Posted by Tina
I’ve held for a long time that men and women should be able to serve and climb the ladder in the military. I prefer separate male and female service especially when it comes to hard combat and specialized missions. It just makes more sense to train and work in separate units given the military’s distinct purpose, the physical differences, and the problems that inevitably rise when healthy, young men and women commingle.
Today I read that in Norway they’ve created the first all female special forces unit. The women develop the same skills as the men but the training is tailored to take advantage of the strengths and strength levels of the women. They are trained to use weapons, to parachute out of military aircraft, to ski in the Arctic tundra, to navigate the wilderness, and to fight in urban terrain. They carry the same 100 pounds of gear as the men and must finish a 4 mile hike, carrying 60 pounds of gear in an approximate equal time (52 minutes-women; 49 minutes-men).
When a change like this occurs naturally, as it has in Norway, the result is far superior to change that is forced through protest, politics and the courts. Norway chose to do this when a need arose that demanded a solution:
The unit was started after Norway’s Armed Forces’ Special Command saw an increased need for female special operations soldiers — particularly in places like Afghanistan where male troops were forbidden from communicating with women. The exclusion of half the population was having a detrimental impact on intelligence gathering and building community relations.
“When [Norway] deployed to Afghanistan we saw that we needed female soldiers. Both as female advisers for the Afghan special police unit that we mentored, but also when we did an arrest,” said Col. Frode Kristofferson, the commander of Norway’s special forces. “We needed female soldiers to take care of the women and children in the buildings that we searched.”
So they created the all-female unit specifically designed to train them.
“One of the advantages that we see with an all-female unit is that we can have a tailored program and a tailored selection for the female operators,” Kristofferson said, adding that at the end of the one-year program the female soldiers are just as capable as their male counterparts.
This solution makes sense. It wasn’t driven by a social or political agenda. It provides the military with another specialized group that I’m sure will grow and evolve to meet various conditions over time. It eliminates the headaches and problems that mixed units are bound to have when young healthy males and females are thrown together in close quarters. It allows for planning in missions tailored to the skills and requirements of the women. It offers women interested in this kind of service a way to distinguish themselves and to rise in rank and pay grade.
Your thoughts?
It does make complete sense. Loosing women who physically can’t meet the male standards, but can and do meet all of the others is what doesn’t make sense.
It was a woman who put together the plan to take out Bin Laden. Plus, the women pilots taking out the terrorist in the middle east take great pride in letting them know they will be killed by a woman and denied their afterlife rewards.
The US should do the same. I’m sure with all of the women in positions of first responders here at home and currently serving in our military would love to have a new career opportunity available to them.
Robert Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” floats the idea of a 2-year stint of military service in order to be able to vote or hold public office.
Had never really thought about it until I read that book during my teenage years (long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . . .) but the idea certainly has merit!
Those Scandinavians can be a clever and wise people. After all, this is the region of the world which produced the Vikings. It is also a region whose fascinating mythology (Viking and other) included heroic “shieldmaiden” warriors.