Anna Simons thinks the full integration of women into ground combat units, and especially special operations units, is a terrible idea. The reason she offers is simple – men and women really like each other and will distract each other enough to ruin unit cohesion and thereby military effectiveness. Simons is a serious and accomplished scholar – one of few who have taken the time to study the military up close. In this particular case it seems she has not, however, used her anthropological skills to study the integration of combat units with the same zeal. Instead, she is relying on the “everybody knows” argument against women in combat that is often heard from those inside and outside the military who really don’t know. Most often because they have not actually served with women in combat, or even studied integrated units.
There are a number of statements in the text that are questionable, but I would like to focus this response on the issue that Simons is right to raise – the impact on unit cohesion and military effectiveness. There is a growing body of social science research that can help us illuminate this issue.
Changing the perspective
The fear about women ruining unit cohesion and therefore combat readiness has a starting point in an understandable but highly problematic assumption: The existing military structure and culture is almost perfectly adapted to perform with excellence in war. According to this assumption, the military organization looks like it does because of the objective requirements of warfare, or what Samuel Huntington has referred to as the functional imperative of the armed forces. Any changes – especially politically imposed changes like women in combat or the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” – therefore pose a danger to what is perceived as a virtually perfect existing order.
Simons has long studied Special Forces up close and is impressed by their performance and their camaraderie, described as “one for all and all for one.” However, the idea that we have achieved the pinnacle of human understanding of unit cohesion and combat effectiveness and that change can only be for the worse is ahistorical. Just because the existing organization is really good does not mean that it cannot be better. Moreover, by taking a look at the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan – while mostly strategic, some of it also stemmed from poor judgment and behavior at the tactical level, particularly in the early phases of these wars. And while I hate to bring up the issue of sexual assaults, the shocking numbers of the last few years are not an indication of what happens when you mix women and men, but rather an indication of a dysfunctional organizational culture. There should, in other words, be plenty of room for improvement.
The aim of integrating women with the limited aim of minimizing damage to the existing structure and culture of the organization provides an unfortunate and misguided starting point for these processes. Instead, the introduction of women in combat units – or the broader implementation of a gendered perspective in military organizations and operations – should be seen as an opportunity to revise the culture and structure of the armed forces for increased effectiveness in contemporary warfare. The inclusion of women should therefore be done with the aim of maximizing the effectiveness of what the organization is supposed to be good at – using force, or the threat of force, for security, stability and victory.
What do we know about women in combat?
It is first of all important to note that the issue in Simons’ article, and this response, is not whether women are good combat soldiers as individuals (that would take us into the realm of physical and mental standards which I have written about elsewhere). But instead, the effect of women on unit cohesion – which is also essential for military effectiveness. Solid data that can predict the impact on the cohesion and effectiveness of different types of combat units is lacking. However, Simons also fails to engage with the useful data that is already out there. Let me highlight some of this data, where it is most useful, and where we might direct our efforts, in four different fields.
First, the lessons from non-military fields. The business literature is now pretty much in consensus regarding the positive impact of gender integration on unit performance (1, 2, 3). Mix men and women in the workplace and you produce more and make more money. The distraction between the sexes that Simons talks about therefore either does not happen, or it happens but is overcome by other more important factors for success. These findings can obviously be countered by the argument that war is different than civilian life so let us move closer to home.
The second field of research is more of a gap: The impact of integration on the performance of non-combat units in the U.S. military. Interestingly, I must confess that I have not actually seen any such studies. One might argue that this is because the topic is too politically sensitive. However, the fact that men and women have been operating together, often in combat, in Iraq and Afghanistan – although not formally as colleagues in a ground combat unit – without hearing about either a positive or a negative impact on cohesion or effectiveness, should perhaps indicate that it really isn’t much of an issue. However, we are still in the realm of non-combat units (regardless of how much they have actually been in combat) so let us move closer to the heart yet again.
The third field of interest is the previous integration processes of black and homosexual soldiers. Simons is simply wrong to dismiss these experiences as irrelevant. The exact same arguments were made about unit cohesion then. It was not about individual performance, anti-integrationists said, but what the individuals would do to the group. The military nevertheless got over both blackness and gayness in the ranks. Simons’ argument why the issue of women is completely different is that racism and bigotry is based on hatred, while women is a problem of attraction. Since Simons is only concerned about this in ground combat units it would indicate that there must be something uniquely sexual about the men who serve in these units. If Simons is right it either means that military organizations are brilliant at recruiting hypersexual men for combat units, or, more likely, that they are socialized into these roles. None of these options are particularly appealing, but the positive news is that the hypersexuality of soldiers thereby isn’t a given.
