Women in U.S. infantry (USMC, Rangers, etc. - merged)

[Humphrey Bogart]

The person I want beside me in a fight is the person, who turns into a rabid foaming at the mouth, cornered wounded badger, when the fit hits the shan. 

And as I said before, if a women set her mind to it, she can make up for what ever shortfall the genetics of her sex have given her.  There are plenty of guys in the infantry who while they can throw on a ruck and grind out a 13km march, or when they take it off they can run like the wind, ask them to climb a rope, or carry 2 full water jerry's a few hundred metres and they implode.  This video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-LvjwLE5Mk is of Camile, I have seen her in person, she is uber tiny, but based on what I see on a daily basis here in the gym in KAIA, she and other gals like here are stronger than 90% of this base.  I can't count how many times I have seen you 6' 200lb male, (some belong to the "elite" units of their home countries), struggle with less than half the weight Camille squats in that vid.

The only really big difference between woman and men, is men have really inflated egos, about how genetically superior they are, but a very large portion of the male popultation doesn't actually utilize that  genetic advantage, making them all talk and no substance.

Do I believe women should be allowed to serve in the combat arms?  Yes I do believe so but only if they can first meet the standard and secondly they can absorb into the culture.  From my experience I have only known a few women to serve in the combat arms, more specifically the infantry, some belonged and some did not belong the problem being that because their are so few women their problems are magnified. 

From my personal experience as well, women have a far easier time succeeding as an officer in the combat arms then they do as an NCM.  This is no fault of their own it is just as a soldier it is difficult for a woman to jive with the platoon dynamic.  Lets not beat around the bush, what is often on soldiers minds and more specifically infantry soldiers (they are a special breed)?  Booze and Women!  So you throw a woman into the mix and it can become somewhat of a volatile situation.  This can be treated with discipline; however, I believe it takes a special woman to operate in that sort of environment.  A female officer on the other hand has an easier time of it because she can isolate herself more easily from the nonsense and she will be able to get more support from her peers.

The other big problem I have seen is fraternization, this goes both ways; however, it is a fairly slippery slope and it is pretty easy for a woman to lose all credibility in a male-dominated organization if she sleeps around with some of the soldiers or her co-workers.  Lets be realistic guys, we have all heard it, "this woman is a ****" etc...

Women should be allowed to serve but you need proper regulations and policy in place before this is allowed to happen and I think the Marines are going about this the right way trying to determine what those are.  Sometimes I don't think we are very mature or professional in the way we handle women in the combat arms either and this has nothing to do with the physical aspects of the job, rather it has everything to do with the social aspects.  I could get into some things I have seen but I am not going to do that on a public forum.

My  :2c:

 

[The_Falcon]

Do I believe women should be allowed to serve in the combat arms?  Yes I do believe so but only if they can first meet the standard and secondly they can absorb into the culture.  From my experience I have only known a few women to serve in the combat arms, more specifically the infantry, some belonged and some did not belong the problem being that because their are so few women their problems are magnified. 

The bolded part, has been discussed before, and highlights one of the bigger issues the makes some people have difficulty accepting women in the combat arms.  Because they are inherintley a small group to begin with, the less then stellar ones tend to garner more of the attention, then a similairly crappy male soldier.

The other big problem I have seen is fraternization, this goes both ways; however, it is a fairly slippery slope and it is pretty easy for a woman to lose all credibility in a male-dominated organization if she sleeps around with some of the soldiers or her co-workers.  Lets be realistic guys, we have all heard it, "this woman is a ****" etc...

That is not a problem unique to the infantry or the military for that matter, it's been an issue since women started making up more and more of the work force beyond nurses/teachers/secretaries at the dawn of the 20th century.  Doesn't matter if the people involved are office rats or infantry grunts, put men and women in the same area frat can happen.  Sometimes the parties involved are mature about it, sometimes they aren't. 

 

[Journeyman]

My ex had a wicked pinch that used to make me bleed almost every time.

