“Any of them are fine, really–all that matters is that they’re female, right?”
Among the core values of the U.S. Marine Corps is Honor:
“Honor guides Marines to exemplify the ultimate in ethical and moral behavior; to never lie cheat or steal; to abide by an uncompromising code of integrity; respect human dignity; and respect others. The quality of maturity, dedication, trust and dependability commit Marines to act responsibly; to be accountable for their actions; to fulfill their obligations; and to hold others accountable for their actions. “
According to NPR, the USMC has quietly postponed the requirement for all its female recruits to be able to do three pull-ups. The standard, which was to go into effect on January 1, 2014 for all women in the Marines, just as it has long been the upper-body strength requirement for men, has put back at least a year for “further study.” Marine women have not yet had to meet the same upper-body strength test as males because they were not permitted onto the battlefield. Beginning in 2016, in response to the calls of feminists and women’s rights advocates, females in the Marine Corps and Army will be able, well, allowed, to serve in infantry, armor and artillery units, where the lack of sufficient physical ability can cost lives and result in military failure.
Why is the standard being changed? Simple: so far, women have not been able to make the grade. Only 45 % of female recruits tested at the end of boot camp were able to complete three pull-ups; 99 % of male recruits pass the test. Lance Cpl. Ally Beiswanger told NPR that the decision to postpone the pull-ups requirement had been made “ensure all female Marines are given the best opportunity to succeed.”
Is such a decision consistent with the an “uncompromising code of integrity”? No. Of course it isn’t. Integrity precludes double standards in any context. Integrity demands that the standards be the same for all recruits, that would-be Marines of any race, creed, age, size or gender than fail those standards ne deemed unfit to serve, and that no manipulations, postponements or alterations in the standards be made to help any particular Marine or class of Marine have “the best opportunity to succeed.” Indeed, any other course not only mocks the concept of integrity, it also undermines the Corps commitment to integrity at all.
This isn’t equality, or fairness, or responsibility, or consistency, or equity, justice, prudence, respect or common sense. It is pure politics.
And we all know how much integrity there is in politics.
From the USMC website:
Semper Fidelis distinguishes the Marine Corps bond from any other. It goes beyond teamwork—it is a brotherhood that can always be counted on. Latin for “always faithful,” Semper Fidelis became the Marine Corps motto in 1883. It guides Marines to remain faithful to the mission at hand, to each other, to the Corps and to country, no matter what. Becoming a Marine is a transformation that cannot be undone, and Semper Fidelis is a permanent reminder of that. Once made, a Marine will forever live by the ethics and values of the Corps.
Right.
__________________________________
Pointer: Althouse
Source: NPR
Ethics Alarms 
Marine Corps Ethos is trumped by their oath of office. As long as the military is used as a social experiment in defiance of nature, then they are under implied obligation (read as “orders”) to make sure that experiment works.
Marines can’t defy their implied objective because their own Ethos (subordinate to the ethos of the administration and congress which outranks them), which is to ‘prove’ that women are equal to men in regards to combat rigors.
And when nature proves that the politically correct contention- imposed on the military by anti-military politicians- is just plain wrong, they do what liberal politicians usually do. They alter the rules, not their contentions, in the face of that reality. Unfortunately, there are few high ranking officers to stand up against them. Those that have find themselves in civilian life very quickly under this administration.
There ARE FEW high ranking officers. Obama has relieved over 200 flag officers and replaced them with left-sympathic generals and admirals. Of course there is no resistance.
Obama knows that there are always some men who will sacrifice their integrity for personal advancement. No system on Earth can weed them all out.
I cant speak to all those officers but three of the Marines who were relieved were relieved by the Commandant or by their commanders not by the President and were properly relieved of their command for either incompetence or they had lost the trust of their commander. It has nothing to with Obama but has to do Generals , and in some cases Colonels being held to the standards of the Corps.
“Is such a decision consistent with the an “uncompromising code of integrity”? No. Of course it isn’t. Integrity precludes double standards in any context.”
I only have a second so I will try and make this short..
I wouldn’t have said this was a quiet announcement, more of an under reported one as it doesn’t fit with the lefts focus on putting women on the front lines and eventually obtaining the highest positions in the ground combat focused branches. To obtain those positions usually requires being a successful combat arms commander. As is being demonstrated now with the current Commandant, he is out of touch with the primary war-fighters and that is a bad thing. Yet another of the Presidents water carriers who should have been fired long ago.
