The Christian Right and conservatives generally don't seem to like having women serve combat functions in the American military. The image of women as warriors contradicts - in a massive way - the traditional image of women as mothers, wives, and nurturing figures. To have women in combat is to overturn basic Christian conceptions of what role women have in society - and they'll do anything they can to stop that from occurring.

One of the most common arguments against women in the military is that their presence has led to a decline in fitness standards - or that the standards for women are lower than for men, leading to an overall reduction in soldiers' ability to fight. Phil Carter, responding to a number of arguments against women in the military, has a nice rejoinder to this one:

[T]he increasing reliance on female recruits has not led to a decline in physical standards. The services have adopted physical-fitness test standards for each sex, after conducting exhaustive physiological studies on the subject to see what the right measures of fitness should be. But these are fitness tests -- not combat readiness tests -- and the standards are designed to test baseline fitness. In essence, they test for the ability to work long hours, be resistant to disease (historically the largest battlefield killer), deal with physiological and psychological stressors, and other factors. Consequently, age and gender-normed standards are appropriate, because these are not combat readiness tests. Any doctor will tell you that disease and fitness risks vary by age and sex, and the military's standards simply reflect that reality.

Where standards have not declined is in the combat-readiness standards expected of soldiers and Marines -- the requirement to road march for 12 miles, carry a wounded comrade, carry an M249 squad automatic weapon, etc. Every division I'm aware of has a training regulation (usually numbered 350-50-1) that outlines these standards for its subordinate units. In the units I served in -- gender-integrated combat MP units at the division level -- these standards were enforced without regard to gender. And that was because we, as leaders, set the standard and enforced it ruthlessly because we knew that these combat readiness standards were important. (It helped that the senior MP colonel in 4ID at this time was a tough-as-nails female West Point graduate with two combat patches and the experience to know the importance of enforcing standards.)

I was not at all aware of the difference between these two types of standards - but I can be forgiven that because I'm not exactly on intimate terms with the military. Many of those who argue against female soldiers, however, are on intimate terms with the military and that makes me wonder about their failure to note the above distinction. If they are ignorant, that ignorance isn't very forgivable. If they aren't ignorant, then they are deliberately misleading others and counting on the ignorance of the general public to ensure that their deception goes unnoticed.

Unless, of course, Carter is wrong and combat-readiness standards either have declined or are not being met in ways which are directly attributable to the presence of women in combat positions. Carter allows for the possibility that combat-readiness standards aren't being enforced as well as they should be in all units because that is dependent upon good leadership and not all units are led as well as they should be - the question then becomes, I think, what the overall trend is. Carter argues that this is only a question of leadership rather than gender, but I'm not sure that is quite right. After all, might not a unit leader fail to uphold strict standards on the fear of "rocking the boat" if too many women fail? That sounds possible - and I'm sure that there are other scenarios which are directly dependent upon leadership but also connected to gender.

I'm not disagreeing with Carter's conclusions that having women in the military and in combat positions has been a failure - on the contrary, I think he is right and that his responses should be read by anyone interested in teh debate. Still I wonder if there is more going on than is immediately apparent.

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