CO-ED COMBAT: The New Evidence That Women Shouldn’t Fight the Nation’s Wars

CO-ED COMBAT: The New Evidence That Women Shouldn’t Fight the Nation’s Wars

By Kingsley Browne

Reviewed June 18, 2008

“Much of men’s motivation to fight comes from their appreciation of the link between warfare and masculinity,” Kingsley Browne states in Co-Ed Combat, “and disruption of that link is likely to diminish their motivation.” Allowing women to be combat soldiers would decouple being a soldier from being a man, and failure in combat would no longer be a failure of manhood.

The first section of the book, which details the biological differences between men and women, introduces the argument that women shouldn’t fight this nation’s wars. After comparing average physical and emotional attributes of males and females, Browne discusses the role of sex hormones in behavior.

He describes studies that show testosterone levels increase to meet challenges, either sexual or competitive, and decrease when men have been defeated or are in long-term romantic relationships. Testosterone is linked with traits required in combat–aggression, risk taking, and pain tolerance, for instance. Estrogen has the opposite effect.

I wondered what the author didn’t say about the various studies, since he chose only points that supported his arguments. Browne, a university law professor who specializes in employment discrimination, appears to begin with a conclusion and then find quotes and statistics to support that conclusion. He doesn’t try to give a balanced analysis, and the reader soon learns not to expect objectivity from the author.

When I read about a helicopter crew lifting a sailor off a ship in bad weather, I prepared for a female pilot who couldn’t hack the dangerous but successful mission. (It must have been an all-male crew, since no heroic woman was mentioned.) The story concludes with the remark that “she” received the necessary obstetric care. Has no man ever been removed from a ship in no-fly weather for, say, a ruptured appendix?

Insufficient information in the footnotes made it difficult to find sources. Every time I looked at a footnote, I then had to go to the bibliography in search of a matching name. The lack of first names increased the difficulty. Sometimes I wanted to see if a man or woman had written the source document. Adding titles in the footnotes and author’s first names in the bibliography would have improved the book.

Browne spends much time discussing average women, apparently not realizing they are not his subject. At one point he says “one can only conclude that the temperamental difference between the average fighter pilot and the average woman is huge.” Well, of course. The average woman doesn’t join the military, and the average military person (male or female) doesn’t become a fighter pilot. There is no comparison.

Co-Ed Combat contains a chapter on why men love war but no balancing discussion on the reasons women might volunteer for combat. The men quoted in the book, besides proving their masculinity, revel in danger, excitement, violence, and destruction.

Women, had they been quoted, would probably talk about achievement, equal opportunity, and being perceived as good as men. During my years in the U.S. Navy, I wanted to be considered a good military officer, not a good woman officer. I wanted to be compared against my peers (they were men) and to be respected as an aircraft maintenance officer and military leader.

Browne’s points about the concerns of today’s military leaders are valid–single parents, pregnancy, rape and sexual harassment, sexual relationships, etc. Pregnancy, especially, is an issue with no apparent solution. During my inspector general visits, I frequently heard commands describe their struggles with personnel shortages. Commanders, however, are expected to succeed with available resources.

The solution, according to Browne, is to remove women from all combat roles. He says enough men are available, but he doesn’t explain why men are not currently flooding the recruiting offices.

He doesn’t acknowledge that women might be better than men in some technological areas, and he doesn’t provide an alternative for women. You can’t reach the top in the military without having held a combat position. If women can’t be in combat, how can they have equal opportunity?

Browne suggests that a fully integrated military would hamper recruiting efforts, because few women want combat eligibility and many men seek manhood-proving experiences. He says, “If opening combat positions to women makes the military less attractive to women, the military will thereby be weakened. If opening combat jobs to women makes the military less attractive to men, the military will be weakened even more.”

There is no answer that will satisfy either side of the women-in-combat issue, not proponents of women’s opportunities or those who consider women a detriment in combat. Brown’s argument could have been convincing if he had included the positive aspects of a fully integrated military. His negative presentation means we must wait for someone else to provide a well-rounded discussion.