Finally, let us move into the realm of existing research on ground combat units. Since the United States does not formally have integrated units, we have to go abroad to the many countries that have already gone through this process. Professor Tony King is my go-to guy on these issues and he has done tremendous work (1, 2, 3) studying and comparing the impact of gender integration in different countries, with a special eye on unit cohesion. He finds that in today’s world of professional armies, it is not gender that determines cohesion, but training and competence. In other words, it is not the social cohesion of units that determines effectiveness, but rather a professional and more task-oriented form of cohesion. As long as women are competent and well-trained, they therefore do not effect unit cohesion negatively.
Unit cohesion – an issue of leadership
Military organizations clearly have a working formula – young, testosterone-filled males bonding through shared hardship, heavy drinking and sexual pursuits. So what happens if we assume that groups cannot be glued together with women the same way (although let us be careful about making essentialist assumptions here)?
I would challenge anyone who argues that professional drill sergeants could not come up with alternative methods to achieve the same objectives. I am at the nascent stages of building my own dataset both regarding integrated combat units abroad and within American ground combat units (among them, Army special operations forces and Marines) that have had women fighting with them (but obviously not formally part of the unit). The most common answer during interviews with commanders, as well as male and female soldiers, is that the sex of the person next to them is completely irrelevant. However, pressing them further on this topic often reveals that there are issues, but that they are perfectly possible to overcome. First, all units are different and a good leader must adapt to the dynamic of the unit. Leading women, or leading integrated units, often provides a slightly different dynamic that requires attention and possible adjustment by the leader. Second, while sex and love are not nearly as prevalent or inevitable as Simons suggests, it certainly happens. However, just as any other problematic dynamic within a unit, this can also be dealt with and isn’t the end of the world (as Jessica Scott discussed in her recent War on the Rocks article). The bottom line: There are different ways to build cohesion, and adding women forces us to rethink our existing approaches and the possibility to build something even stronger and more flexible.
Unit cohesion and flexibility
Unit cohesion is a delicate thing and Simons is absolutely right in pointing out that the nature of war and attrition requires the military to treat individuals not as individuals, but as interchangeable pieces of a complex system. Not only does every combat soldier need to be capable of accomplishing the same essential tasks as every other combat soldier (according to rank, MOS etc.), but every potential replacement has to be able to easily fit into an already-stressed group.
Simons is, however, mistaken when she argues that units cannot handle gender diversity. If this is indeed the case, it is because the unit was not particularly cohesive in the first place. Cohesion based on social similarity can be a fragile and deceptive thing. It often means that groups have not been forced to go through any real challenges in their group development, while looking and acting as a cohesive unit. This sometimes means that they underperform when put under real stress for the first time. A diverse unit has faced more challenges in its development phase and has also been forced to build cohesion around issues other than social similarity and friendship. Again, Tony King’s perspectives on professional cohesion are highly recommended, as well as Elizabeth Keir’s work on the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell”.
In the end, the impact on cohesion and effectiveness in war can only really be tested in war. Here I agree with Simons when she questions the utility of the many tests and experiments conducted within the U.S. military – with the U.S. Marine Corps as the most oft-cited example. Our conclusions are nonetheless the opposite. I say embrace the challenge and “just do it” already rather than stop altogether, based on the dubious argument that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Rather than get stuck in the anachronistic if-discussion, let us instead focus on how! The very nature of this debate shows just how challenging the integration process is likely to be. The special operations forces community can actually lead the way here. Their teams are built on diversity in terms of specific competences and backgrounds, and have the last decades also included many women in particular roles. Let us use women and gender perspectives in combat to improve the armed forces.
Robert Egnell is Visiting Professor and Director of Teaching in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. His research covers the effectiveness and conduct of stability operations – broadly defined. He is the author of Gender, Military Effectiveness, and Organizational Change: The Swedish Model (Palgrave 2014), and (with David Ucko) of Counterinsurgency in Crisis: Britain and the Challenges of Modern Warfare (Columbia UP, 2013). You can follow him on twitter at @robertegnell.
