It’s a matter of national security

Men and women are not equal, and perhaps the most glaring area where this holds true is physical strength.

Daily production of testosterone, the primary male sex hormone, has been shown to be up to 20 times greater in men than in women. Testosterone is anabolic and develops bone and muscle mass, meaning most men are larger and more powerful than women.

Wayne State University’s Kingsley R. Brown published a paper in April 2012 on the topic of women in combat, pointing out the obvious – almost no women are as physically capable as men.

Brown cites a 2002 study from the British Ministry of Defense, stating the few female soldiers capable of the same tasks as males stand a higher risk of injury due to “working at a higher percentage of their maximum capability,” leaving a tenth to one percent of women who can perform as well as men.

Another example comes from a study conducted by the U.S. Navy in the ‘80s, showing that few female recruits could perform “eight critical shipboard tasks,” such as carrying “water pumps to the scene of a fire or flooded compartment.”

According to the 1992 Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces, female Army recruits on average weigh 31.7 pounds less and have 37.4 fewer pounds of muscle than men.

They have “55 percent of the upper-body strength and 72 percent of the lower-body strength” of men.

Do we expect a woman to carry a wounded 200-pound man with almost 100 pounds of gear across a battlefield, especially when “the average 20-to-30 year-old woman has the same aerobic capacity as a 50-year-old man”?
Israel is commonly brought up, since the nation mandates military service for men and women, but Major General Yiftach Ron-Tal said in a radio interview in 2011 expanding that role would be a mistake, as women are far more likely to suffer stress fractures than men.

But what about the outliers, like those in the British study? The answer here is found in the idea of unit cohesion.

Mixed-gender units necessarily have distracted members – because they want to protect the women, because they are having sex with the women and because they’re mad they aren’t having sex with the women.

Some now wonder if women should be required to register with Selective Service, but drafting women would further decrease military effectiveness and unit cohesion.

The military is a matter of national security, not a diversity experiment.


Zachary Lott is a sophomore history major of Jonesboro.