Marines Experiment With Mixed-Gender Teams

Marines Experiment With Mixed-Gender Teams

While a few weeks back I had stated in a different post that I didn’t have a problem with women attending Ranger School (so long as they are held to the same standard), I do still firmly believe that due to actual physical limitations, women as a whole are not as equipped for the strains of combat as men are.

The Marine Corps has confirmed this with an experiment comparing all-male teams with mixed-gender ones. According to data collected and made public, all-male teams outperformed mixed ones across the board in infantry integration testing.

The integration team tasked with this experiment was composed of 400 volunteers, 25% of which were female. The tests were conducted over a period of nine months and tested integration in combat units. The good news (sarcasm)- it only cost $36 million.

It is however worth mentioning that the males that had volunteered predominantly come from combat units and most have real combat experience, where female volunteers were either fresh out of infantry school or come from noncombat jobs.

That said, here are some of the findings from the report:

Of 134 graded tasks, all-male teams outperformed integrated teams on 93 tasks.

Mixed teams were consistently more accurate in the firing of the M2 .50 Cal, however their advantage was not translated over to exercises in which teams were under load.

All-male squads were faster than mixed-gender squads in every tactical movement exercise. The most obvious gap in time belonged to crew-served weapons teams.

All-male rifle squads were more accurate with the M203, M4, and the M27.

Male Marines with no infantry training had outperformed women with infantry training on every weapon system.

All of this comes at a time where Marine top brass must make a decision as to what direction The Corps will take with women in combat.

While I have again previously stated that I believe women deserve a fair chance and deserve what they earn, the fact of the matter remains that males as a whole are the sex better equipped for war fighting. Is that politically correct to say, no, but then again war is for killing, not political correctness.