The Kinder, Gentler Military: Can America's Gender-Neutral Fighting Force Still Win Wars? (Lisa Drew Books) Hardcover – 22 Mar 2000

Historians differ on what causes the fall of a civilization, but certainly an inability to fight off new invaders is involved in the mix eventually. Rome, for example, had such extended frontiers that it could not recruit enough troops to maintain them all, and attacks from without had more and more success.
In America's new self-defined role as global peacekeeper, we look a lot like Rome.
Stephanie Gutmann argues with ever fiber of her soul that our current approach to gender integrating the military will hurt us in a future war. This is especially likely to happen in a repeat of the Somalia experience if urban guerrilla combat is involved. The key argument relates to the observation (in the military) that many women cannot perform the strength tasks that are essential in many combat and combat support roles. This includes loading artillery shells, carrying 80 pound packs, removing injured comrades and changing truck tires. In integrated teams, the men often have to do the women's work which reduces team effectiveness.
The danger to military effectiveness is broader than that, however. In training with integrated troops, the training is physically reduced to accommodate the needs of women and the men don't get as much training as they would benefit from. In addition, women are injured much more frequently in doing tough tasks so units are often understaffed due to unexpected losses of personnel.
Third, the rules of proper sexual conduct toward the opposite sex have been applied in a way similar to work environments in the civilian world, and the limitations put people on edge in tight quarters like aircraft carriers. Basic training has had to be revised to be a confidence building exercise, rather than a rite of passage that prepares one to fight. Drill sergeants spend as much time worrying about how to protect themselves against unfounded sexual harrassment charges as in training the troops.
Thousands of top-performing military people have seen their careers ended by the aggressive efforts to make a gender-neutral military. Many more fail to re-up because they don't like the new style.
The fundamental cause of these problems seems to be a civilian world that has grown unfamiliar with the military. Where congresswomen and men at one time mostly had served in the military, relatively few have that experience now. Civilians who lobby Congress on gender issues have even less knowledge. So, in many cases, the new rules are coming from the relatively uninformed. Descriptions of congressional fact-finding trips make it seem like that uninformed status is likely to continue.
Both the Navy (after the Tailhook convention in 1991) and the Army (after the conviction of a drill instructor on rape charges) found themselves unable to fend off the pressure to go as gender neutral as possible. The Marines have fought off the pressure and don't seem to have the same problems that the other services have due to gender issues, and physical strength is an issue on many fewer jobs in the Air Force.
At bottom, the military is having a harder and harder time recruiting. That's what made it attractive to add more women in the first place. But only so many women want to and can handle the tough military jobs. The more feminized the military, the fewer gung-ho men who want to join for ordinary jobs. It looks like a train wreck getting ready to happen.
In reading this cautionary tale, I was reminded on the experiments with New Math in the schools a generation ago that left many people with an inability to do math. Not all new initiatives work. While there are certainly benefits to having a more gender friendly military, there are limits to how far this should go. It seems like we may have passed those limits, based on the observations of hundreds of military people and studies cited in this book.
Clearly, there have been important benefits to the improvements in treating women in the military. We should be sure that we don't lose those as the line of where to stop is redrawn.
I was especially interested in the experiences in Israel and Canada. I had believed that women routinely are in the infantry in Israel. That's not true. Women have more restricted military roles in Israel than in the U.S. Canada has gone further than the U.S. and it has not gone well for them.
Check it out and see what you think!
This is a wonderful case study of the beaucratic, communication, disbelief, and misconception stalls at work. I hope some good stallbusters get to work in cleaning up this mess for the mutual benefit of all American citizens and all our military people!