As for the primary contention of piece, what is the honorable thing to do? Females can’t meet the standard, even under the new standard it was still not equal as men are required 20 for a top score and women only required 8. The implementation of this has been in the works for the last 3 years, it has been a failure from the start, it will continue to be a failure as men and women are different. The gap in physical performance is not slight, no matter how much it is downplayed, it is significant. This is where civilian oversight of the military becomes a problem as political mandates have to become action. If enacted better than 55 percent of the females in the Marine Corps wouldn’t be able to perform the minimum, thus making them ineligible for promotion and eventually leading to them being discharged.
In the end civilian oversight will lead to the standard being lowered, as the initial double standard was required to allow women into the service. Infantry officer course was left mostly alone prior to allowing women to attend; none have yet to complete it. Prior to enlisted women attending infantry school there were changes implemented which resulted in making it physically easier. Prior to these changes the school mirrored the basic requirements on fleet infantrymen such as the completion of the MCRES.
The Marine Corps is leading the way in evaluating putting women in combat arms that has been mandated to it by civilian government. In these evaluations there are going to be things that come out that are going to be unpleasant realities for some, and many will outright reject the realities. Gender equality in the military comes at a price; this is not comparable to racial equality, the price for gender equality will be a reduction of combat effectiveness the civilians need to decide if the price is right.
Tests (of whatever kind) should be related to the capability required to do the job.
What has happened historically is that simple tests have been used as proxies for actual requirements. If someone can run X miles in Y minutes, they have a high chance of being generally fit enough in the area required for the job, even if it has nothing to do with running.
This, plus the historically all-male recruitment pool, has led to some requirements being relaxed. Ability to fit into confined spaces being the one that most comes to mind, important in damage control.
Tests have become less and less related to actual needs. Ability to change a track isn’t tested, ability to bench-press is. It’s simpler, and worked sorta kind adequately. The bad thing about this is that tests become discredited, they’re performed because they’ve always been performed, not because anyone sees any relation to the job.
So of course if someone says “why 3 pull-ups not 4? Or 2?” no-one has a good answer.
Make the tests meaningful, so in the initial stages or when recruiting pool is small, you can say :”If you can’t pass test T1, you can’t do job J1″. And stick to it. No more justification for different standards for recruits who are of different sexes.
This will lead to imbalances, sometimes wild imbalances, in proportions of various groups in various jobs. But this reflects reality, not PC.
Fun fact, your Physical Fitness Test results are directly tied to the scoring system used to determine promotions in the lower ranks. Holding women to the male standard would make women significantly less competitive for the coveted E-4 rank, both in general MOS fields and especially in the infantry – where the required score for promotion is already so high that most guys never see it in their first enlistment.
And as a further bonus the actual organizational and operational culture of the Marine Corp (and other branches) is so far from the advertised and idealized values that there are several extremely popular blogs that make their bread and butter off comic or frank criticisms of the same. One blog, called Terminal Lance (a reference to a cultural term in the Marine lower enlisted for someone who never makes corporal) makes critical comics of the Marine Corp that are so popular it’s syndicated in the branch’s service news paper, The Marine Corp Times.
Shoot Zoey, that wasnt meant as a response to you. Though I would add that the Combat Fitness Test, a test more tailored to modern combat stresses, is much more popular in the day to day fitness training in a lot of places.
No. It actually reflects P.C. It’s not just a matter of inherent physical ability. There’s a further question of mental and moral ability. Men are naturally inclined for combat beyond women. And no, it’s not just social. Society (a healthy one, at least) merely reflects this natural instinct. Young women are valuable to society as the Spartans well understood. Men are soldiers. Women are the mothers of soldiers. It’s the natural order of things.
It’s a tendency, not a universal, but otherwise I agree.
Men tend to be more naturally inclined to combat than women. Just as men tend to be taller than women.
But there are exceptions, and we can’t afford to waste limited human resources by not allowing for that.
Two things regarding female tendencies (remember, there are many exceptions) in a psychological sense in combat.
First, taking prisoners is not natural to them. A helpless enemy who has surrendered is far more likely to receive humane treatment if men are involved.
Second, if their maternal instincts are activated, getting them not to throw their lives away making futile rescue attempts is very difficult.