For the love of god, stop posting. 

Even if you meant "punch" (which you have provided no posts to believe), you have absolutely no qualifications to comment on what the Infantry does or does not require.  Stick to the Recruiting threads.

 

[Jarnhamar]

There is also a female who successfully completed CSOR AP and SOBQ.

I heard about that. I would be interested to hear how long she stayed in the position of an operator and whether or not the guys liked/accepted her.

 

[George Wallace]

I heard about that. I would be interested to hear how long she stayed in the position of an operator and whether or not the guys liked/accepted her.

There was a young lady from my Sqn who was in the initial Stand Up of CSOR.  She was a Triathlete, so I imagine she did quite well on all accords and was able to hold her own. 

 

[MikeL]

I heard about that. I would be interested to hear how long she stayed in the position of an operator and whether or not the guys liked/accepted her.

I didn't hear anything negative about her;  I never inquired either though. I had some limited time working with her on a exercise and IMO she appeared competent and accepted by the guys.  Hard for me to give a real assessment though as I wasn't around her much.

 

[ballz]

I bet you $5 he could lift more than the 5'4" 140lbs lady.

Could he lift more than the 6'2" 180 lb lady? Probably not...

So then what excuse are you/others going to use to not allow a 6'2" 180lb lady that can outrun/outlift/outlead the 5'4" 140lbs man, and yet still allow the physically inferior smaller man in?

While I realize this example is rare, we are not talking about trying to achieve a 50/50 split for gender equality here, we are talking about letting in the females that do meet the standard, no matter how rare, uncommon, or common they are.

 

[Stiman]

Thumbs up for Annie T. She is a machine!

 

[Jarnhamar]

I never heard anything negative about her; I had some limited time working with her on a exercise and IMO she was competent and well liked/accepted by the guys.

Cool. While physical fitness is a huge issue I think people often overlook how important it is to be accepted by ones peers.

Speaking of which I think we might be overlooking the fact that we're talking about US soldiers in the US forces. Their training and culture is a little different than ours so saying stuff like "it's common sense if a female can pass the pt tests than everything is fine" 1st may work with Canadian mindsets but not do easily done with the US.

Out of curiosity how does our Canadian infantry officers course compare to this US marine infantry officer coursr?
We have enough female officers pass ours, I wonder how our female infantry officers would fare on their course?

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Cool. While physical fitness is a huge issue I think people often overlook how important it is to be accepted by ones peers.

Speaking of which I think we might be overlooking the fact that we're talking about US soldiers in the US forces. Their training and culture is a little different than ours so saying stuff like "it's common sense if a female can pass the pt tests than everything is fine" 1st may work with Canadian mindsets but not do easily done with the US.

Out of curiosity how does our Canadian infantry officers course compare to this US marine infantry officer coursr?
We have enough female officers pass ours, I wonder how our female infantry officers would fare on their course?

I would imagine it is fairly similar although the marines have a slightly different way of training (i.e. they like to scream), we have had some female officers pass the course and some fail.  As someone said here as long as they meet the standard they are G2G.  It is fairly common to have a 50% failure rate on our DP 1.1 Pl Comd's course, the year I did the course it was 70% and we had two females on the course, only one passed.

Edit:

To give you an idea of numbers (I might be off by +/-5):

143 started he course
39 were successful
2 females started
1 was successful

 

[SeR]

It is fairly common to have a 50% failure rate on our DP 1.1 Pl Comd's course.

Mind if I ask why the failure rate seems so high? Would it be due to poor fitness or more to the lack of one's leadership abilities?

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Mind if I ask why the failure rate seems so high? Would it be due to poor fitness or more to the lack of one's leadership abilities?

It is a mix of both

I would say out of that 50% who failed

50% are due to poor fitness
30% are due to poor leadership (i.e. failing assessments/integrity violations, etc.)
20% are due to shit luck (i.e. getting hurt)

A lot of people get hurt though due to poor fitness.  If you show up the the Infantry School for Phase 3 Infantry Officer Trg and you are out of shape your time at the infantry school will be very short I am afraid.