Photo credit: The U.S. Army
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I find it odd that in all of the articles about how the integration of women into combat arms units will hurt/help unit cohesion, nobody has bothered to ask rank and file combat arms soldiers what their opinion on the matter is. Why are those who will be most directly impacted by any policy change in this matter routinely left out of the discussion?
I was going to list the reasons (not the least of which is that their opinions are generally uninformed), but then I remembered that Robert Egnell did, in fact, discuss research interviews with rank and file combat arms soldiers in the above article.
I served in 2 infantry battalions over 8 years, and never met a single 03XX Marine that thinks this is a good idea. Hell, even my own experience with FET teams confirms this. I don’t need some professor telling me about leadership in the infantry or unit cohesion…
Former0331, but by Mr. Lemieux’s statement you are most likely uninformed, while he, also a former Marine Infantryman, is. Now, mind you he will never back up his statements with more than a sentence or two of self-righteous indignation and zero substance, but debate is hard for those driven by emotion over logic.
The whole argument in favor of forcing women into combat units is so incredibly dishonest. Forget unit cohesion (which is a huge factor). Women overwhelmingly don’t have the ability for it without us having to lower our standards for them. The people who keep arguing in favor of it don’t care about our defense and see combat as a social issue.
Also, the military is loaded with problems wherever men and women are working together. I want women in the military despite those issues but watering down our combat units is very foolish.
“The special operations forces community can actually lead the way here.” — Professor Egnell
Historically, Special Forces has at times recruited directly off the civilian street and at other times recruited only from within the Army. Different recruiting models have produced different results.
I understand that the present USMC and Army testing models for women in combat arms have recruited women using the double volunteer model from women who’ve already joined and acclimated to the military.
One wonders if that would be the actual recruiting model for women would want to join combat arms.
I would suggest that the noted, vaunted SF cohesion is a product of a triple volunteer system selecting from a pool of candidates who have volunteered for the Army, for jump school, and for SF and succeeded at all three with their various degrees of sickener factor.
Anyone suggesting that SF cohesion is the model for the integration of women into regular combat arms should accept the burden to devise an effective triple volunteer system drawing on a pool of recruits who’ve already proven themselves to some degree.
Also, let us truthfully recollect the integration of African-American soldiers into the US military. That effort was an eventual success only after tremendous failure in Vietnam. Is American society ready to pay the price of overcoming tremendous failures on the road to success in bringing women on board combat arms?
This has been going on since the 80’s and I will write a long rebuttal, but it does not seem to take it due to length, so I will try to bullet some issues with women in combat arms.
I will start out with some highlights though-
1.) Does this make us more combat effective? How so?
2.) Is this cost effective in terms of injuries and unplanned losses? Adaption of ship for different treatment of females?
3.) Is it fair to men to have quotas, as they currently do for females at the academies and in enlistment goals (Quotas)?
4.) Have we ever held females to the same standards? If we have not, then how will we now?
5.) If people were really serious then they would be paying attention to and monitoring the amount of losses due to pregnancy in theater and out of females and address it. Instead they shut down a MG who tried to stem the tide on that issue of losses.
The author and his apparent “defender” from SWAN, ignore the huge amount of pregnancies that occur every year and prevent female troops from deploying at a rate of 9-15% every year. Those females are taken out of the line and not returned to duty (full) for almost two years. Does the author think this will decrease or increase with the combat arms?
The author also does not know what he is talking about with regard to the use of females in SOF. The only place they were even touched on was in what was called Cultural Support Teams (CSTs) and they were almost useless. They had no real language, medical or cultural training that would have made them useful and they were not being used as combatants. The program was a failure, despite what many try to put forth and has been DC’d. They were just a SOF copy of the FETs and those too were plagued by the same problems, not to mention the huge amount of frat that went on in country.
Lastly, the issue of frat is and will continue to be an issue in the non-combat arms and the fleet, introducing it into the combat arms is a recipe of waster man hours, losses to pregnancy and lack of focus on the mission. Anyone who thinks 18-22 year old kids, in their physical prime, in austere environments and working closely day in and day out are not going to have serious frat issues is either selling something or smoking something.
