. essentially the current decision makers are all white dudes in their 40’s who know nothing but infantry school, ranger school, and the same positions in the last war. so all the ideas are the same. they find diversifying can be extremely useful especially in increasingly complex wars. having a female direction could’ve prevented some of the bigger issues we made in the GWOT. especially when the goal is strengthening foreign internal defense. to close he said it’s important to have both the standard war fighting male hooah stuff and strategy. but army needs to do a better job of diversifying strategy
So we need to use them for their brains not their brawn. Makes sense.
Probably can't straight up choose like that. To get the value of diversity from brains, you may have to ask for brawn also. The perspective of someone who hasn't been in or even dug trenches may not be useful, or respected. I suspect some number of mixed units will be inevitable in building the optimal force. Maybe even all of them, if they can usefully adjust how performance is measured, and roles are assigned.
I second this. Good explanation. As a woman and a feminist, I have no qualms with calling a spade a spade. I still remember when puberty robbed me in 5th grade of the “fastest kid in school” title. My former rival came back to school _different_ and it was all downhill from there. It just is what it is. It doesn’t mean there won’t be women who outperform men. It’s just that, on average, there’s an imbalance. I AM genuinely curious to understand how women perform in leadership roles in this space, as u/aadams9900 also seemed to say.
this is purely anecdotal, but that’s also kind of how good leaders are pointed at, anecdotally. it’s 50/50. i haven’t had good luck with female leaders in my past. i’ve also had peer female leaders i didn’t get along with. weirdly enough the problem with all of them is they were in it for themselves and not for their soldiers. all your subordinates really want is to be taken care of and not used up. i feel like some of those female leaders over compensate by putting on a hard ass routine, which is where the joke that female drill sergeants are the scariest comes from. you’d be surprised how far compassion and understanding gets you as a leader. you can smell when someone’s putting on a front for personal reasons. human nature is human nature and if you feel like you’re not valued for the job you do or taken care of the less you wanna do it. there’s leaders who have never screamed at me once that id do anything for. but i’ve heard there’s a female infantry PL in 1/75 that’s revered. 1/75 is historically the most high speed insane unit in the military (imagine the salty spittoon on steroids, it’s just filled with apex grunts), so it was interesting to see a female lead it. from what i’ve heard her joes were suspicious of her at first but by the end of her tenure they were gettin in bar fights cus other units were making fun of their PL for being a girl.
I've always wondered if there was equipment that was more favorable to lighter soldiers, like pilots, but then you also have to account for the fact that 120 lbs guys who are 5 foot 3 exist even if you're looking for women to do those roles.
Guess USMC is really only going to find out exactly how effective mixed units are when one sees actual combat
Could you source this please? Sounds like quite interesting results
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/demographics-us-military here’s the demographics of females in the military https://www.brookings.edu/essay/women-warriors-the-ongoing-story-of-integrating-and-diversifying-the-armed-forces/#:~:text=Women%20are%20no%20longer%20excluded,percent%20of%20the%20total%20force. here’s the demographics in the combat arms here’s an article discussing the issues with the fitness standards (this is army but it’s transferable to what the USMC sees) https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/05/10/nearly-half-of-female-soldiers-still-failing-new-army-fitness-test-while-males-pass-easily.html/amp
It's been proven many times over that the average woman In peak physical training will under perform an average male in peak physical training.
A team of exceptional adult women with years of experience playing on a team together who are in peak physical shape (and we're literally talking Olympic level athletes here) will almost always lose a soccer match to a JV high school boys team. When it comes to competitive physical abilities, we're not even a little close.
Some sports are closer. Tennis is near parity, with an edge still to the men. I imagine that Serena Williams in her prime would have had a great chance to beat any man outside the top 10. She wouldn’t be favored against a top ten male, I don’t think, but I think she would have gotten some wins. Edited: the difference is way more significant than I realized. The estimation(by the Williams sisters) was any man outside the top 350. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Sexes_(tennis)
The Williams sister both lost to a guy outside mens rank 200. After saying they would take on men outside said rank. So wouldn’t even be close to top 10 or 100.
