To wonder why women are not allowed into combat?

[Weathergames]

The main reason being they don't have the "upper body strength" but Olympians have disproved this.

If you want to join the forces male or female
surely you should be able to perform all roles required (however grim/unethical etc).

Former head of the Army, Lord Dannatt, said keeping women out of combat roles was a "point of principle".

"To be in a unit that is given orders to attack a hill, to attack a town, to attack a village, that is a role not for women," he said.

Am not sure about this - OH is a submariner and they have allowed women on board (they must be NUTS to want to go).

Surely it's pretty sexist?

how is the way we run inefficient corus? women outrun men over distance (beyond the marathon distance, and the longer that distance becomes) we are in fact much more efficient, perhaps because of our higher body fat or we might be advantaged mentally -more research is urgently needed!

This is true Mitchy, fortunately I hope, not our own.

Because the military PR & recruiters have always assumed that its harder for the public to accept the deaths of women soldiers than men. Especially when those deaths start to mount up when women take on full combat roles.

in fact it is one of very few athletic endeavours where women outperform men

Do you know what I think? I think it will be a terrible thing because war is a terrible thing....if women join in to this extent then we'll never find peace will we?

Men have historically started wars and fought them...why should we fucking join in now?

I know that women have LONG played some part in war in various roles but this will be the fucking end of it all if you ask me....the end of women having anything worth anything that differentiates us from men.

I don't think Kelly Holmes had that many problems beating the men in pt sessions when she was in the army.

I used to do sport to a national level. There were a number of female athletes with a much more naturally muscular build than some of the men, who were naturally wiry and small. Its normal nowadays for women to finish in the top two overall in running races and triathlons and definitely for the female winner to finish in the top ten.

The problem now is that young men are becoming less physically able in sport because they tend to lead such sedentary lives and they don't develop the requisite motor skills early enough in life. Women don't tend to be quite so affected because its considered more positive for them to be slim and fit. I would be astonished if this isn't fitting into army recruitment.

The pool of women who can physically match or beat the average male recruit might be small, but that doesn't mean it should be discriminated against. Plus the physical requirements e.g. the 800m run are easily within the reach of the average female club runner. Time is not fast.

CorusKate, given the conditions in the trenches I can't imagine a bit of menstrual blood would have made any difference whatsoever.

I don't know if you're just being deliberately silly coruskate, but slotting women into sports created by and for male bodies and waiting to see how well we catch up doesn't make us inferior athletes. Male gymnasts struggle to complete female floor routines and warm ups, they lack the lower body strength.

women are very very very new to distance running. 1984 was the first Olympic marathon for women. Ultra running is even newer, and the gap has not only closed extremely quickly but if, say, 100 men and 100 women start an ultra a far higher number of men than women will not finish.

Paula Radcliffe was fastest female UK marathoner in 2003.

Sorry, yes, it was NigellasDealer I think.

But the physical ability thing is a red herring. Of course women can't beat Mo Farah over 10k, but nor can the average male soldier.

Birds DS1 has just passed the Army selection process. It is not just down to fitness and stamina, there are other aspects to it too. They are assessed on it all and given an overall grade.

The entry requirements for Officers are different for men and women.

If you have a CAMHS referral as a young person the armed forces will not accept you.

That disgusts me.

I know we are meant to view the male body as stronger, am just not convinced we measure strength all that accurately. I think we prize what the male body is good at and dismiss our own abilities. I also think our participation in sport has been too sparse and is too recent to say with any certainty whether we are as 'good' as men physically.

Runners often get faster and mentally tougher after pregnancy and birth, that's an advantage your average man doesn't have.

CorusKate you are aware that the laws on sex discrimination don't work on the basis of "the law of averages" aren't you? i.e. its not a valid reason to justify discrimination. Its completely illogical to exclude some women who are bigger, faster, stronger and less affected by "physical compromises" (wtf are those - having periods never troubled me at all in my sports career) and include some men who are smaller, feebler, weaker and less determined.

The army is full of physically and mentally mediocre specimens. I don't really think they can afford to exclude women. I think Kelly Holmes would have been a pretty lethal force on the battlefield, if required!

You have clearly forgotten Iona Robertson, who beat all the men (ex army included) in the SAS Challenge. She weighed about 8 stones and was around 5 feet 3. But she was just inexplicably strong and fast:

www.thefreelibrary.com/MULTI-SPORT%3A+Tougher+the+better+for+Iona.-a0126143080

And yes, why are women meant to protect their reproductive organs and so on, which are hidden inside their bodies, but men are not? When theirs hang around on the outside? I find that one baffling.

I think 50+ mile races are a great measure of strength, it's not all muscular is it! Or if it is a matter of force exerted by muscle then the uterus usually wins.

(I posted that as someone who hasn't run more than 10 miles in one go all year and who is a huge fan of the caesarean section )

but there will still be, as boffinmum pointed out, far more men who don't meet the military fitness standards than women who do so dividing it along those lines is odd