Four Women Pass Marine Corps Infantry Test For The First Time

[LanternWaste]

Four women have passed the Marine Corps’ most grueling test for infantry training, raising the possibility that the historically all-male infantry force may become the next frontier to open for female soldiers. The female Marines are part of the first batch of women to undertake the Marines’ eight-week enlisted infantry training.

The Pentagon’s decision to lift the ban on women in ground combat earlier this year was met with skepticism about whether or not women could meet the physical demands. In January, Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AR) argued that opening the infantry to women ignored gender differences in “nature, upper body strength, and physical movements, and speed, and endurance, and so forth.”

To test these long-held ideas, Marines started allowing women to participate in the same physical training as their male classmates in September. Monday’s test dropped 246 men and seven women at 3 a.m. in the middle of the woods, where they hiked 12.5 miles with 80-pound packs before launching into regular field exercises. Three women and 20 men failed to finish the test, which is considered one of the military’s most strenuous training sequences.


http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/10/29/2850801/female-marines-test/

[Vincardog]

1. Men 8.13% failure rate Women 15% failure rate. Not the same but is it significant?

[Revanchist]

2. Since the disparity of the number of men vs. the number of women

gives the men an advantage, I don't think you can apply any statistical significance to the results. The are simply too many males for each female to look at the failure rate like that.

[LanternWaste]

3. As per the article, sample is as of yet still too small to determine.

"The Marines hope to put 300 women through the training by the end of the year in order to accumulate enough research to determine..."

[ismnotwasm]

4. My daughter went for Airborne

Didn't make it because of shin splints-- She was broken hearted. But she did get her Air Assault badge, was a weapons expert, and is a decorated combat veteran for her deployment in Afghanistan.

She's out of the military now, but at the time she was absolutely driven not to let her physical gender hold her back.

Still, although women should be able to serve in equal and earned capacity in the military--and already do in other countries, I regret the need or impulse toward war, always