Igor Antunov wrote:Right lawyers aren't relevant here Wellsey. We have a series of highly physical tasks, the detailed physiology of each gender, a context under which those tasks are performed and minimum relative and absolute standards that must be maintained under that context, drawn from both iterative training regimes and battlefield experiences over the decades.
It's science. It's mean, it's lean, it's nasty un-pc deductive reasoning built on a foundation of cold, hard units of measurement. You can't dispute the results, you can only work around them. And that's disingenuous, misleading and generally lame.
Maia Goodell being a lawyer doesn't make a case against any of her points, I couldn't care what her profession is and so I don't know why you should either.
I shared her work as I think she makes some interesting points that contend with the broad dismissal of women's inclusion in the military, it doesn't go so far as to put women on par with men in all regards and assume that the highest performing women reach the peak results of many men. But it's also not as uncritically accepting of the notion of some exclusive divergence on the basis of one's sex and I think such a position draws attention to having some nuance and seeking clarity rather than a lack of thought.
III. FOUR PROBLEMS WITH PHYSICAL-STRENGTH RATIONALES
This Part discusses four problems with physical-strength rationales: stereotyping, differential training, trait selection, and task definition. Analysis of each of these rationales reveals a different argument against allowing perceived differences in physical strength to justify de jure exclusion of women from the military. Furthermore, each rationale exposes a deeper level of discrimination that is built into the strength argument.
In it's focus on strength it doesn't even necessarily make points that run counter to the Marine study conducted. So for example, the matter of women being more prone to injury would be left untouched by such points.
https://www.scribd.com/document/285174854/Marine-Corps-analysis-of-female-integrationIn addition to performance, we see significant evidence of higher injury rates for females when compared to males. The aforementioned upper- and lower-body strength and higher fatigue levels lead to greater incidents of overuse injuries, such as stress fractures. This leads to significantly higher levels of non-deployable status for females, of which, medical non-deployability comprises the largest fraction. We have seen this not only for GCE-ITF and ITB females, but also for female Marines in general, and for females throughout foreign militaries that were studied. Further, for all GCE-ITF volunteers, we saw higher levels of injuries within the ‘hiking’ MOSs (03xx [less 0313] and 1371) compared to the ‘riding’ ones (08xx, 18xx, and 0313).
But then one could move into a more specific discussion as to why this might be, is it simply because women are innately vulnerable or something else, to which even if it's a more temporal rather than assumed innateness, it would still be a problem.
But if arguably temporal and born out of other conidtions rather than an enduring biology, it's something that could change with intervention.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/marine-corps-study-casts-doubt-success-gender-integrated/story?id=34524486"...female volunteers in the study had no operating force experience in ground combat units, and that better physical screening would have all but eliminated the rates of injury for womenn"
https://meganhmackenzie.com/2015/10/14/exclusive-access-to-marine-corps-study-shows-it-misses-the-mark/?preview_id=456Another issue associated with the volunteer population and representativeness relates to selection and physical requirements. There has been significant attention given to the relatively high rates of injury for women in the Marine study. However, the longer reports show that “when fitness is considered, female injury rates are similar/the same as male injury rates” and that “a stricter physical screening tool would have eliminated all the female Marines who sustained injury and were dropped during ITB” (infantry initial entry training). They also conclude that “it is unknown how much a stricter (higher) physical screen would have improved the physical performance of female volunteers” during the integrated task force testing.
High Injury Rates Among Female Army Trainees A Function of Gender?Conclusions: The key risk factor for training injuries appears to be physical fitness, particularly cardiovascular fitness. The significant improvement in endurance attained by women suggests that women enter training less physically fit relative to their own fitness potential, as well as to men. Remedial training for less fit soldiers is likely to reduce injuries and decrease the gender differential in risk of injuries.
Yeah and in science one can critically appraise things and not accept them at face value.
You yourself have interpreted the data to mean that "that most women recruits can't keep up with men in such roles and tend to fall in the lower 50 percentile in up to 70% of tasks.".
I could accept such a conclusion but I also hold some skepticism to the strength of it on the basis that people are very quick to leap to such a conclusion and I'd give such things a little bit more slack than that before I go making general statements that don't get into detail as to why women were subpar in their performance.
Questions like how were tasks defined, like to what end, was it just a competition between the groups or was it to meet a cutoff standard applicable to their job requirements for example.
https://meganhmackenzie.com/2015/10/14/exclusive-access-to-marine-corps-study-shows-it-misses-the-mark/?preview_id=456Although the Marines had clear directives from DOD and acknowledged the limitations of their current standards for infantry, their studies did not focus on establishing quantifiable job-specific performance standards. Instead, their main research effort, the Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force (GCEITF) had as its objective “to evaluate the physical performance of individual Marine volunteers in the execution of individual and collective tasks in an operational environment” and to “estimate the effect of gender integration.”
The problem with this objective was that the Marines were seeking to evaluate the physical performance of Marines in the absence of quantifiable job-specific standards. Not only did they lack clear standards at the start of the research program, but they failed to define or outline criteria for evaluating success or “combat effectiveness” at any point whatsoever in their research. Throughout the analyses, the only criteria used to measure achievement or combat effectiveness appears to be absolute speed and accuracy when completing a select number of physically demanding tasks: in other words, no standard was established to be met, and each task was turned into an absolute competition.
Since the study does not establish minimum operational standards associated with combat tasks and duties, and it fails to measure study participants against job-specific standards, this research does little to further the discussion on gender integration. The conclusion that all-male groups, on average, performed faster than integrated groups has been taken as proof that there are risks to gender integration and that the inclusion of female Marines would therefore render the Marines less combat effective, regardless of any individual Marines’ qualifications, male or female. Despite the importance placed on speed, the study does not define how fast a task needs to be accomplished or under what conditions to meet combat effective screening criteria. They just say that men are faster, therefore better. Although it is interesting that all-male teams – on average- performed better than integrated ones, the results do not tell us whether the integrated teams performed adequately. Moreover, an unexpected and unreported finding was that males with no infantry training consistently outshot their infantry trained counterparts on three of the four weapons tested and tied them on the fourth.
Such criticisms don't necessarily bury the study but the study within itself isn't the be all end all on the subject and bringing up perceivable limitations is vital to assessing the generalizability of such a study.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics