Women in the marines: test results

[sumskilz]

Cause Heaven forbid, spending money on the military is such a low priority for a world superpower.

Deliberately wasting money for equal or compromised efficacy is just foolishness. The small number of women who have the desire and could qualify are not needed, so why bother? It's my understanding that everyone's position in the marines is ultimately subject to operational needs.

[Valkor Deathborne]

Cause Heaven forbid, spending money on the military is such a low priority for a world superpower.

And there are a million better options to spend money on then coddling.

[MissRarity]

Deliberately wasting money for equal or compromised efficacy is just foolishness. The small number of women who have the desire and could qualify are not needed, so why bother? It's my understanding that everyone's position in the marines is ultimately subject to operational needs.

I say this, anyone who can fight, will fight and has the skills necessary should fight (if they want to). Plain Pragmatism. And any sort of loss squad effectiveness is clearly because of poor training. If your squad underperforms, it needs to go through training.

Women has been in wars, and are still in wars (both officially and unofficially) and to not give them access to the same public training as men just seems stupid to me.

And there are a million better options to spend money on then coddling.

Marine training = Coddling.

[Phier]

I say this, anyone who can fight, will fight and has the skills necessary should fight (if they want to). Plain Pragmatism. And any sort of loss squad effectiveness is clearly because of poor training. If your squad underperforms, it needs to go through training.

Train me not to act like a male eh?



Good luck with that genetic trait reeducation and training.

[sumskilz]

Regarding disputes earlier in the thread about sexual dimorphism, here is one example:

Hand-grip strength has been identified as one limiting factor for manual lifting and carrying loads. To obtain epidemiologically relevant hand-grip strength data for pre-employment screening, we determined maximal isometric hand-grip strength in 1,654 healthy men and 533 healthy women aged 20-25 years. Moreover, to assess the potential margins for improvement in hand-grip strength of women by training, we studied 60 highly trained elite female athletes from sports known to require high hand-grip forces (judo, handball). Maximal isometric hand-grip force was recorded over 15 s using a handheld hand-grip ergometer. Biometric parameters included lean body mass (LBM) and hand dimensions. Mean maximal hand-grip strength showed the expected clear difference between men (541 N) and women (329 N). Less expected was the gender related distribution of hand-grip strength: 90% of females produced less force than 95% of males. Though female athletes were significantly stronger (444 N) than their untrained female counterparts, this value corresponded to only the 25th percentile of the male subjects. Hand-grip strength was linearly correlated with LBM. Furthermore, both relative hand-grip strength parameters (F (max)/body weight and F (max)/LBM) did not show any correlation to hand dimensions. The present findings show that the differences in hand-grip strength of men and women are larger than previously reported. An appreciable difference still remains when using lean body mass as reference. The results of female national elite athletes even indicate that the strength level attainable by extremely high training will rarely surpass the 50th percentile of untrained or not specifically trained men.

Hand-grip strength of young men, women and highly trained female athletes

[alhoon]

Seriously?!? Women have THAT weaker grip? That can't be possible. I have seen grandmothers grip and pick up cauldron caps that should weight like 3kgs with one hand from a really small top handle.
And it's not that it takes the STRONGEST women to open that olive or marmalade jam that gives the average man a pause!
According to the above post, if the median man can't twist the cap off, then like 5% of women will be able to.

[Phier]

Seriously?!? Women have THAT weaker grip? That can't be possible. I have seen grandmothers grip and pick up cauldron caps that should weight like 3kgs with one hand from a really small top handle.
And it's not that it takes the STRONGEST women to open that olive or marmalade jam that gives the average man a pause!
According to the above post, if the median man can't twist the cap off, then like 5% of women will be able to.

Did you seriously just compare your recollections of can opening to a scientific study?

[alhoon]

Yeap.
I realize women are weaker but they can't be THAT weak. You tell me. You're a biologist. Is it true that the top 10% of female athletes has as strong grip as the median man? And a very small percentage of normal women that are not athletes is as strong as the 30% WEAKEST males?

Do you consider this source reliable? I will take your word, so be sincere.
You have (I hope) a better understanding of which medical journals and studies are a joke and which are good.

But don't claim that every scientific study is good, cause I have seen scientific studies even in serious journals of my field that were ridiculous and a pre-graduate student could see the mistakes.

[sumskilz]

None of the studies listed as citing it dispute its findings. Full text is free here with registry, so I'm attaching a PDF of it.