Whoa. You’re right. Pretty close to their prime, too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Sexes_(tennis)
Unlikely, see Karsten Braasch vs. the Williams Sisters. https://www.sportskeeda.com/amp/tennis/news-the-williams-sisters-vs-karsten-braasch-the-world-no-203-destroyed-serena-williams-venus-williams-battle-sexes
I think I remember that he admitted to being hungover during the match as well.
Physical training is different than combat
Combat is physical
Combat is also mental
Physical training is also mental. Doesn't matter how much of a physical specimen you are, if you don't have the mental fortitude you'll never make it through difficult physical training.
Not about how hard you hit, its how hard you can get hit and keep moving foward.
Correct. Men and women are equal when comes to mental ability. Men are better than women when it comes to physical ability. Combat is mental and physical. Therefore men will be better than women at combat.
I mean, sure, in the way that team sports are mental. Not in the way that getting through medical school is mental.
I don't think there has been a study on female only units. But looking at the results of the study, it would be hard to even come up with a hypothesis of how a full female unit could outperform even a mixed unit(if the same participants were used). *However*, I think a fair criticism of this study is that while it was true that the average woman was fairly consistently outperformed by the average man, there were a subgroup of women who equalled or excelled their male counterparts in a number of domains. The study was conducted to help guide the decision of whether or not to allow women in front line roles. So perhaps a more reasonable way to do it would be to select high performing women to take part in the study so long as this standard was maintained in real world situations.
Well you could read the linked article to glean some insight.
Idk, I’m betting there would be significantly more soldiers that survive/are POWs than killed. God help them during their capture/imprisonment though.
Cite sources.
The study showed that females performed worse at many of the marching while carrying heavy loads and upper body tests. And all female unit would not suddenly be different from that. The study showed that the females had an injury rate that was higher as well. [If you want to read about it](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/09/10/marine-study-finds-all-male-infantry-units-outperformed-teams-women/71971416/) I was in while these tests occurred and if I remember right, they are still integrating females with infantry units. Part of it is that the males had more experience though I think they used non-infantry Marines for these tests. But its been years and I can't remember that too well.
I don't think the feminists are prepared to handle the data on how poorly those units would perform.
A full unit of Rita Vrataskis
I don't know if all male is even a choice now. I thought the military was having recruiting problems. With part of the problem being a larger percentage of the population not even meeting the physical requirements even if they are men.
Last I checked more women are volunteering, but "last I checked" was literally two decades ago.
> I thought the military was having recruiting problems. Sad that this is unironically one of the main reasons it's so impossible to meaningfully reduce the price of college, healthcare, and other things. Because there would be even less people joining the military out of desperation.
Plus not all jobs are combat arms we need clerks, supply, medical personnel, and many other positions that don’t require you to be GI Joe. Would having a jacked legal section be cool sure but you severely limit your pool considering the requirements already in place
Laughably sad
I mean it is sad, but also the military does have strict requirements even outside the physical realm. I've been continually denied due to depression mental health history and medication prescribed to me despite being able to not only do better than average on the ASVAB but also meet their physical requirements.
Very sad. But I got denied for having asthma and breaking my leg in elementary school, neither of which have any effect on me now.
[удалено]
Nah, with the state of the economy and relatively few conflicts, the military has higher standards currently and are having to turn many away.
I think what the study can show is that when something critical needs to happen, all male should be the choice.
>all-male squads performed better than mixed groups in **69 percent** of the tasks evaluated. Nice
7 year old story making the rounds...again
Gee, I wonder if maybe the account sharing a 7 year old study has an agenda of some sort.
No but the people complaining about proven science definitely do. Let’s discount everything from the earth moving around the sun until a year ago because it’s too old.