Here are some more tidbits cut and pasted from others on why this is a bad idea:
-1982, Women in the Army Policy Review reported only 8 per cent of women were capable of performing heavy work category jobs and recommended establishing a Military Enlistment Physical Strength Capacity Test (MEPSCAT). Army never implemented test because it would reduce the women eligible for those occupational specialties.
-1992, James A. Vogel in an article, “Obesity and Its Relationship to Physical Fitness,” reported Natick Laboratory research results noting that aerobic capacity is a function of body fat percentage and strength is a function of lean muscle mass. A lean muscle mass of 50 kilograms is required if an individual is to perform heavy work jobs. Because woman are smaller in stature and have a high body fat percentage, few women will have the physical stature to train to the physical requirements of heavy work jobs.
-1992, Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces unanimously recommended Services adopt gender-neutral muscular strength/endurance and cardiovascular standards for relevant specialties. Never adopted.
-1997, U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine study, Effects of a Specially Designed Physical Conditioning Program on the Load Carriage and Lifting Performance of Female Soldiers, reports that in 24 weeks the women in the study increased their lifting capacity to 82 percent of that of average males but gained less than a pound of muscle mass limiting the potential for additional improvement.
-1998, because the British Army had found women in heavy work occupational specialties were physically incapable of performing the assigned job, the British Army instituted a standard set of physical test scores in relation to career specialties. The British Army expected that the number of women qualifying for heavy work jobs would decline but discovered that during training the injury rate among women
soared.
-1998′, Dr. William J. Gregor testifies to the Congressional Commission on Military Basic Training and Gender Related Issues that because of the physiological differences, men training with women do not increase their aerobic capacity. British Army study in 2009 observed the same results.
-2000′, “The rate of unplanned losses is 2.5 times greater for women than for men—25 and 10 percent, respectively. That is, a quarter of women and a tenth of men are lost from ships every year for unplanned rea- sons. The rate of losses due to pregnancy is 11 percent.”
“The loss rates of women exceed those of men for medical, family care, and honorable discharge reasons. Men’s disciplinary rate is higher than women’s.”
-2002′, (Reviewed) 2010′, UK MoD-“The Women in the Armed Forces report examined the differences in the physical abilities of men and women which are relevant to military performance and observed, unsurprisingly, that they differ significantly. Differences between women and men in their capacity to develop muscle strength and aerobic fitness are such that only approximately 1% of women can equal the performance of the average man. In lifting, carrying and similar tasks performed routinely by the British Army, this means that, on average, women have a lower work capacity than men and, when exposed to the same physical workload as men, have to work 50-80% harder to achieve the same results. This puts them at greater risk of injury. In load marching, another fundamental military task, and in all other simulated combat tasks, women were found to perform worse than men, and the greater the load, the greater the discrepancy. The study concluded that about 0.1% of female applicants and 1 % of trained female soldiers would reach the required standards to meet the demands of these roles.”
-2006′, Daniel W. Trone, MA, in a study of the first term outcomes of female Marine Corps recruits observed that 44 percent of female recruits suffer lower extremity injuries and that those who experienced those injuries were less likely to complete their first term enlistment.
-2010′, Military Medicine (Journal)-LTC Philip J. Belmont Jr. and others report findings of a study of disease and non-battle injuries sustained by an Army BCT during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The non-battle injury rate for women is 167 percent higher than men, and the skeletal-muscular injury is almost equal to that of men from all causes. (Read the report and how many pregnancies there were too, shocking.)
-2011, Laurel Wentz, et.al., report in Military Medicine a systematic review of medical studies of U.S. and foreign militaries and athletic teams that females have a greater incidence of stress fractures. The greater incidence of stress fractures results from anatomical differences regardless of general fitness and training.
-2011, Dr. William J. Gregor reports the results of a study of cadet physical performance of all Army ROTC cadets from 1992 to 2011. The report observes that over that period only 72 women bested the lowest 16 percent of men in aerobic capacity and that the 72 women stood four standard deviations above the female mean. Such women are exceptional and their performance cannot be replicated through training the general population of women. Additionally, male aerobic capacity exceeds female capacity regardless of the weight to height ratio, BMI.
Need to add on more quick line, the comparison to the integration of homosexuals and blacks is almost cliche and always a false one. There are no physical differences between a straight man or a gay man, be black, white, yellow, brown, red or even purple. Also, add in that men cannot get pregnant and that they have far less orthopedic injuries due to skeletal frame differences and the comparison becomes even more illogical.
