New debate rages over women’s right to fight
‘We females can train as hard as we like. . . [but] our increased fitness still will not put us on par with that of the men.’ Jude Eden
THE push for American women to join men on the front lines of combat has taken another step forward, with the third female candidate graduating from Army Ranger School.
But the landmark success of the first three women to earn their Ranger tab, along with United States Defence Secretary Ash Carter’s initiative to increase combat roles for female troops, has set off a new round of gender wars across the country.
When Carter visited US sailors last week at Naval Air Station Sigonella in Italy, one of the first questions he fielded came from a Marine who asked why the Pentagon wants to place more women in battlefield infantry ranks.
After assuring the Marine that ‘‘we’re going to make a data-based decision in all of the services’’, Carter said simple mathematics dictated that Pentagon leaders open more combat jobs and other previously closed roles to female troops.
‘‘Half the American population is female. So I’d be crazy not to be, so to speak, fishing in that pond for qualified service members.’’
On October 1, the heads of the five US military services gave Carter recommendations on which frontline combat jobs and special forces roles should remain closed to women, along with data justifying the exclusions. Carter has pledged to accept or reject the recommendations, which he has not made public, by the start of next year.
As it is in so many other cultural disputes, the internet is now a main battleground in a fight over women’s roles that, both inside and outside the military, goes back to the nation’s founding.
Captain Shaye Haver and Lieutenant Kristen Griest, alumni of the US Military Academy at West Point, completed the Ranger School’s rigorous 62-day training programme and graduated with 94 male counterparts in August. Major Lisa Jaster, an engineer with two children, graduated last week.
News articles about the three women’s historic achievements have prompted dozens or even hundreds of online comments over whether standards were lowered for them and, more broadly, whether women should join infantry and special forces units in war.
Many comments quickly divide along gender lines, with women advocating more opportunities for female troops and men arguing against them. Some of the exchanges turn nasty.
The gender wars
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have reached the halls of Congress and West Point. Steven Russell, a Ranger School graduate who deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and other war zones before his election last November to the US House of Representatives from Oklahoma, sent a letter to Army Secretary John McHugh in September, demanding the evaluations and related performance documents for Haver and Griest while they were being tested to become qualified to join the Rangers.
Within a week, a group of female veterans and West Point graduates filed a Freedom of Information Act request for Russell’s Ranger School files.
One of the women, former army captain Sue Fulton, told Stars and Stripes, the official news outlet of the US armed forces: ‘‘This is about the fact that these are the kinds of objections we [female service members] have heard for 40 years. For some of us, enough is enough.’’
Not all the opposition to sending more women into combat comes from men.
Jude Eden, who served as a data communications specialist in the US Marine Corps from 2004 to 2008, has outlined more than a dozen studies and books spanning four decades that she said proved female troops could not meet the same physical and mental standards as male troops.
‘‘We females can train as hard as we like, and we may increase strength, stamina and fitness. Nevertheless, our increased fitness still will not put us on par with that of the men who are training to their utmost, like men in combat units and the Special Forces.
‘‘No matter how widespread feminism becomes, our bones will always be lighter, more vulnerable to breaks and fractures. Our aerobic capacity will still be 20 to 40 per cent less, and we will still be less able to bear heavy gear at a hard-pounding run.’’
Former Ranger captain Matt Griffin, who served three combat stints in Afghanistan and one in Iraq, rejected out of hand the claims that Ranger School standards were lowered in order for Haver and Griest to have graduated.
‘‘It would be very tough to water down the standards for those two women in the class with all the men that were there. There would be some disgruntled men who would stand up and speak out.’’
While a few male classmates of Haver and Griest have said testing standards were lowered for the two women, they’ve done so anonymously, and their claims were rebutted by other male classmates speaking on the record.
As much as he admires Haver, Griest and Jaster for their accomplishment, however, Griffin is not certain that they should be allowed to enter the 75th Ranger Regiment.
‘‘You’ve got America’s top freedom fighters who are alpha males on extremely stressful missions out in the middle of nowhere. If there is a man and woman together, there’s inevitably going to be some sort of romantic or sexual tension between them. That will decrease focus and deter from the mission.’’
Griffin said women served admirably with him in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he they were in separate units attached to his Rangers platoon.
One of their main assignments was to interact with Muslim women during US raids, in deference to Islamic prohibitions against direct contact between women and men, especially foreigners.
Retired lieutenant commander Brian Lippe, who served 24 years as a US Navy SEAL, said women should be allowed to become fullfledged special forces troops, but they should have their own testing regimens and then serve in allfemale units.
‘‘They should be given a chance, but it would be better for everybody if they created separate programmes instead of Washington trying to make them like guys,’’ he said.
‘‘It’s like trying to put girls in the NFL. Yet you can’t deny them the right if we have an equal society.’’