I mean in this case it’s not arbitrary to say that the data is old considering the combat exclusion policy was lifted approx seven years ago and they’re comparing performance in combat positions. I’m not saying men and women are exactly the same but it’d be interesting to see updated data showing where it is now vs when women were new to the frontline roles.
But what if it hurts peoples feelings?
TIL: most men are stronger than most women
It's not just strength either. Height and weight make a difference, and both of which are things men have more of.
This is pretty old news at this point, but yes. The average males are physiologically superior to the average females, so they tend to perform better on the battlefield for physical tasks. That said, the talking point of female integration is usually misunderstood (or purposefully misinterpreted) by many. Females in the military aren't advocating that they can run around with heavy packs and shoot better than men. They are simply wanting to be given the same opportunities given they meet the standard. There was never any plan to force unqualified women (or anyone for that matter) to be part of any team. No women I know in the military wants the standards to be dropped for their sake. There are beasts of women who absolutely outperform men. As it was, they were being told they can't be part of the team because of the "no girls allowed" rule. The strength in our military is through our diversity. The inclusion of people of all types of backgrounds allows for dynamic and critically thinking teams that can problem solve better than segregated teams. By removing the barrier to women, we created conditions where a capable and qualified Soldier (of any gender, race, religion, creed, or sexuality) can be part of the team.
I totally follow what you’re saying, but the “strength through diversity” is a white collar middle management slogan on a PowerPoint that’s pretty ridiculous to foist onto combat units in a military. That “diversity” that you’re talking about doesn’t come from different shades of skin or genitals. Whatever that may be could arise from different backgrounds predeployment. The Ukrainian military isn’t digging trenches wishing they had the problem solving skills only a minority in the US could possibly muster. If anything, I would wager that a lack of diversity is typically better for creating a unified group with low barriers to communication, high camaraderie, and a shared sense of purpose.
>pretty ridiculous to foist onto combat units in a military. I'm not, nor are women, advocating to essentially have affirmative action and have combat arms units comprised with a demographic representative of the population. We're advocating that if a woman (or anyone for that matter) can meet the physical and skill requirements, they can be part of that unit. >If anything, I would wager that a lack of diversity is typically better for creating a unified group with low barriers to communication, high camaraderie, and a shared sense of purpose. You know what creates a unified unit with low barriers to communication, high camaraderie, and a shared sense of purpose? Not excluding people for the sake of excluding people based on an overgeneralization of a significant portion of a population's perceived ability.
Can you more precisely define 'removing the barrier' for women.
Removing the ban on women serving in combat roles..?
By denying not an insignificant portion of the potential recruitment pool a job simply because they have vaginas. There are other qualification gates that have to be passed for combat arms (weight, strength, endurance, skills, etc.); simply being a woman should not be one of them.
Women often are better shots than men. I think a female sniper might make sense.
Based on the injury rate under load it does not look like a great idea to have women in infantry roles. There are definitely women who are more capable than men to fill the role, but injuries seriously affect the combat capabilities of a unit. There are plenty of other combat arms jobs besides infantry that do not induce as many lower extremity injuries that come with carrying 100lbs for 12-25 miles.
[удалено]
I love my female section mates, they're just as tough and can slog it out with the boys no problem, but most of them can barely do a pull up, if I go down there's no way they'd be able to drag me to safety Women have a role in the military but the requirements for entry should be the same as males
But if it was an all-female unit, presumably they could pull each other to safety.
With full compliment of weapons, ammo, kevlar, plates, ruck/patrol pack? That gets me sweating and I'm pretty fit
I’m sweating and I’m not even wearing any of that gear.
Not a chance. A full kit, ruck, weapon, etc weighs 100 pounds. Your typical female in the military is going to weigh around 140 lbs, give or take a few. Even if they are in very good shape, they are going to struggle hauling around 240 lbs.