There are several similarities, mainly that ‘biological’ arguments were also used against blacks, stating that they couldn’t swim as well because of their lower body fat percentages, that they had worse vision, etc. Physical strength and capability are on a continuum, where some men are very strong and fit while others are not. The same is true with women, and there is overlap between the two.
And no, men can’t get pregnant but lesbians typically aren’t getting pregnant, either. Further, men are more likely to be non-deployable than women due to disciplinary issues and sports injuries. I’m not saying pregnancy is a non-issue, but men come pre-loaded with their own.
The Navy SEALs have trouble recruiting black candidates because black populations have historically been in places where they never learned to swim. Biologically there is no difference.
In the gender split, world records in athletic events have shown women consistently lagging men, meaning there are biological differences.
http://www.jssm.org/vol9/n2/8/v9n2-8text.php
I support allowing women to compete on equal basis with men, but if there is no shortage of better male candidates, that means they are out of luck.
It is perhaps quite revealing for us as a society that the waging of war has become a social experiment dictated by those who spend their lives talking rather than fighting.
There should only be one question asked at every juncture of these ‘noble’ alterations to a nations military… Will this make us more effective at defeating our enemies. Not ‘is it right’ or ‘will they approve’.Success and failure on the battlefield is measured in blood, something those who talk and
The author ignores the degree to which a) physical and task standards have been lowered in the positions currently open to women, b) the on-going problems with pregnancy and fraternization, and c) the failure of the current armed forces to actually win a war against even non-competitive enemies. With respect to cohesion, whenever fraternization occurs within a common chain of command, the people have to be separated. Even if everyone is fine with this, there is disruption to the units. Pregnancy has the same effect. Add in the inherent lack of trust that accompanies someone who is known to be unable to perform to the same level as another, and you have problems. So, a coed unit is inherently less cohesive and less stable than an all-male one.
The bottom line is that, at each step, the military (and our broader society) has placed “equality” above performance and standards. The result is a spectacular level of dishonesty about how things have gone so far. Sure, a suitably squared away female officer can navigate a ship and order a cruise missile fired; she almost certainly can’t carry an average size, wounded man, up that ship’s ladder if it takes damage. Even on USS Cole, which was a coed ship, the men had to do all the heavy lifting. If we ever have to fight a competitive enemy, our bases will be under ballistic and cruise missile attack, our pilots will be flying five sorties a day, ships will be hit, and all logistical work will be under bombardment and in chemical warfare gear. Nothing we’ve done recently requires anything even remotely approaches that level of performance.
In the end, none of this – not the proposed steps nor those already taken – enhance our military performance. They merely enhance the self-esteem of a handful of women who are with few exceptions able or willing to meet the male standard.
The data disagrees with you on this – RAND did a study years ago and women did not have a negative effect on unit cohesion, morale, readiness or effectiveness. Surprisingly, the presence of women lowered the rate of disciplinary issues.
The only reason we are even having this conversation is that the military has not confronted an existential threat- a truly capable, numerically and technologically equivalent foe- since WWII. Should we ever be unlucky enough to see our ships aflame and sinking, our planes being shot from the skies, and soldiers being marched off into captivity, all this politically correct social engineering will disappear overnight.
It was in WWII where women served in greater roles than they ever had before, as pilots and spies, in medicine and in logistics. Previously, they had been banned but because our threats were our “equals” we put women into new roles. We weren’t the only, the Russians were putting women in infantry- in fact, our American Sniper hero may be the deadliest sniper in US history but doesn’t come close to beating Lyudmila Mykhailivna Pavlichenko, the female Russian sniper who killed scores more.
If anything, the threats we have faced in the last several decades are all male. Integrated militaries are all superior to those that are not, unless you spend your nights terrified of the Saudi army. I’d put my dollar on the Israelis any day.
The Israelis put women in the field for the same reason the Soviets did: a shortage of men.
The US Navy isn’t loud about it, but a huge reason women are joining submarine crews is the difficulty of finding male volunteers.
I don’t know about the Army, but I know that the Marines have no shortage of men volunteering for the infantry, so a fair competition infantry slots would likely see virtually no women in the force.