US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has previously expressed opposition to women serving in combat, has ordered the military to develop gender-neutral physical fitness standards for frontline troops, a memo released Monday said.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has previously expressed opposition to women serving in combat, has ordered the military to develop gender-neutral physical fitness standards for frontline troops, a memo released Monday said.
Mostly because there are many different roles that apply to “front line troops.” The traits that work great for running ammo boxes all day are different from the traits to carry a 200 pound dude a few hundred feet. The traits to shoot accurately are different from the traits to assemble and deploy explosives. The traits to drive a tank are different from the traits to work the comms.
More importantly, though, is that this isn’t JUST choosing one set of standards. This will absolutely be “choosing one set of standards with very high bars in certain categories.” There are things women just do not do as well as men, and we all know those will be areas that are emphasized and with difficult to reach goals. There are things women do better than men, and we all know those areas will be de-emphasized with very easy to reach goals.
I agree with the sentiment that different roles have different specific requirements- a tank driver doesn’t need to be as strong or fast as an infantryman. However, there are some base requirements that apply to all front-line troops. No matter your role, if you are expected to see combat, you need to be at a certain level with regards to weapons handling, but also physical strength and endurance. Even a tank driver, medic or radio operator may need to fire a gun, carry wounded, or help push a jeep upright.
Still, I agree that there are different requirements for different specialities, and definitely think it is a good idea to have different requirements for these in the selection process. However, I can’t see a compelling argument saying that the base requirements for male and female tank drivers, medics, infantry, etc. should be different. I think the tank crew is an especially good example here, because research on Norwegian soldiers has indicated that women are (on average) better suited to this role, because they are often better at handling high cognitive load while exhausted. Putting the same requirements for everyone, with requirements tuned to the specialisation, could very well lead to more women in certain roles.
Of course, for your second point, I think that falls under the category of “everything is bad if poorly implemented”. I definitely agree that it’s a bad idea to place very hard baseline physical requirements for all roles. That means the military will lose out on highly capable medics, tank crews, radio operators, etc. both male and female. But as you say, more of the capable people lost will be women, simply because of biology. However, I think that’s more a question about how requirements for the military should be implemented, and not really a question of “should we place the same requirements on men and women in the same role?” to which I think, on general grounds, the answer should be yes.
To be clear - I have no doubts that the people pushing this in the current administration intend to leverage it to push highly capable women out of roles they are more than capable of filling, and that’s an unambiguously bad thing.