Women in Combat

Women in the People’s Liberation Army marching in short skirts and knee high boots during the 60th anniversary parade of the People’s Republic of China:

They might look great but the women who serve in the world’s largest army are barred from serving in front line infantry unit.  In fact, with the first decade of the 21st Century coming to a close, women still serve mainly in non-combat roles in the armies of most NATO members, and are barred from serving in front line combat in the US Army. So are women in the army just nurses and secretaries in khaki?

Miss Russian Army Parade

Women served in combat in the Red Army during WWII, but in today’s Russian army, they compete in a the Miss Russian Army beauty pageant. So while the men in the Russian army strip their weapons, the women… strip!

Miss Russian Army

The are obviously huge physical differences between men and women — men are bigger, heavier, stronger, faster and have better endurance than women – but these are hardly insurmountable problems. In Italy, since 2005, women have been allowed to serve in an equal capacity to men within every branch of the military, including the elite Brigata Paracadutisti “Folgore”, Bersaglieri, and Alpini, and also serve in the Carabinieri and  NOCS  (counter terrorist unit).

Female Italian Paratrooper

Girls can be quite strong, fast, fit and resilient too, and we can shoot as accurately as men, and serve in an equal capacity in the police forces of every NATO member state. So the argument that women can’t do it just doesn’t wash. The real reason that women are barred from combat has nothing to do with size, strength,  stature, speed or stamina, it’s because culturally we have a problem with the concept with females going into battle, as C. S. Lewis put it, in ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’, “battles are ugly when women fight”. A captured female soldier is almost certainly going to be raped or sexually assaulted, although females in the military are more likely to be raped by the soldiers they serve with rather than the enemy. But is this a good enough reason for barring women from assuming equal roles to men in the military?