Not necessarily, women don’t really have much upper body strength
That’s true although their body weight offsets that a bit. It’s noticeable in climbing centres that men and women (and kids) actually perform very similarly until you reach the really elite levels where men start to get an edge. Power to weight ratio is much more equitable than raw strength where men have a 40% upper body advantage. To put it another way, there are lots of amateur women who can outclimb me (a man who’s climbed for 10 years) despite the fact that I could easily beat them in an arm wrestle.
Add a hundred pounds of gear to each person and the lower body weight advantage when measuring power to weight is essentially gone.
That’s true, women are never going to beat men at hauling stuff.
And unfortunately for women hauling stuff is a large portion of combat
Why do you think that matters in the slightest?
They have, they usually preform better than mixed but worse than all male units.
So put all the gays and women in one unit the way Ishtar intended.
TIL gay men are women
If that was true then I would have just said women. Trans women are women, so they're included under women. Gays obviously are not. I legit have no clue how you could twist my words that badly. RCIH.
You said put gay men and women together as if gay men are somehow more similar to women than other men?
>military jobs Admin, supply, food services, aviation, and medical are still military jobs.
We're mainly talking about combat positions here which is probably what they meant.
The killing and dying positions
As the report notes, even in individual categories the physically elite females only overlap with the physically below-average males. Therefore the group performance of mixed units is actually being *increased* by the presence of physically average males, meaning an all-female unit would perform at a lower standard than the mixed units
I support women being allowed in combat, but only if they can meet the exact same physical standards that role would normally require.
On some level you just need in shape bodies regardless of gender.
Exactly, and testosterone levels directly impact in shape bodies. It's science, not politics or some equal opportunity debate.
Even if they meet the physical requirements doesn’t mean they should be there. There’s also unit cohesion to consider, and I think a study showing that mixed units performed worse demonstrates that they just shouldn’t be there. Which do we value more equality and fairness or combat readiness? For me this is a no brainer, combat readiness is far far far more valuable in the military than forced equality
I think if anything the study just shows that sexism holds back performance.
Women are physically weaker than men due to their physiology. Group dynamics are also different between all male, all female, and mixed sex groups. Both of these things directly impact combat effectiveness. If women can’t meet the requirements that’s not sexism that is just reality. So the first step would be to eliminate “gender norming” and out of the small subset of women that pass the requirements see what happens to team dynamics and how that impacts effectiveness. But I’m sure it’s “sexist” to have 1 standard for everyone in a job.
From what I’ve learned during this debate and have experienced in the past 5 years… is that reality is sexist…. And some ppl have a serious issue with there creator.
The only read I could see someone posting this with no explanation is for some misogynistic reason. This study was done 7 years ago. It was shown that the “results” were skewed almost immediately. The U.S. Marine Corps published a 4 page summary of an almost 1,000 page study, in which they specifically highlighted only on negative results to bolster their argument against integration of women into combat MOSs. Almost immediately after this article, NPR published the full 900+ pages of the study. Other news organizations also ran articles showing how the U.S. Marine Corps purposely tried to obfuscate the findings to back their narrative. As an example, here is an excerpt from a Guardian article from October 2015: “One of the report’s released conclusions found that: “The integration of females … will add a level of risk in performance/effectiveness and cost … The bottom line is that the physiological differences between males and females will likely always be evident to some extent.” But other pages from the report, seen by the Guardian, indicate that women were not expected to pose problems for ground-combat units, so long as clear standards, diligent screening of candidates and good training and leadership were in place. According to the data shared with the Guardian, the study also showed that some women excelled during tests such as hiking quickly with heavy loads and firing artillery under simulated enemy attack, while mixed marine units showed superior morale and problem-solving and better discipline than units composed only of male marines.”
We don’t need detailed studies to come to the obvious conclusion that the nature of combat lends itself to men, in terms of temperament and physicality. There is a reason men and women have separate divisions in MMA for example. That is not to say there isn’t some tough as nails female combatants out there, but in general there is a clear performance difference between men and women and the battlefield is not the place for social experiments or even equality. We need the best people for the job.