Also, a bit about the reason:

Enhanced physical strength is a secondary sex characteristic in males. Sexual dimorphism in physical strength far exceeds sex differences in stature or total body mass, suggesting a legacy of intense sexual selection. Upper-body strength is a particularly promising marker of intrasexual competitiveness in young men. Consequently, it is assumed that sex-influenced gene expression contributes to the development of physical strength. It is unclear, however, whether the underlying sources of individual differences in strength development are comparable across sex. We obtained three measurements of hand-grip strength (HGS) over a six-year period spanning adolescence in male and female same-sex twins (N = 2,513). Biometrical latent growth models were used to partition the HGS variance at age 11 (intercept) and its growth over time (slope) into genetic and environmental components. Results demonstrated that variance around the intercept was highly heritable in both males and females (88% and 79%, respectively). In males, variance around the slope exceeded that of the intercept, while the reverse held for females. Additive genetic effects accounted for most (80%) of the variance around the slope in males, but were of less importance in females (heritability = 28%). Absolute genetic variance around the slope was nearly nine-fold higher in males. This striking disparity suggests that the developmental processes shaping HGS growth are different between the sexes. We propose that this might account for the sex-specific pattern of associations between HGS and external measures (e.g., digit ratio and physical aggression) typically reported in the literature. Our results underscore the role of endogenous androgenic influences in the development of physical strength.

Genetic influences on the development of grip strength in adolescence

[alhoon]

None of the studies listed as citing it dispute its findings.

Good enough for me. I'll send it to my feminist friends to troll them.

The text you quoted is... too hard for poor me. If none of the cited studies dispute it, it's good enough for me.

[Condottiere 40K]

Expeditionary warfare you want the best possible candidates, since supplying and supporting them requires about the same resources, except maybe stuff that women might need in addition.

But if they need to make up the numbers since there's a shortage of qualified candidates, they can lower the standards.

[xcorps]

I say this, anyone who can fight, will fight and has the skills necessary should fight (if they want to). Plain Pragmatism. And any sort of loss squad effectiveness is clearly because of poor training. If your squad underperforms, it needs to go through training.

Women has been in wars, and are still in wars (both officially and unofficially) and to not give them access to the same public training as men just seems stupid to me..

Did you miss the part about the increase in training injuries during training? Strength standards are set to meet performance requirements. If the strength standard of squad A is lower than the strength standard of Squad B, you will not be able to train that away. Strength and skill are not the same thing.

Public training? Marine infantry training is not open to the public.

[Valkor Deathborne]

I say this, anyone who can fight, will fight and has the skills necessary should fight (if they want to). Plain Pragmatism. And any sort of loss squad effectiveness is clearly because of poor training. If your squad underperforms, it needs to go through training.

Women has been in wars, and are still in wars (both officially and unofficially) and to not give them access to the same public training as men just seems stupid to me.



Marine training = Coddling.

Well the data back contradicts confirms your point about pragmatism.
The loss of squad effectiveness because one member is not physically dispositioned to carry 300 lbs of dead weight out of a kill zone is just, especially when you can't train to it.

You don't just "get access" to training, thats not how this works, thats not how any of this works. You test into it. Im sorry if some people aren't predispositioned to succeed. Nature is a dictatorship.


well that data says a lot about females performing poorly at "coddle training"

[Phier]

Yeap.
I realize women are weaker but they can't be THAT weak. You tell me. You're a biologist. Is it true that the top 10% of female athletes has as strong grip as the median man? And a very small percentage of normal women that are not athletes is as strong as the 30% WEAKEST males?

Do you consider this source reliable? I will take your word, so be sincere.
You have (I hope) a better understanding of which medical journals and studies are a joke and which are good.

But don't claim that every scientific study is good, cause I have seen scientific studies even in serious journals of my field that were ridiculous and a pre-graduate student could see the mistakes.

I really hate to do this... really hate.. .but ...

Do you even lift bro? (sorry its an old weight lifting joke, google it)

As a male, I'm pretty average as a lifter. I am not breaking any records, or even getting close to look at them. I'm in my mid 40's. I didn't even START weight lifting until I was late 30's even semi-seriously.

Let me tell you how many woman I've seen lift more than me, including many female college athletes.

None... I've never seen a woman bench more than me, squat more, DL more, pull more, press more, ever. I saw one 6'2" college volleyball player get close to my dead lift warmup weight.

Now if you go to the Olympics, you will find women stronger then me, women who have trained for years, women who have gone the extra mile, women who are the height of the genetic potential.

Now in that same gym, on any given day, unless I happen to get there at a odd hour, there will usually be 2-3 men stronger than I am in there, sometimes more.

So maybe your grandmother can open cans thats great. My wife does crossfit and weight lifts, shes very strong for a woman, she does all the lifting type work at a all female volunteer organization she is part of because they can't, and I can hold her arms back like I'm holding a childs.

I'm sorry but women are *that* weak.

Years ago I got on trouble here. In a thread in EMM I said every woman should be hit once by a man for real. As in a real blow, all his force. This was of course taken horribly out of context and I had to defend myself before TWC court (I won). My reasoning is that women (and apparently so men) just have NO idea of the difference. My wife used to think, even before she worked out, at a time when I had to once carry a 20 pound box for her because it was too heavy to carry up stairs with one hand, that if she were assault by a man, she could somehow fight. I told her run like hell. She gets it now (and I didn't have to hit her ) but due to the civility of todays society a lot of women and men just have NO clue how different we are in strength.

