The Military Should Fight Wars, Not Sexism

By Adam G. Mersereau
The Wall Street Journal, 17 March 1998

Today representatives of the Army, Navy and Air Force will testify before the House National
Security Subcommittee on Personnel on the Pentagon’s latest investigation of women’s roles in the
military. The investigators, a civilian panel led by former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum-Baker, spent
much of 1997 researching sex-integrated training and related issues. The panel concluded that the
integration of the sexes during basic training is not working, and recommended that the Army,
Navy and Air Force resegregate basic training into single-sex platoons. Defense Secretary William
Cohen has said he is still considering the issue, but he is likely to follow the recommendation of
the service chiefs, who have already declared that they support the status quo and oppose the
proposed reforms.

The reforms are indeed misguided — but only because they do not go far enough in reversing
the
expansion of women’s military roles. In hopes of winning Mr. Cohen’s support, panel members
assured him that their proposal mirrors the successful method the Marines already use. The truth
is that the Marines keep male and female recruits totally segregated. In an attempt to
get
Marine-like results for the other services without resorting to the Marine method, the panel has
stumbled upon a new arrangement that is drastically different — and that would highlight the
physical limitations of female recruits.

To understand how the Kassebaum-Baker plan differs from the Marine approach, one must
understand the military’s seemingly enigmatic unit structure. The largest relevant unit in recruit
training is what the Army and Marine Corps call a battalion. A battalion contains roughly 800
soldiers divided into four companies. Each company consists of four platoons of about 50 recruits
each. A recruit’s daily life revolves around the platoon, but companies often come together to run,
hike and conduct combat training in the field. A significant aspect of recruit training is the healthy
but fierce competition between platoons within each company. Drill sergeants foster that
competition to build platoon unity and teamwork and to inspire recruits to stretch their physical
abilities.

Historically, the services segregated the sexes into separate companies or battalions for basic
training so that men and women rarely crossed paths. When sex segregation became politically
unpopular, each service save the Marine Corps integrated basic training by thinly dispersing
women throughout each platoon. That way, military leaders hoped, the burdens of women’s
physical limitations, injuries and pregnancies would be diffused, and no single unit would suffer
disproportionately. Feminists like this arrangement because it obscures the detrimental effects
women have on units during physical training. The method also pleases many at the Pentagon, in
part because it allows the military to “train like it fights,” and in part because it passes the
enormous daily burdens of integration down the chain of command to small-unit leaders.

The Kassebaum-Baker panel recommends that basic training in the Army, Navy and Air Force
be
resegregated, but not totally. It suggests segregation at the platoon level. In other words, when 50
female recruits are assembled into a platoon, that platoon would be grouped with three all-male
platoons to form a company. The panel members are adamant that men and women would train
together 70% of the time under their plan, suggesting that companies would continue to run, hike,
go to the field and compete together. The panel also stresses that physical standards, which have
been lowered to accommodate women, should be restored to preintegration levels.

The net effect of the new proposal is that all-female platoons would train side-by-side with
all-male platoons, while high physical standards are maintained for all. Daily comparisons between
the physical abilities of military men and women would be inescapable and irrefutable. This is
what happened when the Marine Corps segregated the sexes by platoon at the Basic School, a
physically demanding secondary school for Marine lieutenants. Even though the physical
standards were more lenient for female platoons, women’s physical shortcomings were highlighted
at every turn. The Basic School abandoned the arrangement in 1991.

If platoon-level segregation were carried out throughout the other services, there would be no
escaping the conclusion that the expansion of women’s military roles into physically demanding
combat and combat-support units has been a mistake. The Kassebaum-Baker panel probably
didn’t realize this, but Secretary Cohen and his advisers surely do. And the chances are slim that
Mr. Cohen would allow a side-by-side comparison of military men and women. Since 1992, the
Defense Department has worked diligently to shield recruits in basic training from all physical
tests that illuminate the drastic physical differences between the sexes.

Although Mr. Cohen has announced his support for the panel’s recommendation to abolish
coed
housing for recruits, he is unlikely to endorse the panel’s central recommendation. It’s likely that
the status quo will prevail, with everyone evading responsibility. Mr. Cohen will defer to the
service chiefs, who oppose resegregation — but then, what kind of soldiers would they be if they
waged an unwinnable war against their civilian leaders?

Will Mr. Cohen at least acknowledge that integration of the sexes in basic training is not
working?
Probably not. Such an admission would leave him cornered. After all, there are only three ways to
organize the sexes in boot camp: total integration, segregation at the platoon level or total,
Marine-style segregation. An admission that men and women do not train well together would
rule out all options except total segregation. A president desperate to hold on to his feminist
support will never endorse such a move.

Basic training is an environment designed to simulate the stresses and strains of war. So an
admission that mixed-sex units are problematic in basic training is an admission that they will be
problematic in combat. Mr. Cohen will not make such an admission unless he somehow finds the
will to support a total re-evaluation of women’s military roles.

Such a re-evaluation is urgently needed. Each day brings America nearer to its next military
conflict. If Mr. Cohen does not stand up for the truth in peacetime, America’s sons and daughters
will one day have it forced upon them in war.

Mr. Mersereau graduated from Marine boot camp at Parris Island in 1990, and left the
Marine
Corps as a first lieutenant in 1995. He is now a student at Georgia State University School of
Law.