Kim Schmitz
News Editor
Decision has inspired a complex debate about the role that female soldiers should play in the military
U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has announced that the ban on women in combat positions in the U.S. military will be lifted. Made in cooperation with the Obama administration, this decision will open hundreds of thousands of positions in the infantry and Special Forces that were previously off-limits to women.
The decision has sparked heated debate, with extremists on both sides seeming to be astonished by the other side’s argument. Stark proponents of lifting the ban have trouble recognizing that such a large fraction of the military was sex-specific until now. “It isn’t easy in 2013 to make the case that every man should be eligible for the draft but that no woman should be permitted to compete for a combat role in much of the armed forces,” said supporter William Saletan. Opening these positions to women would certainly reduce the need for recruitment efforts.
Advocates for keeping the ban in place feel that sex segregation in the military is the only option because women are unable to meet the physical requirements called for in active combat. They claim there are volumes of evidence to support this argument. According to Mackubin Thomas Owens of the Weekly Standard, “the average female soldier, sailor, airman and Marine is about five inches shorter than her male counterpart and has half the upper body strength…and 37 percent less muscle mass.” Additionally, “at her physical peak between the ages of 20 and 30, the average woman has the aerobic capacity of a 50-year-old male.” Carrying the load that a typical infantryman carries can also have destructive effects on the lighter female skeleton.
A 1990s study by the U.S. Military Academy classified 120 physical differences between men and women, and contributed to West Point lowering their standards across the board “in order to accommodate female cadets,” stated The Daily Beast writer David Frum.
While some supporters of eliminating the ban find no problem with these lowered standards, others advocate for the best of both worlds: only women who can pass the same physical standards asked of men should be allowed to perform the same duties as men. To this, proponents of the ban have said that the small number of women who would meet these criteria are not worth the negative change in camaraderie that they fear would result when women join the ranks.
Owens cited the writing of Captain Katie Petronio, who reflected on her experience as a combat engineer officer in Afghanistan. “I was extremely successful during both of my combat tours,” she wrote. But she continued, “Despite my accomplishments, there is no way I could endure the physical demands of the infantrymen whom I worked beside as their combat load and constant deployment cycle would leave me facing medical separation long before the option of retirement.”
According to Owens, women in the military are four times more likely than men to fall ill, and are “medically non-available” twice as much as men are.
Sgt. Stephanie Santoyo recognized that integrating herself into a combat role would be difficult, especially considering the male soldiers’ perception of females. “They want to test you emotionally, physically, see can you keep up with us,” she said, but added that she enjoyed the challenge.
Spc. Charles Lencioni is worried that the American public will not be happy with the way the ban lift plays out, firstly because they would not like to see women treated the way that some military men are treated, and secondly because only a small percentage of women will meet the physical requirements.