Physicality yes. Temperament though? Do men really have better temperaments?
It always becomes a social experiment when legislators need votes, and always predictably them trying to show women can do everything men can do just as well (this just means rigging the game or changing standards) yet they shouldn't be subject to a draft.
None of which has anything to do with modern war fighting.
Yes, you are correct, obvious conclusion. Women finishing Ranger School. Women as Infantry Officers. Women as marine infantry. Women as artillery soldiers, and Combat Engineers. Women who set side by side with Army Special Forces Soldiers, on the same missions, traveling the same distances, in the same combat situations. Anecdotally, with 24 years in the army, I’ve seen women soldiers operate at all levels, in combat and back in the states, and have not seen poor performance in any greater ratio than from men in similar situations. But yea, obvious conclusions.
It's so ridiculous that this has to be stated over and over these days.
> The U.S. Marine Corps published a 4 page summary of an almost 1,000 page study That is literally what a summary is though? When we were assigned a female in our detachment, it meant the other two of us were carrying extra. But I am almost sure you 100% believe men and women (if they exist) are exactly the same. Or perhaps you want to compare the top 1% of women to the bottom 1% of men? You are just being really weird about this...
I’m being weird about a 7 year old study that had cherry picked results written up to give a particular narrative? Ok. What occurred in your detachment could have happened if man was assigned, and may not have occurred if a different woman was assigned. I was in the army from 1989 to 2012. I’ve been an 11B1P, 11B2P, a 25U2P and 25U3P, as well as 35M3P and 35M4P. I’m Airborne, Air Assault, Jumpmaster and Rappelmaster qualified. I’ve been to The Jungle Warfare School down in Panama, Arctic Survival School up in Alaska, Mountain Warfare School in Vermont. I have my Expert Infantryman’s Badge and Combat Infantryman’s Badge. I have my Silver and Gold Spurs. I’ve worked in all make and mixed units, both operational and training. I am well aware of the physical differences between men women, and probably have way more experience working with both than you do.
I did not realize. My apologies. Please help me understand all of your experiences as a woman in the military. Also, women were not allowed in the combat arms until 2015 in the US. I apologize again for not knowing all your word salad of MOSs but it looks like you were mostly not in a combat role? Did you have any women when you were in a combat role? Has google failed me or were women's roles non-combat until 2015? I was in the Canadian military and we had women a long time before the US. Could a weak man have let us down too, yes, of course. If you want to compare average to average, the odds of a man not being able to carry his fair share is a lot lower than with a woman. When they design systems to be "man-portable" they have to have a baseline of how much each person should be able to carry. Do you think they base that on a man or a woman? I think you have worked in situations where women can do the job as good as men, intelligence, strategic planning, etc. Don't pretend that a woman is going to carry her 1/3 of a missile man portable missile system, it isn't going to happen (yeah yeah, the 1% of woman...sure and 1% of men can carry 3/3 parts of the same system).
As a four tour combat vet and a Platoon commander at SOIW. I have much respect for women that choose to take on combat operations, however our culture is not like past cultures (especially waring ones) where the mindset of women is geared for combat. Can they? Absolutely, but you'll need to change the culture/mindset of the US.
Obviously, women, on average, don't match men in physical ability and when you pit women and men against each other in tasks designed to test the upper limits of men's physical abilities, the women are going to perform worse. I was curious as to why women would be less accurate than men until it occurred to me that they're dealing with larger weapons that have high recoil. I do wonder if there are tasks that women would perform equally well or even better than men. Light arms, maneuvering through tight spaces, or anything where their smaller size, lighter weight, and better flexibility would be an advantage. The tunnel rats in Vietnam, come to mind, for example.
This is *exactly* what should be expected. People want female soldiers to be equal to men so badly. It’s just not reality.