Remember these are generalities though, tendencies, and psychologically men and women are more similar than different in general. Just not in these areas.
testing
An enigmatic comment, to be sure…
I was trying to get back on for a comment, Jack. I had just composed a lengthy one in repsonse to Zoe, only to see it vanish into the Black Hole of Cyberspace. I find that discouraging, to say the least.
The PFT is the baseline requirement for all Marines each job does have it’s own requirements, some may be the PFT some may be higher. Striving to get folks to perform the minimum required standard for a job in the name of equality should be the last thing the military should concern itself with. This social engineering in the military needs to end.
In all jobs, everywhere, from police to firefighters to the military, construction workers and law professors, Presidents and judges, the qualifications should be exactly the same for all, regardless of race, gender, age, nationality or physical disability. Whatever the social malady varying from this principle is supposed to cure, the treatment is worse than the disease. Integrity is the casualty.
You’re mistaken, the military has always operated on different rules then the society at large. The change is that now instead of focusing on having the most capable fighters, we want equality. When those female infantry don’t happen, the standards will be lowered: that is unethical, I don’t disagree. The mealy-mouthed lefties don’t understand that we are not talking about acceptable performance, not where national security is concerned. We want to performers. The gender performance gap places top women at the higher end than average men.
The more dishonest will try to tell you how successful other nations have been taking this on, but none have been successful. The units that didn’t lower standards have no females, the rest have watered down standards to meet social goals. You don’t think police and firefighters have suffered from the exact same thing, you are delusional.
Sorry for the crappy formatting and grammer, I am on my phone.
I did some cleaning up.
Thanks
Still wrong and stupid, unfair, discriminatory and self-destructive, and obviously so.
Sorry, Jack, but Steve’s got it right. The military has to operate on a values system based on the imperative of defending one’s nation and winning wars as quickly and effectively as possible. This calls for a logic and a sound understanding of the basis of the human spirit rooted in unrelenting reality. The hardest sort of reality, as it likewise encompasses life and death on a massive scale. Thus, the military is no place for social experimentation or political correctness.
I’m curious: how did describing the system Steve derides as “wrong and stupid, unfair, discriminatory and self-destructive, and obviously so” suggest that I disagree with him in any way?
Because it is none of those things. It is wholly right for maximizing military potential. That’s the bottom line for the mission. I’ll allow that it may be termed “discriminatory” to a degree, but so what?
Mmh…I find this a difficult issue because some professions call for a combination of mental AND physical abilities. Although this is concerning only sports, I would like to give an example: during my teens, fencing was my passion and I was more or less successful at it. Till the mid 90s foil fencing was the only way to go for women and therefore the only weapon they were allowed to compete in. The épée and sabre were reserved for male combatants although the weight difference between foil, épée and sabre is at a max only 600 grams. (The only difference in equipment: women wear extra protective gear over their breasts.) I thought it a gross unfairness, especially in a sport that strutted its sense of fair play.
Fortunately these ridiculous limitations were challenged and eventually abolished.
So, although I longed to compete with the épée, I never had the slightest wish to compete against a man with said weapon.
Considering all this I still observe that even at the Olympics the men don’t run with the women. I don’t consider that discrimination but an acknowledgement of physical limitations between the sexes and instead of glossing them over we have to examine and indicate them, so that it can improve the collaboration between the sexes AND minimize resentments on boths sides.
I don’t know how this issue can be resolved to everybody’s satisfaction but still, there’s to be a better way than what is the status quo.
Two comments.
1. Thirty years ago or so, the motivations of the military really were to keep women out of any position of authority. My (female) cousin was in the Navy, and wanted to join the Shore Patrol. The Navy wanted to keep women out, but couldn’t put it in those terms, so they decided that SP had to bench press a certain amount (I want to say 110 pounds, but don’t quote me). They figured that would solve their problem, but Cindy, who couldn’t have weighed more than 125, went out and passed the test… and became one of the first half dozen or so women on Shore Patrol.
2. I remember reading about the ramifications of lowering standards for upper body strength in the military some time ago. The specific problem discussed at that time was that women were unable to change tires on a jeep because they couldn’t lift the spare, meaning that in certain areas they couldn’t go out alone. Can’t remember an exact date, but I know where I was at the time, which places it sometime in the late ’90s.
