She’s always a woman to me

A case for recruiting women in combat units, with some exceptions

Kartik Bommakanti Delhi

With debate raging over whether women should be permitted to serve in combat units, the issues animating the debate sidestep some critical concerns. Rights groups advocate the principle of equality of opportunity, while opponents of women serving in combat billets see it as immoral and socially undesirable. The latter have principally couched their positions in oft-repeated stereotypes and anachronistic arguments about the social trauma the country would suffer in the event women were captured in battle. The former, while making a substantive case for an expanded role for women in the military, ignores military considerations. The terms of the debate need to centre on the principle of equality of opportunity and combat efficiency. Equality of opportunity cannot trump national security. On the other hand gender-based stereotypes and archaic arguments about women’s societal role cannot be used as a pretext to deprive women legitimate opportunities to serve in combat units where they are physically capable of performing tasks assigned to them. The key is to find an optimum balance in the tradeoff between the social imperative of giving women equal opportunities and the compulsions of combat efficiency and its consequent impact on national security. Given the roles performed by women in the armed forces today, the scope for career advancement is very limited. Inhibiting factors are limited service tenures and a general social ambivalence towards the prospect of women serving in combat units. Expansion of the role of women in our forces offers them the scope for mobility through the ranks. That begs the question, should all combat units be open to women? Yes, with the exception of submarines, the special forces, and frontline ground combat billets such as armour, infantry and artillery. 

Empirical evidence suggests that the physical limitations of women preclude service in frontline ground combat units. Three years ago the Israeli army conducted a physical evaluation among a pool of military age women and men to determine the feasibility of allowing women to serve in ground combat units. Notably, the test found that men had the endurance to cover a distance of over 55 miles as compared to 32 miles for women. Largely because the oxygen level in the haemoglobin of men is 10 per cent higher than it is among women. Women, the test found, could carry 40 per cent of their body weight whereas men could manage 55 per cent of their body weight. This is because men on average weigh 33 pounds more than women. It is estimated that military age women (aged 20-30) have approximately the same upper-body strength and lungpower as a 50-year-old man. Significantly, it punctures a widespread myth that the Israeli army deploys women in its ground combat units. Israel has not deployed women in frontline ground combat units since 1948.    

Moreover, pursuing gender-neutral training standards in a bid to mollify equal opportunity activists has proved impractical. In 2002, following a physical assessment the British Army had to reverse its policy of subjecting male and female recruits to identical standards. The factors impelling the decision were physical breakdowns due to increased stress fractures, ankle and knee injuries among women and their general incapacity to competently perform physically strenuous tasks required of infantry and armoured personnel. Lower muscle mass and weaker bone structures mean that women are more prone to injuries. As compared to men, women need to invest 50-80 greater work capacity to achieve similar results for a range of military tasks. As the study concluded, only one per cent of military-age women would qualify to serve in armoured and infantry units. These figures simply make it impractical to integrate women. In fact the pursuit of identical physical training standards by the British Army only resulted in a raft of compensation claims on the part of women soldiers against the Ministry of Defence for subjecting them to a “unisex” basic training programme. Conversely, introducing dual standards in training for entry into ground combat units for men and women risks undermining combat efficiency. The adverse impact on combat efficiency for land combat tasks could take the form of reduced operational mobility. Assume operationally, in a high-intensity conflict an infantry company commander decides to load-march his mixed sex units over a long distance within a specified time period, his capacity to do so could be severely handicapped if the women among his troops lack the requisite physical capacity to cope with the challenge. This could prove detrimental in terms of battlefield performance rendering the company commander ineffective in prosecuting operations. Instead the physical inefficiency of women could pose an unacceptable risk to their co-combatants. Despite technological advances there is no form of warfare as relentlessly unforgiving as land combat. The acute challenge of land warfare stems from variable terrain and the direct exposure of soldiers to intense physical violence. In that sense, land combat is still very primitive, contrary to the technologically deterministic claims bandied around by feminists that physical capacity matters little in contemporary warfare. 

Another salient issue is what mixed sex units would do for unit cohesion. Infantry units typically operate in small teams, particularly in low-intensity conflicts, but also at various stages in a high-intensity conflict. They are required to engage and kill the enemy at close quarters. Critical to the survivability and combat effectiveness for both armoured and  infantry units is social cohesion and camaraderie among its members. This would not be a problem in an all-male unit, but these social bonds could be ruptured if women were allowed into the unit. One of four possible consequences could come about due to integration: sexual misconduct, protectiveness, outright resentment or fraternisation towards the female inductees. This could have a deleterious effect on discipline, morale and combat effectiveness. Crucially, as the military sociologist Anna Simons argues based on her years of experience researching US special operations units, no matter how closely knit special forces soldiers are, it never compromises their judgment or distracts them from their primary tasks. This would apply to infantry and armoured units as well. 

That said, while the problem of unit cohesion applies to the air force and the navy as well, entry of women into combat units of these services is perhaps overdue. Ninety-nine per cent of the jobs in the US Airforce are open to women and 94 per cent in the US Navy (barring the US Navy SEALs and submarines). Upper body strength is not a requirement to be a fighter pilot, the capacity to pull gravitational forces is. Women in air forces around the world have shown that they possess the physical and mental aptitude to fly high-performance aircraft. Nor do a broad range of shipboard duties necessitate the same physical aptitude as heavy-duty ground combat missions. A RAND Corporation study conducted in 1997 found no negative correlation between the performance of women in air and naval combat units and general combat efficiency. Second, relative differences in training standards between men and women, in these two services the study found, is unlikely to translate into decreased combat readiness. Moreover, there is a practical case for inducting women into combat positions. India has a volunteer military, and several combat positions in the air force and the navy sometimes do not get either the best or a sufficient number of male recruits. Opening combat billets to women could redress this problem.

To be dismissive of all physical differences between men and women as “sexist” by equal opportunity activists and feminists oversimplifies the issue. Ultimately, militaries exist for war fighting and are dedicated to the management and application of organised violence. If their principal purpose is the defence of the state, it necessitates that the integration of women into combat units be in harmony with combat efficiency and the needs of national security.