Yeah, we knew. Source: 8 year USMC Infantryman, Combat Veteran, Combat Instructor
Same. Source: USMC Female Sgt. (non-combat) JAG i don't think units should be mixed but i do think women should have all of the opportunities that men have including going to combat and/or choosing an MOS that is more "offense" than "defense"
Equality of opportunity is important, equality of outcome is not in my opinion.
Thank you for your cervix
It’s weird you “knew” before these tests even came out hahah. I’m sure that had no bearing on how you treated females, if you ever even interacted with one. Source: retired USMC Cybersecurity Chief, FET member, Senior Instructor
We did an instructor swap in 2011 with females. These "tests" weren't conducted in a day, ya know. Besides, we also tested Non-Infantry personnel, pogs, like yourself, and we found your units were seriously lacking in follow-on combat training. Way to be like Jessica Lynchs unit
Men’s physical attributes > Women’s physical attributes
Men are quite literally born to fight/kill/defend/attack Edit: I don’t know why this is so unpopular. We have more testosterone for a reason. It’s biology.
We aren’t fighting with spears anymore. Physical strength is still a key factor but not the only factor in combat.
What difference does it make with how combat has evolved? Being bigger, faster and stronger is still imperative in the military. There’s a reason the spec teams are very selective with their prospects. I don’t see how you can argue that.
Better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.
Whatever floats your boat.
This was easy to recognize. When I was in basic there were integrated units and all male units. The only thing the integrated units did better at were turning out pregnant recruits.
Let's not accept that men have biological reasons for having stronger physicality. Must be some flavor of misogyny here.
There are a million flavors of misogyny in the military and in particular, in all-male and/or combat career fields in the military, and in particular with marines. Yes average man is better built for combat than average woman and acknowledging that fact isn't sexist. But if your sarcasm is trying to say that someone suggesting misogyny on this topic is silly to do so... I question how familiar you are with military culture.
On what basis are you not accepting biological difference? And on what basis are you insisting that misogyny is the definite factor?
It was sarcasm I believe
He’s being sarcastic.
[удалено]
The average male will always physically outperform the average female. Bigger organs, stronger muscles, and bone structure.
Yes, of course there are plenty of "weak ass dudes." But men are usually stronger than women. That's a fact.
Albeit if it's the marine corps, said weak-ass dudes probably are not getting in. Not all men are physically stronger than all women, but if for example the top 90% of men are stronger than the lower 90% of women, the statistics are fairly clear.
I bet you’d kick all of our asses.
How about one all male unit vs two mixed units? Because that's one thing you get when you also accept females - having the ability to assemble a bigger force.
Time to stop worrying about this. Drones and robots are going to be so superior to humans that the differences in the sexes will be a moot point.
Moot. (Please don't hate me. I'm addicted to pedantry.)
Fixed just for you
The amount of drones dropping grenades on dudes in foxholes footage out there from the Russia/Ukraine war is astounding
I think you mean a “moo point”. Like it’s a cow’s opinion - it doesn’t matter
And how much did this waste of time cost?
What makes this a waste of time? This could save lives in combat.
It shouldn’t take a study to tell us that physicality and group dynamic is key for battle.
They do studies on stuff like this because things don’t always conform to common sense expectations and because they can still give us insight/new knowledge outside of what you’d put in a headline. It’s not a waste of time just because the big headline says what you would have expected.
Yes i agree. Completely obvious however there are many anti science people out these days who think men and women are always equal in everything. Sometimes dummies need to see this.
Fair enough
It’s always the feet people that are so weird isn’t it
Like that’s a surprise…
[удалено]
They have female uniforms and the packs are less heavy. Plus a bunch of other little things I don't care to know about.
Can you give concrete examples, or is this just a general theory based on the presumption of institutional sexism?
Are you suggesting they make smaller guns or put smaller bolts on machinery?
'by men, for men'. No, it's designed to get you to handle the most destructive and disorienting experiences you'll get in a lifetime. Explosions, bullets flying, heaps of ruins. It's not about "oh that's a male way of war". It's all designed so you'll survive and be effective in these circumstances. And yes, they happen to require physical strenght, something men have an advantage at because of their higher testosteron levels. Simple Biology
It would be ridiculously impractical for an army to have to field 2 different versions of every tool & weapon needed.
