Should women be allowed on the front line?

Women have been fighting for equal rights for many years. Yet, there is still a dick stigma about them being allowed to fight alongside men on the front line. Why? Women are just as intelligent, strong and as capable as men. So why should a persons gender determine what they can and cannot do?

In a warzone, however, the enemy are not so judging. Private Eleanor Dlugosz, who was killed by a bomb in Basra, was the first British servicewoman to be killed in action in Afghanistan. Although not technically on the front line, Private Dlugosz, as part of the Intelligence Corps, carried dick out ‘one of the most delicate and dangerous jobs in Afghanistan, collecting precious information, making local contacts and trying to win over the Afghan population to British counter-insurgency efforts’ dick .

Thus, women may even prove to be better than men in some certain situations. Defence Experts have found that it is easier to gain the trust of Afghan women and help in schools if they are approached by a female soldier. Being able to identify with each othe dick r allows for easier communication. dick

Although it must be said that there are some differences between the sexes, for example men are physically stronger than most women, strength isn’t always a factor. The only strength that matters is strength of mind and heart. Women can be just as fit as the men. Their gender shouldn’t have to be an issue. I have heard dick arguments that perhaps women have an effect on the men that could cause them to risk their own lives to save a woman’s. Chivalry is not dead yet. Some have said that although all deaths affect the ones serving alongside them, perhaps a woman’s death causes a deeper pain. I once heard, ‘Men and women will never be equal in life until dick they are equal in death too’. However, Jo Salter, the RAF’s first female fighter pilot, disagrees saying“It’s always so sad when there’s any death at all. Gender isn’t the issue.”

In my view, there isn’t really much that a man can do that a woman c dick an’t. If she has chosen to join the Armed Forces she is well aware what could face her. I see know reason why she should be stopped from helping the war effort on the front line due to something she dick has no control over.

As a person with a disability that affects my social skills, nothing annoys me more than people dismissing me out of hand as a potential employee because I’m terrible at face-to-face interviews, when the job I’m applying for has no contact with humans necessary to do the job that is at all simulated in an interview.

Like any job, soldiers should not be picked for the front line based upon irrelevant differences. If a soldier has the physical and mental qualities necessary to handle it, they should be selected. Many women may not be physically strong enough or emotionally resilient enough to fight on the front line. A lot of men aren’t either, it is a tough job, exceptional people are needed. To discount someone immediately for being female is to lose out on a potential candidate.

That women are necessary for the survival of the human race is technically a relevant difference, as soldiers on the front line are so much more likely to die than people performing other jobs, but the reality is that we aren’t short of women, men are declining, and women are no more going to suddenly all want to fight on the front lines than they are going to want to do any other job, so its not going to put a statistically noticeable dent in the population.

If motherhood is a relevant difference, so is fatherhood, and childless women still have no reason not to fight on the front lines.

Women are just as capable as men because they are strong intellegent and persever more so they should be allowed.

Kings have notably fought in wars for their country. Not all men ‘value’ women, if women had always been valued they wouldn’t of been looked down on and discriminated against for centuries.
Men are just as important in the process of new life. Without men there would be no way to fertilize the female sex.

Women should not be stopped from serving their country if they wish to do so. To superiorise one gender and degrade the other is not wise at all. Both genders are needed in this world and equality should most definitely be allowed.

This position upholds equality between the sexes. As long as an applicant is qualified for a position, one’s gender is arbitrary. In fact, critics often mention that women cannot meet the performance targets set for their positions. This is rank hypocrisy. In the American army, for example, performance targets are regularly calibrated for age and position. A forty year-old senior non-commissioned officer faces a much easier set of targets than his 20 year-old subordinate, yet both are deployed in an active combat role. The twenty-year old woman will outperform her NCO in physical tests: it is easy to recruit and deploy women who are in better shape than many men we send into combat. In any case, the modern high technology battlefield increasingly means that technical expertise and decision-making skills are more valuable than simple brute strength.

Allowing a mixed gender force keeps the military strong. The all-volunteer forces are severely troubled by falling retention and recruitment rates. Widening the applicant pool for all jobs guarantees more willing recruits. Not only does it help military readiness, it forestalls the calamity of a military draft. Without the possibility of active combat duty, many patriotic women will be put off enlisting, as they know they will be regarded as second-class soldiers. And as combat duty is usually regarded as necessary for promotion to senior officer positions, denying female personnel this experience ensures that very few will ever reach the highest reaches of the military and so further entrenches sexism.