As a former navy guy, I just want to give an alternate point of view here. An army/navy/etc.. should be, to the extent feasible, a reflection of the society it exists in. That goal is somewhat secondary to the goal of combat readiness, but as the army is itself a political instrument of sorts (clausewitz), there’s no reason politics can’t be some part of it’s consideration.
Physical standards for all the forces have changed throughout the years as the force’s desires and goals have changed: http://www.artofmanliness.com/2011/09/12/are-you-as-fit-as-a-world-war-ii-gi/, as an example for the marines. IN the navy, as of when I went in, there was no longer a pullup requirement, it was a timed hang. I guess one can consider this an ethical issue if it reflects on the fitness of the service, but I think it would be hard to argue convincingly that the armed services of today are less capable then their forebears.
The problem, in sum isn’t that the marines/army etc.. have gotten soft: It’s that we as a society have. A discussion to bet had there, surely, but I can’t see how acknowledging how the society you draw from has changed is a bad thing.
“As a former navy guy, I just want to give an alternate point of view here. An army/navy/etc.. should be, to the extent feasible, a reflection of the society it exists in”
That meat of that sentence should begin: In a democracy, “if we want an army of the people, as opposed to a mercenary one, then I just want to…”
Then let em all hang, then. There is no argument that can justify saying a woman is fit for combat who can’t pass a standard that eliminates a male soldier as “unfit.”
Ha! I loved your play on words there.
I wonder if this has to do with the amount of people the military wants.
If they suddenly need to recruit a few million extra warm bodies, they will lower standards.
Nah.
We’re in a drawdown period right now.
Because slashing the military after a big war has always worked so well for us…
The drawdown is irrelevant to numbers when the numbers coming in are reducing faster than the drawdown. Recruiters are having a very difficult time filling their quotas without huge bribes (called bonuses), statistical manipulation and sometimes outright corruption.
The lowering of standards is part of this.
The Marine Corps is having no issue meeting goals, I cant speak for the other services but the Marine Corps is having no problem. Bonuses play a part in retention and drawing folks into specific jobs, overall numbers are fine.
“…difficult time filling their quotas without huge bribes…”
The Army, Navy and Air Force aren’t either.
No, Michael. What they’ll do is institute more and increasingly rigid basic training to bring those recuits (or draftees) up to standard. However, the days of mass conscript armies are likely over.
Only 3 pull ups in The Marines!!! I was a Army Reservist way back and I managed to do 40. Not bragging but this is shocking!!!
Keep in mind that 3 is the minimum, the score for 3 pull ups even if you max out the run and crunches is not going to give you a score that will be competitive.
40 consecutive pull up is very good, not many people in the world could do that.
Let me clarify a score of three for a male wouldn’t make you competitive, female if it were to go in effect it would, if she did well on the crunches and run.
Is what should be required of every soldier the same though? I’m not in the military, so I don’t pretend to know the answer, but the first thought that came to my mind is why “3” pull-ups? Why not 2, or 10? Why is 3 the right number?
But okay, let’s assume that it is 3 — does that measure physical strength or physical fitness? If it’s the latter, then the test seems to be the wrong one, doesn’t it? Women and men generally are built differently, with men having more muscle mass. But women tend to be more flexible. Men also are faster but women can excel at endurance. (I’m making generalizations about physically fit women and men obviously.) Often, when women are tested for physical fitness, flexibility, balance, and core strength are looked at as measures of fitness.
If the ability to do a certain number of pull-ups means you’ve reached the minimum standard for being in the field, then obviously I agree with the post here. But, if this test was designed primarily as gauging male fitness, then maybe the test should be reevaluated? I imagine that there are even professional male athletes who would fall flat on their face in a yoga class doing some of those poses.
Well, pull-ups or chin-ups are bad measurements of anything useful. Last I looked, for example, women held the record for one arm pull-ups. It’s nor absolute arm strength, but lat/arm to total body weight ratio. A slim woman with good upper body strength can out chin any male body-builder.
The point is the job and the tasks it requires. If the job is the same, the fitness requirements, standards and tests, whatever they are should be exactly the same regardless of gender. The exact move or its required number of repetitions are irrelevant. A male lifeguard should not have to be a better swimmer than a female life guard.