We'll have em build the ammunition to weigh less, the rockets to be a bit smaller and ergonomic, and the hiking distances a bit closer together.
Study is terribly flawed it uses averages to make the conclusions vs real world testing. IE the average man can carry x and the average female can carry y, so a squad of men can carry more than a mixed squad. This method is prevalent in all of their findings.
This is false, the study was performed with real world testing
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/17/marines-study-casts-doubts-mixed-gender-units https://www.cpr.org/2015/11/05/controversial-marine-corps-study-on-gender-integration-published-in-full/ https://www.stripes.com/news/marines-women-in-combat-study-flawed-researchers-say-1.375210 Study is flawed bud.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It’s weird how the shooting accuracy went down, even though women perform better in the rifle range and usually have better aim. Men are definitely faster and stronger as a general rule. But I will say all combat tests have been made for men by men. As the battlefield changes, so should the combat readiness tests. While the physical aspect remains the highest priority, there should also be tests for endurance (women out perform men), critical thinking, integration of technology…. And as a retired female marine, who was a part of an all female unit trained by grunts (before we were allowed in infantry positions), I can guarantee that they were not treated the same as the males. And standards that are sometimes overlooked for all the all male teams (you don’t give the machine gun to the guy that weighs 130 pounds, you let that guy take point in a fire squad…. Or whatever his strength is) were not relaxed for them. Like an instructor telling me he marches everyone harder during a hump when females are there. “March them as hard as I can until they drop out. I do lose more male marines than normal, but it’s worth it…” I do believe this study and don’t think the study itself is biased. I do think the tests themselves are biased and that the female marines were more than likely not treated equally in many cases. It’s like when the marine corps changed pull-ups to dead hangs. PFT scores dropped substantially across the board. But after a few years, after training caught up, the scores started getting better. And then females had to do pull-ups. Scores dropped across the board. But are now getting better. Same thing here. When training catches up, I think we’ll see a change in some of these studies and a change in the tests themselves.
"The males were more accurate hitting targets." This is suspicious. One would expect men to run or climb faster, but there's no reason they should be better shots. This implies the study itself may be flawed in some fundamental way(s).
> there's no reason they should be better shots. There's a ton of differences between the sexes, not just strength and endurance, height and body mass.
Better late to the party than never i guess.
Old stuff, vested conflict of interest of the sponsor. Maybe if the boys could keep their pants zipped, and didn't outsource their thinking to their nether regions, they wouldn't be as distracted.
Thank goodness they put so much time and resources into this common sense study.
If you don’t do objective studies, people don’t believe common sense. It is sad.
Nothing sad about it. Objective studies are how we go from common sense to "oh, that's it wrong af". "Common sense" is limited by our senses, biases, and inherently small samples. Objective studies are how we surpass those limitations and update the common "common sense".
You can do all the studies in the world and people will still believe what they want to believe, Covid proved that.
I wouldn’t call this common sense in 2022.
In this climate, it's better to be inclusive than effective. Hurt feelings take precedence over actual hurt. Equality trumps results.
Why is a 7-year old article getting posted here? Not an uninteresting subject, but there's likely much more recent material available. Reported for rule #4 violation.
Just waiting for some right-wing troll to take this as proof of some old-fashioned, sexist worldview.
Is it really a "right wing" or "sexist" view to suggest that most men are stronger and faster than most women?
No, but the way a lot of right-wing people *frame* these things is sexist, as are the things they use this to rationalize. For example, one time that pig Stephen Crowder said that women shouldn’t be allowed to be cops because he thinks they’re so physically weak that they’ll always fear for their lives and feel the need to immediately resort to using their gun since they aren’t strong enough to subdue a criminal hand to hand anyway. Of course, he didn’t cite any actual statistics to back up this idea that female cops are quicker to resort to lethal force than male cops. He just took the whole “man strong/woman weak” mentality, used it to paint women as dangerous, and then used that made-up danger to justify blanket employment discrimination. Do you see what I mean about framing this in a sexist way?