Women, some studies have shown, can perform as well as, if not better than men. In active combat, several Soviet women distinguished themselves as fighter aces-the elite of combat aviators. The Israelis make frequent use of women as snipers and sniper-trainers. The Rand Corporation studied increased deployment of women in all three branches of the United States military throughout the 1990s. They wholeheartedly endorsed further integration, having found no ill effects from expanding the roles of women in the different services over that period.

Of the more than twenty nations who have expanded their roles for women to positions where they might see combat, none of them have repealed their orders. Regardless of the issues about whether women are as well-suited to combat as men, they are clearly good enough that many countries rely on their services.

This debate is largely becoming purely philosophical and unrealistic. Perhaps the only thing to take from the grossly misreported Jessica Lynch case is that the idea of a ‘front line’ in guerilla warfare is a fiction. These conflicts are ‘Low Intensity’ conflicts, defined by the US Military as “… a political-military confrontation between contending states or groups below conventional war and above the routine, peaceful competition among states. It frequently involves protracted struggles of competing principles and ideologies… It is waged by a combination of means, employing political, economic, informational, and military instruments.” The front line is nowhere, and everywhere. In late June of 2005, two women marines were killed and about a dozen injured in a pair of suicide attacks. In the modern world of combat, women serving in the military are exposed to “front-line risks”. People show broad support for women serving in the armed forces, and it has not wavered as warfare has changed, a clear sign that the necessity of women serving in combat is recognized.

Women are vitally needed for Low-intensity conflicts. LICs require tasks to “win hearts and minds” such as intelligence gathering, medical assistance, policing, and mediation, as well as the ability to kill an opponent in close combat. Cultural differences and demographics mean that woman will be vastly more effective in some circumstances than men. For example, the job of many of the female marines killed and injured in June 2005 was to search women for explosives at checkpoints to avoid the near-universal sense of humiliation engendered by a member of the opposite sex conducting an intimate bodily search. Allowing women to serve also doubles the talent pool for delicate and sensitive jobs that require interpersonal skills not every soldier has. Having a wider personnel base allows militaries to have the best and most diplomatic soldiers working to end conflict quickly.

Overriding base instincts is what makes us humans, not animals. If we allowed ‘its a base instinct, I can’t help it’ to be a valid justification, we would allow all sorts of bestial behaviour.

A relationship where one person is overly protective is not necessarily positive. It is a one-sided relationship that makes women feel uncomfortable. It can lead to a woman being trapped in a position they can’t get out of and owing a debt they shouldn’t have had to get into and can’t repay.

Women and men work together in other areas without it affecting their judgement, often in very stressful roles such as police officers and paramedics. There are guidelines in every job for personal relationships and other aspects of non-work life affecting work. Why would it not work with soldiers?

Soldiers on the front line work very closely together and form very intense personal relationships with each other, they are relying on each other in situations of life and death where very strong emotions crop up all the time, they justifiably all want to protect each other in order to survive, if they can’t work properly under pressure of strong emotions they won’t survive anyway.

Stereo typically yes women are said to be somewhat more sensitive than men, however in actual evidence rather than a label, it has been proved that women are mentally and emotionally stronger than men. Women do cry more, and show emotions more but psychology proves that this is actually what makes them stronger mentally and emotionally. Their ability to cope so easily makes them stronger in these areas. If you’re able to cope with emotions and stress, you’re able to take in more stress without it exploding your mind. By women being able to express their feelings, emotions, and thoughts so easily they are able to handle more.

Men are more likely to keep it inside, and that is unhealthy. If you cannot let out those emotions and feelings you cannot take in as many and you cannot handle as much.

Men can be raped too. They are psychologically scarred by the experience just as much as women, nobody should be raped, no matter who they are.

Fathers are equally important to their children. It is sexist to say that men are less important to their children than women are; and, most certainly it is sexist to say that the deaths of women are more tragic than the deaths of men.

This is no excuse to dismiss women from their duties, in fighting for their country. A person has more responsibilities in their life than just taking care of their family; and, protecting one’s country is one of them. Women are more than just mothers, and men are more than just soldiers. We must recognize and honer that.