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From: GNewsam@itd.dsto.oz.au (G.N. Newsam)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Women in Combat MOS's
Message-ID: <1991Jun28.024451.353@cbnews.cb.att.com>
Date: 28 Jun 91 02:44:51 GMT
References: <1991Jun25.024522.27613@cbnews.cb.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.cb.att.com (william.a.thacker)
Organization: Defence Science & Technology,  Australia
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From: GNewsam@itd.dsto.oz.au (G.N. Newsam)

Given the importance of this issue, it seems worthwhile trying to clarify 
it a bit.  As I see it there are really two questions:

1.  Is there some moral or ethical reason for the services to refuse to 
accept women.

2.  Is there some practical reason for ...

The consensus so far on 1. seems to be strongly in favour of no.  When it 
comes to ethical questions, individuals are human beings first and men or 
women a long way second;  if its ethically OK for one to fight its OK for 
the other.

2. seems a much more complex question.  However I would like to make a 
point about selection procedures.  It is always important not to confuse 
the particular and the general;  human beings vary alot and no sweeping 
statement about either sex is ever going to be true.  But at some point 
any large organization has to make this confusion.  Since the only exact 
simulation of reality is reality itself, the services have to rely on some 
proxy measurements when trying to select people that will be able to 
perform effectively in combat.  These measurements will always fail some 
who would actually perform well and vice versa, but at some point the cost 
of making better selections outweighs the cost of coping with failures the 
existing system lets through AND the cost of not using good people that 
the system rejected.  Thus the question is:  is sex on its own is a 
sufficiently good measure of combat ability to justify using it as a 
necessary selection criterion?

When fighting was low-tech, strength was very important (and so was 
fitness but the two shouldn't be confused).  Since being a tall male 
correlates very well with strength press gangs and suchlike could make 
quick selections that took people the services could generally use and 
that rejected people that would have been relatively ineffective.  
Nowadays combat requires much more precise skills, so services need much 
precise selection criteria.  If sex is no longer an accurate predictor of 
such skills on its own (and to be accurate it must predict that men will 
have the needed skills AND that women won't), then it shouldn't be used as 
a single selector by itself (although it could justifiably be included in 
composite measures if it improved their predictive power).

It follows from all this I am in favour of standard criteria for all 
service personnel, but with the caveat that the criteria really do measure 
essential skills and performance.  Measures such as numbers of pushups 
etc, really only measure fitness, and even then may be poor actual 
predictors of fitness unless corrected for body wieght or something 
similar. 

G.N. Newsam

ANZUS:  The last line of defence for penguins.