The Female Soldier

Since the 1970s, women have been increasingly integrated into the military; in Iraq and Afghanistan many women served on the frontline in combat. This article argues women’s integration has been facilitated by the all-volunteer professional forces in which individuals are judged purely by competence. Female soldiers have been accepted in all military roles if they perform competently. There are serious limitations in the infantry, however, as only a small number of women pass the selection tests and it is likely no more than one percent of the infantry could be female at present. Moreover, masculine prejudices abound and women are still the victims of discrimination, harassment, and abuse. T accession of women into the United States combat arms, announced on 24 January 2013 by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta following a unanimous decision by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been welcomed by many. The decision, however, remains controversial and there are some who oppose it. Indeed, Martin van Creveld, a long-standing opponent of female integration, has anticipated some arguments that opponents of integration may use. Van Creveld claims that not only are male soldiers “often obliged to undertake additional hardship in order to compensate for women’s physical weakness” but because women are weaker, “for them [men] to undergo military training and serve alongside women represents a humiliation.”1 For van Creveld, the inclusion of women into the armed forces corrodes the bonds among male soldiers, vitiating the honor of service. Indeed, David Frum, a contributing editor of Newsweek recently rejected Panetta’s ruling on similar grounds. Citing Kingsley Browne’s work Co-ed Combat: The New Evidence That Women Shouldn’t Fight the Nation’s Wars, Frum argues that women are too weak physically to perform as combat soldiers and they undermine the cohesiveness of all-male groups. Even women who are strong enough to serve in combat present a problem because the armed forces, focused on war-winning (not employment equality), are unable to apply gender-blind standards to women; they cannot treat them equally and tend to be too lenient. If van Creveld, Browne, and Frum are right, Leon Panetta and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have made a serious mistake. It is pertinent and perhaps necessary to assess the issue of female accession. Drawing on archival research, and interview and fieldwork research in Britain, Canada, France, Germany, and the United States,2 this article attempts to identify the conditions most likely to expedite the successful integration of women into the combat arms following Panetta’s announcement—and to highlight likely obstacles and 1 Martin van Creveld, “Less Than We Can Be: Men, Women and the Modern Military” Journal of Strategic Studies 23, no. 4 (2000): 12, 13. 2 Anthony King, The Combat Soldier: Infantry Tactics and Cohesion in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Women in bAttle