Maybe the test should be more reflective of the actual tasks then — but even then there needs to be selection. I imagine that all men who pass the pull-up test still are not able to change the treads on a tank because that requires immense strength, right? We wouldn’t keep all male recruits out of the military if they weren’t able to do that task, but I assume the military makes sure that the right men are assigned to those duties. I don’t like the idea of putting anybody in the field (male or female) if they can’t do the job, but shouldn’t we allow the military determine who is fit and who is not?
There in the military.. At least the army… To update the fitness test to be more immediately reflective of modern combat rigors. I was partied the brigade that initially tested the new exercise regimen.
Pull ups were added because in urban environments, especially middle eastern ones, soldiers found themselves often hauling their whole weight up a wall or fence.
Pull ups are not without purpose. The “classical” fitness test was only push-ups, pull-ups and a run, not because of combat applicability but because there used to be much greater fervor to join te military. The army figured a simple fitness test was fine to determine that a solider was fit enough for their individual unit to develop them along combat and job specific lines of fitness.
Every unit commander could and often did add layers to the fitness test based on their mission. In my airborne unit we had to do 6 pull ups, because that would determine your ability to pull up on your parachute risers to maneuver during your descent as well as certain combat situations.
If a soldier failed those extra standards, the commander could transfer the soldier out of the unit.
See — that makes perfect sense to me. If you are in the field, you have to be physically fit. But, if you have an office position or work in the mess hall, is the pull-up component necessary? And, as technology is vastly changing warfare, I don’t mind changing the rules as long as it’s okay for the particular position. As Jack noted, however, whatever rules are in place should be fair to both genders.
Every Marine must maintain a basic level of fitness, which is measured by the PFT and CFT. The scores of which go directly into a individuals chance of promotion. If there were not separate standards no females would ever get promoted, that is why there is a male/female standard and scores are adjusted to provide one scale. The PFT consists of three tests, pull ups or flex arm hang for females, crunches and 3 mile run. The first tests upper body strength and muscles endurance, the second core strength and muscles endurance, the third cardio and endurance.
Many jobs in the many jobs in the Marine Corps the physical requirement is the PFT and CFT, since it is the lowest required performance level. In other jobs the physical requirement is much greater but is not measured as a separate physical test but as a job performance evaluation such as loading and firing x number 155mm projectiles over x amount of time or conducting a movement to contact of x distance in x amount of time with a full combat load. How you perform the physical requirements of your job are evaluated in your job performance. Are there some jobs in the Marine Corps where you don’t need the physical attributes that the PFT test? Yes and no, daily job maybe not but if you consider those who are normally not combat arms do in fact experience combat then yes they do need a base level of fitness. Another example is band members, they found themselves not carrying instruments but bodies as they assisted mortuary affairs on the battlefield to take care of all those killed in the fighting.
In the Marine Corps every Marine is expected and required to maintain a certain level of combat preparedness so that if needed you can grab any Marine and have them guard a wall or at least defend themselves from an enemy attack, thus freeing up infantrymen from having to provide that protection and allowing them to be focused on offensive operations.
“as technology is vastly changing warfare” Simply not true.
Look — I admit that I know nothing about warfare or about how our military works other than what I’ve read in books. Nada. But, I keep thinking about a recruit who may be completely fluent in Arabic (and various dialects), relatively fit, smart, with a strong desire to serve our country. (And perhaps I know too many CIA people, but this is the type of person that comes to mind.) Should the military turn this person down because he/she can’t do the requisite number of pull-ups? I hope it wouldn’t.
Most of my family has served in the Army and Navy, and while most of them were at the front, that was not always the case. My father was very physically fit, but he served in intelligence. The only physical activity he had to do was surfing in Hawaii off-duty while his friends were serving in Southeast Asia. The military needed him, but they didn’t need him to do pull-ups. Is there anything wrong with permitting discretion? A test for a Navy Seal or Ranger should be more rigorous than the piccolo player, and I don’t have a problem with that.
I thought the CFT didn’t have separate scores for male and female.
Female CFT scores are much lower then males
As in they don’t have to score as high to pass or they that are not scoring as high?
Ok I stopped being lazy and looked it up. Thanks. I didn’t know they has separate max scores.
Lower mins as well, 5:27 for 880, 17 30lbs lifts and 5:59 for maneuver under fire.
Beth: One reality of the new military environment is that front lines in the classical sense of the term are increasingly invalid. Any soldier, regardless of specialty, needs to be able to function as a rifleman on a moment’s notice. To one extent or another, this has always been true.
