Navy to open all jobs to women despite experiment
Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus will not seek an exemption from combat for women
Navy to open all jobs to women despite experiment
By Gretel C. Kovach
The San Diego Union-Tribune
OHIO — Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has made his final decision. The infantry, SEALs, and all other combat jobs under the Navy should open to women by the end of this year, with no exemptions to the Pentagon's new gender-neutral employment policy, Mabus said Monday during a speech in Ohio.
Results of a controversial Marine Corps study on women in combat released last week did not sway the Navy leader, who must approve recommendations from the sea services before they are forwarded to the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The lengthy Marine Corps experiment involving about 300 men and 100 women who volunteered as research subjects found that all-male units performed significantly better than mixed-gender ones on 69 percent of tactical tests. The task force on gender integration also found that women were injured more than twice as often as men, according to a brief summary of results released by the Corps.
Mabus and other critics of the study have questioned its premise and methodology, saying the experiment was not designed to accurately assess gender integration of combat jobs as directed by Congress and the defense secretary. He contended that the goal is to see whether some women can excel in rigorous ground-combat assignments.
Amid a firestorm of passionate commentary by supporters and detractors of the report, Marine officials described their task-force research as unbiased and groundbreaking. In particular, they said it revealed that adding women to all-male units made them slower and less lethal, reducing combat effectiveness in most instances.
Some defenders of the Corps' experiment are accusing Mabus of choosing political correctness over research-driven facts.
At Marine headquarters, officials said they would not debate with Mabus about his criticism of their experiment.
"The purpose of the service's research was to show scientific method and rigor that would help inform our military leaders and others about the possible considerations of gender integration into previously closed combat arms jobs," Capt. Philip Kulczewski, a Marine spokesman who observed the task force since its inception, said Tuesday.
Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Marine commandant, is weighing the task-force findings as well as related research on entry-level training courses, the opening of 12 occupations to women and the addition of female support staff to some ground-combat units.
As of Tuesday, Dunford had not announced his recommendations. The deadline to request an exemption is Oct. 1.
Mabus considers the Marine Corps decision a moot point. "I'm not going to ask for an exemption for the Marines," he said Monday at a forum by The City Club of Cleveland.
Commandos
What's more, "Nobody is asking for an exemption in the Navy ... The SEALs aren't asking for an exemption. Our notion is set standards, make sure those standards have something to do with the job, and then if you meet it, you meet it," Mabus said.
He may not have the final say on the SEALs and other special operations jobs in the Navy Department, which fall under the operational control of U.S. Special Operations Command. People familiar with the process say a recommendation from the four-star general in charge of the commandos, Gen. Joseph Votel, may be weighted equally.
Rear Adm. Brian Losey, head of the Coronado-based Naval Special Warfare command, has said he does not think gender should be a consideration for employment in the SEALs.
In a rare public speech in February, Losey compared the debate over women in combat to racial integration and sexual orientation. "In this person's view, if you take away all the descriptors, you have two things left: You have a candidate and you have a standard," Losey told the San Diego Military Advisory Council.
"At one point you could have put ethnic or racial descriptors in front of the candidate, and you could have had a discussion about that. At one point five to eight years ago, we had a discussion about sexual preferences and how that might impact the community," he said.
Losey called the debate over allowing gays to openly serve "irrational and emotional" and said, "We've crossed that rubicon."
He added, "We are now at the crossing where the question is being asked of women. Again, I think it's about candidates and standards, pure and simple."
Marine approach
As for the Marines, Mabus said he was aware of their research from the beginning but it was Marine Corps officials who decided what to study and how.
Complete results of the experiment contained in a nearly 1000-page report have not been released by the Corps. Mabus said he read through the study carefully a couple of times.
After their nearly yearlong experiment, the Marines came out in a different place than he did, Mabus said, "because they talk about averages, and the average woman is slower, the average woman can't carry as much, the average woman isn't quite as quick on some jobs or some tasks.
"The other way to look at it is we're not looking for average. There were women that met this standard, and a lot of the things there that women fell a little short in can be remedied by two things -- training and leadership," he said.
The Marine Corps already had a grip on individual female performance because of its experiments with infantry courses for officers and enlisted Marines, among other research, Col. Anne Weinberg, deputy director of the Marine Corps Force Innovation Office, said last week in an interview.