Its understandable with todays environment, but the difference is real and its HUGE.

[MissRarity]

Train me not to act like a male eh?

Good luck with that genetic trait reeducation and training.

So, male biology makes you a worse fighter if a female is looking at you?

Strange, much strange indeed

[diegis]

Its obvious that on average females are weaker then males, however I don't think a well trained and physical fit woman can't be good for military service.
The problem I saw is most a psychological one (women are seen as weaker, or need to be protected and so on, is something instinctual and can mess up sometime the cohesion or activity of a unit) and obvious another one of sexual nature. Because in the case of young/adult people of different genders stuck together for prolonged periods, this will lead to sexual tensions as well (and many times not just tensions but direct acts).

There is as well the social construct that almost automatically direct women since the childhood to non martial roles or jobs in society.

However women as these I believe are surely at the level of medium trained man/soldier, from any point of view (including physical fitness)

http://s1.reutersmedia.net/resources...=CBRE8730URG00
http://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/...ng-1-popup.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...0b0396d9db.jpg
https://paleodiabetic.files.wordpres...4149xsmall.jpg
http://maybusch.com/wp-content/uploa...er-closeup.jpg
http://www.gripstik.com/B_Proffitt2.jpg
http://www.amurmuringmind.com/wp-con...Women-rock.jpg
https://41.media.tumblr.com/55b6cdfc...xspfo1_500.jpg
http://adventure-journal.com/wp-cont...hris-noble.jpg

And this little guy have probably a grip stronger then a big bodybuilder twice his size

http://www.zenith-watches.com/media/...10e61946b6.jpg
http://sxh1b2g2g4f2w04gm2piih1u.wpen...ay-660x350.jpg
http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/5820/...0c612bc_XL.jpg

Its just a matter of selection and training, if you ignore or resolve the other problems (social and sexual) that may appear. Truth is that with new development of technologies that allow people less physical strong to do lots of things the women can find more roles in the military, but still is not the time to think they can do everything there.

[alhoon]

...
My reasoning is that women (and apparently so men) just have NO idea of the difference. My wife used to think, even before she worked out, at a time when I had to once carry a 20 pound box for her because it was too heavy to carry up stairs with one hand, that if she were assault by a man, she could somehow fight. I told her run like hell. She gets it now [...] but due to the civility of todays society a lot of women and men just have NO clue how different we are in strength.

Its understandable with todays environment, but the difference is real and its HUGE.

No, I had no idea. I really had no idea.
I'm very weak as a man, the weakest among my friends, never set foot on a gym etc, but thinking of it, my mother and sister are indeed weaker and my sister used to work out.
About how we don't realize the difference... you are right. I don't think many know that the stronger 10% of women are weaker than the average man!
That actually convinces me to keep carrying up the luggage when women friends and relatives tell me "it's OK, I'll take it" etc.


About the stuff that got you in hot water, I sincerely suggest you edit it out of your post. My jaw dropped when I saw your suggestion and it WILL start a flame war. It is not adding anything substantial to your post.

Its obvious that on average females are weaker then males, however I don't think a well trained and physical fit woman can't be good for military service.

Marines. The study is about FRONT LINE marines.
Nobody said a woman can't be a good pilot. OK, nobody proved it at least.
Piloting a bomber or fighter jet requires aggression, fast reflexes and good spatial sense, and I don't know how women fare there. I know they are in general less aggressive than us.

And I think women would do better in submarines than men since they're more able to cope with being cramped in a small space with many other people.

[Condottiere 40K]

Especially mini-subs.

Since the Russians have pretty much automated the loader position, they should recruit them for their tank corps.

[Himster]

I really hate to do this... really hate.. .but ...

Do you even lift bro? (sorry its an old weight lifting joke, google it)

As a male, I'm pretty average as a lifter. I am not breaking any records, or even getting close to look at them. I'm in my mid 40's. I didn't even START weight lifting until I was late 30's even semi-seriously.

Let me tell you how many woman I've seen lift more than me, including many female college athletes.

None... I've never seen a woman bench more than me, squat more, DL more, pull more, press more, ever. I saw one 6'2" college volleyball player get close to my dead lift warmup weight.

Yup.

Now if you go to the Olympics, you will find women stronger then me, women who have trained for years, women who have gone the extra mile, women who are the height of the genetic potential.

Exactly: citizens who are capable of being soldiers. Not many, but more than zero. Citizens being denied the right to equal opportunity solely because of their gender.
That's the issue. The average female is utterly and completely irrelevant, not that you necessarily brought it up, it's just annoying that such a non-sequitur has been the most discussed thing in this thread, by both anti-women-sexists and biology-denialists.

[Condottiere 40K]

I doubt there are very few who would deny a woman a combat role, as long as she isn't a liability.