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?

The manipulation of physical tests to level the playing fields for the sexes is fascinating when you look into it more.

Consider the throwing distance for a hand grenade - vital for someone who will be using hand grenades in a live combat situation. Not important for many other, but just as important, roles. Therefore, having a test that will have a disproportionate effect on one gender for no good reason is very much discriminatory towards getting women in the forces generally. Far fairer to have physical fitness tests specific to the needs of each role. So keep the hand grenade throwing test as it was but only for recruits who are trying to take on a role that requires you to throw a hand grenade. If you fail that and you're a woman, tough, just as it would be if you were a man.

I worked with someone who was ex-forces and had served in Afghanistan. She had lived in very close quarters with her male counterparts and showered naked next to them etc. She said it wasn't nice in the sense that conditions were appalling and privacy is something you kiss goodbye to, but it was fine in the sense that no one leered at her or treated her like a precious little princess. Working in those conditions mean male colleagues see you as a colleague rather than 'a woman' in her experience.

what do you think happens now caruthers?

the stuff about our reproductive functions (our primary purpose obviously) sounds about as robustly evidenced as the Saudi minister's justification for not letting women drive because of our ovaries

or even the IOC person last year worrying about women doing ski jumps

LtEveDallas

They don't do they?

Otherwise there wouldn't be this discussion by the powers that be.

I'm not blaming female soldiers BTW, I am blaming the misplaced chivalry of the leaders in prohibiting this from happening.

This is a quote from the BBC.

Currently women can serve on the front line, but not where the primary aim is to "close with and kill the enemy".

Maybe we don't design grenades very well if only certain people can lob them a safe distance. When you look at most military equipment it's like time passed it by and it came straight from WW2 anyway.

And maybe those brilliant inco pants you can wear after having babies to soak everything up are the solution to the wee thing. They can hold more than a pint of liquid and still let people run about.

Who even cares about wee? I want the best people defending my country, not the most arbitrarily masculine.

I would like to point out I happily decorated a bathroom:

a) at 9.5 months pg with my waters actually and quite seriously breaking
b) with serious mobility problems

I am sure the average female soldier would be capable of running about a bit with wet disposable pants on and wearing a heavy pack.

caruthers think of a signals officer for example, killing the enemy isn't the main point of them being on the front line but they can and do have to do that as a necessary but secondary function

curious as to what you imagine the women on the front line in Afghanistan right now are doing

Hi Caruthers. All that means is that women cannot currently be capbadged as Infantry, Royal Armoured Corps, Royal Marine and RAF Regiment (like the Infantry). Other capbadges can deploy alongside them, and train and work with them, but they don't have the same primary task as them. There are also a number of specific trades within some Corps (like the Royal Artillery) that they cannot do.

There are women on the front line, but they have trades that are needed within front line units. There are women who have killed etc - but that isn't their 'primary task'

Yes, dingalong, by all means have a grenade throwing test for the front line but a) train people properly, and b) think about what the next generation of grenades might have to look like.

Ok here's a stronger proof - 2 veteran women infantry soldiers www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10363980/Meet-the-female-soldiers-proving-the-case-for-women-on-the-front-line.html

Wish I could dig out some of those interviews I've read. Women are front line soldiers in other places. It is done, it can be done. As infantry too. So you can stop arguing . The question is why doesn't Britain do it, and the answer is there in op's - it's chivalry.

Though I'm still not joining up . Too old now anyway.

How do you even define female now, given what we know about the physiology of gender and the fact there are very many permutations?

Dingalong - so make it a test purely for frontline combatants otherwise you'd be losing very capable people from other roles because of their inability to pass a test that has nothing to do with their job requirements. Although BoffinMum makes a good point about the design of equipment.

Body armour is a good illustration of that. It can be uncomfortable for women with larger breasts. Designing body armour that can accommodate female breasts can be expensive. Therefore women can be considered by many to be causing expense and inconvenience.

But if women had been the first people to wear body armour and so it had always been designed with breasts in mind, the problem wouldn't exist and would always have been dealt with from day one.

Just because things were one way in the past doesn't mean it's ok to continue with that in the present just because of inconvenience and expense if continuing the status quo is discriminatory.

I understand what you are saying and the discussion within service chiefs is that women should be allowed the privilege of fighting alongside their male counterparts in a battle arena.

There is nothing curious about the figures of the dead soldiers in war zones right now Mitchinge....considering women make up 9% of our armed forces how many female soldiers die in combat compared to men?

I'll tell you now that it's a very very small percentage.

If female soldiers were badged as infantry and such then obviously this would change and the numbers would rise, which is what they seem to want to prevent.

I had this explained. it's because men want to naturally protect women. If they are being shot at by the enemy, a man will stand in front of a woman and tell her to "get back so she will be safe" or something along those lines. if a woman has her period while she's on duty it can be really stressful for her especially. A woman would not be able to go on duty if she is pregnant, but she can do it if she's in intelligence/REME or whatever. They really should think about allowing women to be on the front lines, the US allows it (i think) and so do a lot of other countries, don't see why ours should be different but there are a lot of factors to consider. a man will not be able to do his job properly if he is hell bent on protecting a woman who can, and rightly so, protect herself. It's not a sexist thing, its just nature, a man will naturally want to keep a woman out of harms way. This shouldn't even come into it, every female soldier has got to be a very tough nut to crack to be in the forces. I admire every single one of them.

it's fascinating isn't it boffin, eventually we will probably have to abandon our binary understanding of biological sex now we know that 1 in 100 live births have some degree of ambiguity

Again I refuse to blame female soldiers just their leaders in preventing full integration into the combat arena.

Yes LtEve. The SAS explained them to me when I successfully completed the exercise above. Can you read? How the hell do you think you make it between observation points if you don't know what a fucking observation point is?

Apologies for my lack of actual army experience. As a woman, despite my abilities, I'm discouraged.

May I add also, a man can't have any body fat to do arctic tours and the like. They need to be of utmost fitness, but a woman naturally has body fat. She would freeze faster than a man, or so im told, not sure of the science behind it. This is like saying "Why can't women play pro football alongside men" because they can't. if a man tackles a woman in pro football then they get scrutinized for hurting a woman. Its totally strange but it's not something a woman would be able to do. A woman could be very, very good at football but probably not as pro as Ronaldo for example. She may be on par but wouldn't be able to play alongside him because of the FA's fear of being accused of hurting women for entertainment. I think its stupid.

The flip side to being allowed to fight on the front line is that one day all our daughters may be called up.

How do you know they were SAS, Melon?

I thought part of forces training was to re-educate the way in which people think about themselves, their colleagues and the 'enemy'.

A frontline soldier who successfully protects a colleague is a hero. A frontline soldier who tries to protect a colleague while putting the rest of the troops in danger is not. That's down to judgement, not the gender of the people concerned surely?

I would question suitability for combat in a soldier whose judgment can be so easily skewed by the gender of his colleagues TBH. If my erstwhile colleague can work with all those soldiers in Afghanistan without problems, and presumably she's not the only one, it's clearly not an impossible ask.