I think pull-ups are a good measurement if it comes to a situation in which you literally have to pull your own weight. If I imagine carrying a 100 pounds of equipment of body armor, ammo, food and some such even if only during training camp (or whatever it’s called) and then not being able even to move my own body weight with just my arms. How can I not be a hinderance to everybody else in my unit…
And honestly which young sporty person can’t do three pull-ups, male or female. That’s just sad.
I think the requirements to become a PE teacher are stricter than this.
I wouldn’t mind seeing what that record is. The Marine Corps does consecutive pull ups. The current record for women is 36 set in 2011, the current Guinness record for men is 136 (a Marine BTW). There is a report of Czech doing 232 a few years back but I am not 100 percent on that one.
As for your “A slim woman with good upper body strength can out chin any male body-builder” is a bogus claim. Pull ups are general measurement of upper body strength and fitness. Doing them consecutive demonstrates muscle endurance. One of the reasons the current female standard is the flex arm hang. I will go in more detail in reply to Beth.
1) We are talking about unusual individuals vs. the norm. My phrasing was sloppy—I didn’t mean ANY slim woman coulkd out-chin any bodybuilder, but I knew bodybuilders at my gym who would not do chins. It is essentially a lat pull-down with 200 pounds for some guys.
2) I’m not sure how the records are measured. The same woman who holds the record claimed to do 130+ in ten minutes. What does that mean?
3) I had a clip somewhere about a woman holding the one-arm record, but it was obviously out-of date or wrong, and I can’t find it. Thanks for the correction.
It’s still an exercise that isolates just a few muscles (no chest, no triceps, no legs obviously) and is a weird choice to measure general fitness, as it favors certain body-types.
Alicia Weber was likely who you were thinking about, she hold almost all female pull up records, she is just amazing, even with that said, she does about 50 percent the male record for pull ups in a minute, 70 percent of male record for pull ups in 30 minutes.
See above, pull ups is just one of three events that makes up the PFT
What muscle you use depends on how you do the pull up or if you do a chin up.
I’ve been using my chin to pull up. It’s hard. Is this wrong?
That’s funny as “resting” on the bar using your chin is one of the things banned during the pft.
I know, I can only imagine the one recruit thought they’d gamed the system and the test givers realized they’d actually have to add another rule.
Not that much. The only readily apparent difference between a chin up and a pull up is which direction one’s palms are facing.
Both exercises target the Biceps and the Lats directly. The differing palm facing merely causes a difference in how much effort each muscle group exerts during the exercise.
Both exercises rely more on the Lats than on the Biceps, but the Chin Up (Palms facing you) has greater reliance on the Biceps than on the Lats than does the Pull Up (Palms facing away from you).
But even then, the width of grip affects which muscle group does most of the work than does the orientation of the grip.
Sorry but the pull up in the Corps is a good measurement of upper body strength. You can not swing or kick and the arm has to be fully extended. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLdwu4RCMqY
Jack,
I agree the standard should be the same, but it can’t happen for many reasons but toping the list is the services are required to have women.
With that said let me give you something to consider, with the requirement that women have to be allowed in you still want to identify the best men and women, the only way to do that is to have two scales otherwise men would always dominate the top 50 percent of PFT performers on a single scale. Now the added benefit of having two scales is that males will go and work out on thier own to score better, women do as well but most unit PT is at female performance level so they are already performing near female max. Males have to work on thier own to push up to thier max, or be a part of an all male unit. This can seen across the service as all male units out perform mixed units including male to male comparison. So female lower capacity lowers average male performance in mixed units, so by having a seperate scale it drives males to work to increase thier capability to stay competitive.
There is no way that the USMC HAS to discriminate, and I guarantee the courts would uphold gender-neutral standards.
The only way not to discriminate is to lower the standards for men or to drastically reduce the number of women in the service due to not being able to perform at the male level. The military needs top performers not mediocrity and even though I find it reprehensible the only way to insure this at this point is hold men to a higher standard. I believe you will find that the separate standards have been adjudicated.
I would be all for having one high standard but it will never happen, when women were allowed in service a separate standard had to be developed, if we go through with allowing them in combat arms the same will happen again. This is the way the game is played, the Marine Corps is operating on good faith and fairness, showing what the outcome will be and demonstrating how women perform when held closer male standards, despite these evaluations I doubt we will end up with anything less but a legislative mandate to open all jobs to women.