 

[ballz]

Out of curiosity how does our Canadian infantry officers course compare to this US marine infantry officer coursr?
We have enough female officers pass ours, I wonder how our female infantry officers would fare on their course?

When LCol Aitchison was the CO of the Infantry School, there was some cross comparison going on with the USMC course. He told us that while the curriculum was pretty much the same, we had a lower success rate at the time. We had more academic failures though, while about the same for physical fitness. They thought it was because of the format... at the time, we were doing the course in 2 week modules that really didn't facilitate learning/development. The USMC course was not done in mods, all the garrison stuff was at the front of the course and the field stuff on the end of the course.

They've now changed the format of our course to be more similar to that of the USMC course, in order to facilitate better learning/development. I don't know how the failure rates compare now. It *did* seem to decrease the failure rate, IMO only because the new format gives people 6 weeks in garrison so if you show up a little bit behind physically, you can build yourself up a bit before going to the field for 7 weeks, so if you were probably a borderline candidate physically, you could squeak through physically where as before you would fall short. But that's as far as I'll go with that, purely my opinion, and a bit of speculation in there to boot as well.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

When LCol Aitchison was the CO of the Infantry School, there was some cross comparison going on with the USMC course. He told us that while the curriculum was pretty much the same, we had a lower success rate at the time. We had more academic failures though, while about the same for physical fitness. They thought it was because of the format... at the time, we were doing the course in 2 week modules that really didn't facilitate learning/development. The USMC course was not done in mods, all the garrison stuff was at the front of the course and the field stuff on the end of the course.

They've now changed the format of our course to be more similar to that of the USMC course, in order to facilitate better learning/development. I don't know how the failure rates compare now. It *did* seem to decrease the failure rate, IMO only because the new format gives people 6 weeks in garrison so if you show up a little bit behind physically, you can build yourself up a bit before going to the field for 7 weeks, so if you were probably a borderline candidate physically, you could squeak through physically where as before you would fall short. But that's as far as I'll go with that, purely my opinion, and a bit of speculation in there to boot as well.

I miss the old 2 week mod formula... Go to the field for a couple of weeks, come back all sleep-****ed put some beer down range and hit up the 20/20, rinse and repeat for the whole summer!  Great times were had!  > > >

Edit:

My favorite memory of that course was at the end of the weapons mod (mod 1) you would go to the Argus Range to shoot and then do a forced march back to H111 with the Crse O setting the pace, we started with 30 and finished with 6 (everyone was carrying support weapons).  There was this MLVW following us as we *cough* ran *cough* I mean marched back.  People just started disappearing as they fell out, it was as if the truck was eating them  >.  Many of those folks I never saw again 

 

[Kat Stevens]

On CLC it was referred to as "doing the kit bag drag to the man eating truck".

 

[George Wallace]

........  There was this MLVW following us as we *cough* ran *cough* I mean marched back.  People just started disappearing as they fell out, it was as if the truck was eating them  >.  Many of those folks I never saw again 

The "Man-eating Truck" is legend at CTC, and other Schools.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

The "Man-eating Truck" is legend at CTC, and other Schools.

Good catch on my poor grammar George in ref to my use of the word "there"

If only the Infantry School taught english as well as they teach how to do a proper a hasty attack  ;D

 

[George Wallace]

;D

Having been in C Sqn and partaken in the Coy/Sqn Comd Crse exercises, the Infantry Hasty Attack was always good for catching some shut eye.  ;D

 

[vonGarvin]

On one of my courses, we had the "truck eating man".  In spite of several trips to the MIR (mostly on the day prior to redeployment from the field), one fellow candidate kept coming back!  Legends are made of stuff like that!

 

[The Bread Guy]

Good catch on my poor grammar George in ref to my use of the word "there"

If only the Infantry School taught English as well as they teach how to do a proper a hasty attack  ;D

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