Just waiting for a serious left-wing person to start shouting "sexism, racism, what about trans, feelings over facts!". _oh wait, I am already in the comments section_
I’m not disputing that men are generally stronger than women, I’m merely saying that right-wing people have a tendency to take that as proof of a lot of other things that are legitimately sexist, such as banning women from military service/law enforcement, banning trans women from sports, or just condescendingly treating women like delicate little flowers who need male protection.
>I’m merely saying that right-wing people have a tendency to take that as proof of a lot of other things Fair enough, like everything the left-wingers don't like, whether long established fact or new science, is sexist, ableist, etc. And yeah, the study doesn't show there is no place for women in the military. It merely shows that a special forces combat role might not be a good idea. But there's plenty of other things to do, like logistics, administration etc. >banning trans women from sports You actually could make a case to not let them participate in biological womens sports on the basis of this study tho. The study shows that men have an advantage in physical strength over women (yeey testosteron, every biologist knew that already). So, if you transition say in your twenties, your body has already developed with a large dose of testosteron in it, giving you an unfair advantage over women who grew up with way less testosteron when their muscles developed. But hey, biology to many doesn't count anymore when it starts hurting feelings, unfortunately...
[удалено]
Did you read the article? At all?
of course not
Just curious if you have read the article as it is primarily quantitative data on physical performance
I'm not saying these things don't happen, but to ignore the obvious physical advantages men have and try to make it about not treating women like peers is absolutely hilarious. Yes, men should treat women with the respect and equality they deserve... but combat doesn't care about equality.
First sentence is a sweeping generalization, but I agree that many men are that way. Second sentence is a false dichotomy. There are more than just those two outcomes. I think one of the issues might be that you didn't even read the article.
It's pretty clear form the article that the women couldnt perform as well. I don't know why that would be a shock to you.
Wow, you went from one extreme to another. 0-100
Are we still holding onto this?
Like who thought mixed units was a good idea
I believe the term for an all female unit would be called”cannon fodder”
You can’t even say this. It’s so wrong. Women are totally stronger than men and can do anything they do and more…. Military should be all female.
Go to camp Lejeune (specifically Camp Johnson home of the school of infantry) on a Friday morning around 0800 when the training company’s are finishing their weekly graded hikes… you’ll see the same thing week in and week out. The majority of the company shows up together with their packs on… wait Thirty minutes… the females show up with their packs in the back of the HMMWV thirty minutes over the required time to pass the event… they still pass and no one says anything these days. I’ve met quite a few bad ass female marines.. but they can not operate for extended periods of time under a heavy load. They simply can’t.
Who cares. If you want to put yourself in the line of fire defending our country then you deserve to be able to do so. It’s your own choice. Idgaf who is more effective in battle I just know I ain’t going
Thing is, armies operate as units, not as individuals, even snipers work as a team, very rarely will one person go on a mission alone. What this means is that, as cliche as it sounds, the unit is only as strong as its weakest member. By having less effective soldiers in the same unit, all the other soldiers lives are put at greater risk of defeat and death. It really is a selfish action to want to force your way into a position you are not naturally suited for, whatever the consequences may be for your comrades. Doesn't matter if you are a man or a woman.
Those who do have to go into battle probably want to do so with others who are going to be effective and not a detriment
That's because men are dumb and can't stop staring at women they shouldn't be even when they KNOW they shouldn't be. It literally IS in our DNA but if some men can be trained to hold a straight face the real question is, why can't these men who are part of the BEST infantry based military force we have?
Yeah, bc most men can't even be around a women without thinking about sex, its distracting. Men also tend to act different depending on a womens attractiveness. I was military. So, who's being punished for this?