It is easy to imagine that the presence of women in front line combat units will influence war fighting decisions for the worse.

By Lyle Dunne

The recent announcement by Defence Minister Stephen Smith that women would be permitted in front-line combat roles – the pointy end of warfare – has met with more opposition, I believe, than the Government expected. I’m sure this was intended as an easy option, to placate their critics on the left.

After all, like “gay marriage”, it represents a triumph of individual “rights” ­– established by vociferous assertion – over the national interest. How could it fail?

Various commentators including Greg Sheridan in The Australian (“Women Have No Place in Combat”, ²⁹⁄₉) and Clive Hamilton in The Sydney Morning Herald (“Women in war is the final Surrender”, ³⁰⁄₉) have pointed to the physical and psychological differences between men and women.

Historically such arguments have cut little ice with feminists, and they won’t do so now. The psychological differences are dismissed (or attributed to differential socialization), and the physical ignored. (I heard a good example on the local ABC recently: an anonymous servicewoman, confronted with the claim that in low-level ejections from fighter aircraft men risked hernias but women risked a prolapsed uterus, felt the solution would be to design ejector seats that injured no-one. Brilliant, I thought — or if the main aim was equity of outcomes we could just eliminate ejector seats – with bonus cost and environmental benefits. Win-win-win!)

And wouldn’t one expect appropriate selection criteria to take care of the physical differences?

Firepersons

No. There’s the real fear that these would be diluted to the point where women were not seen as disadvantaged.  This is exactly what happened in the notorious “fireperson” case in the US in the 1980s¹. The New York Fire Department administered a test to aspiring firefighters that involved carrying 50 pounds of gear along a ledge. However a much greater proportion of women than men failed the test. (It was suggested that some of the women who attempted it had more interest in providing this data than pursuing careers as firefighters.)

Accordingly the courts found that the test was discriminatory, and struck it down. At no time was it disputed that the test was directly relevant to the job of fire-fighting, but no-one appeared to draw the inference that perhaps the reason fewer women passed the test was that fewer women were fitted by nature to be fire-fighters. At the time, such a statement would have been unsayable.

Newspaper correspondents have pointed out that women seeking to join the Australian Federal Police similarly face lighter physical requirements, e.g. they have to perform fewer sit-ups. (I don’t know whether they are provided with lighter criminals to arrest.)

But the issues are more complex than the simple capacity of individuals. Much in this debate turns on attitudes toward women. Sheridan adverts to this, bravely using the word “chivalry”, eliciting the predictable (and doubtless expected, possibly even intended) attacks.

The most predictable is that this dinosaur sexism needs to be stamped out.

Good luck with that. But this (to say the least) long-term aim is hardly one governments can afford.

Can one imagine a PM of either sex having to announce that one of our girls – in a headline, perhaps “mother of three” — has been killed by an IED?

Letter writers in The Australian ask whether we’re ready for servicewomen coming home in coffins. Can one imagine a PM of either sex having to announce that one of our girls – in a headline, perhaps “mother of three” — has been killed by an IED? Worse, at least politically, would be announcing that one or more of our female soldiers had been captured by the Taliban. Details here are surely unnecessary, but it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to envisage the effect on tactics of trying to avoid this scenario.

SkyNews ran a series of interviews with serving soldiers on its news channel expressing concerns along these lines, including that servicewomen would be considered “high-value targets”.

In 2007, 15 sailors and marines from HMS Cornwall, said to have strayed into Iranian waters, were seized by the Iranian navy. Iranian television coverage prominently featured servicewoman Faye Turney, shown wearing a head scarf.

However my recollection was that it wasn’t just a case of the Iranians obsessing ­­- the British press, especially the tabloids, were outraged that the dastardly Muslims had had the temerity to lay hands upon one of our gels!

It is easy to imagine the presence of women in front line combat units influencing for the worse war fighting decisions, at both political and military levels.

Only slightly more amenable to reconstruction than the Taliban and tabloids would be service MEN.  It’s been widely reported that armies such as Israel’s, which had deployed women in frontline combat roles in actual wars, had abandoned the practice because they found that if a woman was wounded, her male companions (at least) would abandon objectives and rush to her rescue.

Hetero- warriors

Further, despite recent reforms, the overwhelming majority of soldiers are heterosexual, and in some respects will never relate to male and female comrades the same way.

This has been touched on in the reporting, but mainly, whether or not intentionally, at the level of caricature. It has been reported, for example, that a successful functional military unit depends on a special sort of male camaraderie, which the presence of women would disrupt. I suspect what commentators were implying was that sexual attractions and sexual relationships between members of a unit inevitably introduces a wild card into its operations, which is of particular concern in battle.  But recent well-publicised scandals among military cadets, and experiences on naval vessels where integration between the sexes has certainly proceeded but perhaps not as planned, have limited our capacity to have an honest conversation about this.

This is particularly unfortunate, as these cases should’ve alerted us to the fact that there’s rather more at stake in such environments than “workplace harassment” in the form of inappropriate remarks.

The truth is that, even if recruitment to frontline roles were conducted in a “gender-neutral” way – and even if this were not interpreted as meaning selection criteria bent to engineer an “acceptable” mix — there is no reasonable prospect that strategic or tactical decisions could be taken in a way which was blind to the sex of those involved.

I said at the outset that this was a measure designed to advance individual “rights” at the price of the national interest, for political purposes.

But looking at the totality of the issues, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that there must be some “big picture” purpose beyond the short-term propaganda gain – which may prove illusory.

Perhaps there are those in government for whom this, like the “fireperson” case, is a blow in the greater struggle for women’s “equality” – a struggle which has become an end in itself, with “equality” continually re-defined so as to remain elusive. In either case, the limitation of the effectiveness.

Or perhaps it isn’t even just about women.

This move will limit Australia’s capacity to participate effectively, or participate at all, in particular sorts of wars and military campaigns.

For many of us this is the unacceptable emasculation of an army that is the legitimate focus of national pride, as well a force for good in the national interest and beyond.

For others, this may be a necessary evil to bring about a world purged of sexist attitudes.

For a few, however, any move toward the relegation of our military to a ceremonial role would be a bonus — or perhaps even the main aim.