Make no mistake, I am not belittling or minimizing what women are superior at or the value including them in some jobs can be. But for that to happen they have to have separate PFT requirements or the system has to be lowered for everyone.
The Marines are nott going to discriminate. They will implement gender neutral standards.
I think they’re starting from the wrong end. Why make it a women-in-the-military (or anywhere else) argument? — or, for that matter, transgender folks? If the person can qualify for the job AND if the qualifications fit the job in the first place (not just because they were necessary a hundred years ago when first designed), the test-passer should be eligible for the job.
Example: There are two jobs for cable-car operators, gripman and conductor. Both require great upper body strength needed for the grip and brakes; somewhat less for the conductor who “only” has to control the rear wheel brakes when descending hills. [Other qualifications: good hand-eye coordination and balance, a height requirement, and passenger management under sometimes perilous conditions: the ability to simultaneously collect fares, manage the safe and efficient boarding and exiting of passengers from multiple locations (including jump-ons jump-offs on the running boards), block children great and small trying to get closer to the open machinery, and answer questions — the twenty or so inevitable ones & the hundred others out of the blue. Not to mention having the wrist-ability for bell-ringing at the annual contest.] It’s a high-stress occupation. There haven’t been many takers.
Two made it. Fannie Mae Barnes was the first gripwoman (1998 to 2002), and Willa Johnson the second starting in April 2010, and still on the job as far as I know. Only two. And that’s because of one essential physical requirement. Which makes sense.
Maybe the military should find out how essential their requirements are, for every recruit. And keep it there. Basic would wash out a lot more than it does, so fewer women (and realistic men) would sign on. Problem solved.
On second thought, this would rouse the ire of a gender-competitive and -obsessed culture … perhaps training on cable cars should be a prerequisite….
“Beginning in 2016, in response to the calls of feminists and women’s rights advocates, females in the Marine Corps and Army will be able, well, allowed, to serve in infantry, armor and artillery units,”
Your going to have to show me another reference for this besides the NPR article as I cant find that stated any where else. As of right now women Marines are not scheduled to allowed to serve in infantry units and the Marine Corps is studying if it is even possible. Right now women Marines may apply for and enter these basic infantry schools but do not receive an infantry MOS. Currently no women Marines have graduated The infantry officers course and only three have graduated the basic infantry school for enlisted personal.
As to pushing the requirement back from its January 1st due date is not a good thing, and trust me someone at Parris Island is going to have to answer why this date wasn’t met. I have no problem with it as women Marines cant serve in the infantry right now anyway. Plus graduating from boot camp does not make you eligible to serve in the infantry in the Marines. You must first graduate from the Basic Infantry School at the infantry training battalion at Camp Geiger in North Carolina or Camp Pendleton on California.
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/article/20131004/NEWS/310040025/4-more-female-Marines-fall-short-Infantry-Officer-Course
Okay, let’s hope this doesn’t get duplicated like the last ones:
To begin with, I agree completely that utilitarian standards are the only relevant ones to make policies about, and discriminating between different candidates for a job using any criteria other than how well they do the job is unethical. Since people can’t always be field-tested first, sometimes prospective employers try to use predictive traits, and sometimes they’re wrong, but that’s a slightly different issue.
That said, it occurs to me that the military could (with some serious and costly restructuring) split their standards so that they recruit people into one of two (or more) groups: people with male-typical physical and mental traits and all the strengths and weaknesses thereof, and people with female-typical traits, et cetera (note that people of either sex could potentially belong to either category). If they got creative, they could even mix it up a bit, and collect people with female-typical physical traits but male-typical mental traits and vice versa. That’s if they really wanted to bring out diversity as a strength. And of course, why stop at gender differences? You could make use of all sorts of cultural mindsets if you set it up right.
However, as “representative of the people” as this might be, I seriously doubt that this tack is cost-effective, especially with the entrenched system we have now (I hate it when entrenched systems make it difficult to switch to something better.) It is admittedly very effective to standardize a single physical and mental archetype which is deemed battle-worthy and make sure everyone participating can fit into that mold. It’s far easier for a military to have a large effective organizational structure if people are interchangeable within their job descriptions. That’s why the military is decidedly not the place for me (but that’s a whole different story). As far as I can tell, it is good that people combine organizational intelligence and strategic intelligence to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of the military with the standardized criteria that they set.
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