“The US Marines Tested Mixed-Gender Squads Against all Male ones, and the Results are Pretty Bleak”
I will be writing a full post about this soon, but since I already have a month+ backlog, it’s going to be a while before it shows up here. Nevertheless, I think this is an important enough study that I want to bring your attention to it now. A few quotes:
“All branches of the military are facing a January 1, 2016, deadline to open all combat roles to women. …
“All-male squads, teams and crews and gender-integrated squads, teams, and crews had a noticeable difference in their performance of the basic combat tasks of negotiating obstacles and evacuating casualties. For example, when negotiating the wall obstacle, male Marines threw their packs to the top of the wall, whereas female Marines required regular assistance in getting their packs to the top. During casualty evacuation assessments, there were notable differences in execution times between all-male and gender-integrated groups, except in the case where teams conducted a casualty evacuation as a one-Marine fireman’s carry of another (in which case it was most often a male Marine who “evacuated” the casualty.)
“The report also says that female Marines had higher rates of injury throughout the experiment. …
“A military unit at maximum combat effectiveness is a military unit least likely to suffer casualties. Winning in war is often only a matter of inches, and unnecessary distraction or any dilution of the combat effectiveness puts the mission and lives in jeopardy. Risking the lives of a military unit in combat to provide career opportunities or accommodate the personal desires or interests of an individual, or group of individuals, is more than bad military judgment. It is morally wrong.”
