Do Women Belong in Combat? | 5-Minute Videos

Michelle Thibeau served in the U.S. Army Special Operations Command in Afghanistan. As a woman and a soldier, she knows that there are many roles in the armed forces that women can and should fill. Is combat one of them?

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Transcript:
Do Women Belong in Combat?
Presented by Michelle Thibeau

Women do not belong in combat.

I say this as a woman—and a soldier.

I’ve seen war firsthand, in all its ugliness and brutality.

In 2017, I served in the U.S. Army Special Operations Command in Afghanistan. My job was to engage with local women—something my male colleagues were discouraged from doing, because of religious and cultural barriers. That access was critical to our mission.

I saw up close what our warfighters had to do to succeed, to survive, and to protect civilians.

I was as close to combat as you could get. And I thank God I didn’t get any closer.

I’m proud of my military service. There are many roles in the armed forces that women can and should fill. But combat is not one of them.

Until recently, it was conventional wisdom not to put women on the front lines. The principle that combat is a male burden has been nearly universal across civilizations.

There’s an obvious reason for this. Men are, on average, stronger, faster, and more capable of delivering— and withstanding—extreme violence. That’s not a stereotype. It’s basic physiology.

And common sense tells us: a society that places women—the bearers of new life—on the front lines is not prioritizing its future.

Yet in 2015, the Obama administration ordered the full integration of women into all military combat roles, including special operations and mixed-gender infantry units.

At the time, many of us in uniform knew this was a mistake. And we had the data to prove it.

A U.S. Marine Corps study that same year found that all-male units outperformed mixed-gender units in nearly every measurable category. Mixed units had slower times in obstacle courses. Women were six times more likely to suffer musculoskeletal injuries than men. Women took longer to evacuate wounded comrades to safety. Where male Marines could do single-person lifts, female Marines often had to revert to two-person drags, which were slower and less efficient.

In war, those gaps aren’t theoretical—they’re fatal.

Military experts, including those in the Israel Defense Forces, have identified additional concerns: in mixed-gender combat units, the Israelis found, male soldiers often shifted focus away from the mission to protect their female comrades — their natural instinct — even if it risked compromising mission goals.

And there’s another obvious problem: As Anna Simons, Professor of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, observes: “Men and women have been each other’s most consistent distraction since the beginning of time. To pretend that we don’t know what will happen when men and women are thrown together for prolonged periods in emotionally intense situations defies common sense.”

Preparing for battle and battle itself is stressful enough. Why would we want to introduce sexual tension into the mix? Not to mention the strain this places on supervising officers who now have to deal with sexual dynamics in addition to their traditional responsibilities.

Does this sound like a strategy for mission success?

But all these warnings were ignored.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta famously said, “If [women] can meet the qualifications for the job, then they should have the right to serve…” But when women couldn’t meet those standards, the response wasn’t to rethink the policy—it was to lower the standards.

When two women graduated Ranger School in 2015, it was only after multiple attempts and what military insiders described as “unusual command interest.” At West Point, physical tests have employed gender-adjusted thresholds. In the Army Physical Fitness Test, male soldiers had to perform 84 push-ups in two minutes—women, just 42.

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