Quote:
Originally Posted by polak
I can sort of see the concern outside of their strength.
Like the original post said, women might make guys inclined to do riskier things in battle to protect them and what not.
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I wonder if this is really a real concern or just a bunch of bluster from a defence department though. Is there much study in this regard?
I've never served, so I can't tell you what the culture is like. I suspect though that if we take a slice from a sports league, we'd get similar culture clash results from dropping a women into the locker room as we would if we put one in a front line squad. Does anybody know how Wickenheiser's foray into a men's league went in this regard? Or, even better, can somebody who's been in the military confirm that these two would be reasonable for comparison?
I'm pretty open to the idea of assigning according to ability, so affirmative action makes no sense. But if a woman is legitimately as good as the men, then we go ahead, as long as the decision makes the most effective combat unit. If, for extreme example, the woman causes all the men to become useless in combat (well, her side. If she caused the other side to do so, then put one in every squad
), then we've got a major problem. This might be something we'd need to test first.
To summarize: I'm not against it, as long as it doesn't impact the overall fighting capability as a whole. If the front line units are just as good with a female soldier, I see no reason to deny.