They created the task force to move to the next level. "When you add that dynamic of, on average, a population that is physiologically at a comparative disadvantage in terms of strength and endurance and bone density and all those things we know about human physiology, trying to understand what that did in a collective task ... that is really where the combat effectiveness of our small units becomes so incredibly important," Weinberg said.
Looking at the results: "no matter how you slice it, it was gender that kept popping up," Weinberg said.
Research value
According to Mabus, the value of the Marine research was helping to set entry standards for physically demanding combat jobs such as the infantry that never had them before. "Male or female, you're not going to get to be in the infantry, you're not going to get to be in armor, or whatever, unless you meet these standards up-front. That is a tremendously good thing that came out of the study," he said.
"Once you've done that I just see no reason to say 'because the average person, woman, cannot meet these, we're not giving anybody a chance,'" Mabus said.
The Marine Corps asked scholars at independent organizations such as George Mason University, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the University of Pittsburgh to help develop its research plan and analyze findings.
One recommendation for the task force experiment that went unheeded involved the need for a comparison against set standards such as loading an artillery gun within 60 seconds. If men could do it in 30 seconds and women in 40, the difference in combat effectiveness may not be significant.
"You might say the women are less lethal, but you can't say they are outside of the standard," said a senior Pentagon official who followed the Marines' integration experiment from the start.
Another criticism was the use of a broad measure of statistical significance. The standard p-value for scientifically rigorous research is 0.05 or less, indicating strong evidence. The Marines used a much weaker measure of .10, casting a wider net.
The sample size of research subjects was also very small. In the infantry company, 29 women participated, including 16 in the provisional platoon not required to meet minimum physical fitness standards like the rest of the task force. For that reason, some feel that results from the provisional platoon should be discarded.
The tankers included three women in combat trials. "Are we really going to use three women to set the standard for every woman in the nation today and every girl in the entire Marine Corps? It's hard to believe that," said the official, who described the overall experiment as "ambitious" but limited.
Whether the Marine experiment truly isolated gender as a factor in combat performance as claimed is in dispute, since more experienced Marines were pitted against women fresh from schoolhouse training in ground combat specialties.
The weapons company, for example, had 20 women and 22 men, commanders told the Union-Tribune during testing at Twentynine Palms. All the women joined the experimental task force straight from the infantry schoolhouse, but none of the men did (although more than half were reservists.)
Pushback
Marine officials said months of training together mitigated differences in experience levels, since the women checked into entry-level courses in July of 2014, started training with the task force in October and completed combat tests this spring. However, these women newly assigned to combat occupations continued to build muscle and become more efficient throughout the combat trials, according to observation and interviews with task force participants during and after the tests.
On more than one occasion, Mabus said the experimental Marine task force should have screened for a higher caliber of women. That hit a nerve with Marine officials and task force participants who said they were insulted by the insinuation that the women were bottom of the barrel or simply average as tactical athletes, since most of the female participants had to pass a male physical fitness test and perform at least three pull-ups.
Paul Johnson, principal investigator of the study for the Marine Corps, said the female Marines joined the task force with slightly better marksmanship scores than the average woman in the Corps, whereas the men were below average on the rifle range. The women were also at the "top end of the female spectrum" on physical fitness and combat fitness test scores.
"These are highly motivated Marines. If you're a slacker and you're just getting by, the last thing you're going to do is volunteer for something really rigorous. It takes a certain kind of person who wants to put themselves through this. Not surprisingly, it is really high-quality female Marines," he said.
Sgt. Maj. Justin LeHew, a Navy Cross recipient and the senior enlisted Marine for the Corps' Training and Education Command, slammed Mabus in a lengthy Facebook post for being "way off base" and "unfair to the women who participated in this study," the Marine Corps Times reported.
"In regards to the infantry....there is no trophy for second place. You perform or die," he wrote in the post, which has since been removed or hidden from public view. "In this realm, you want your fastest, most fit, most physical and most lethal person you can possibly put on the battlefield to overwhelm the enemy's ability to counter what you are throwing at them and in every test case, that person has turned out to be a man." (In two tasks in the experiment, mixed-gender groups outperformed all-male ones when firing the .50-caliber machine gun as a crew.)
Sgt. Joe Frommling, a Marine monitor for the gender-integrated research, told the Washington Post that Mabus was wrong to say they went into the $36 million experiment expecting women to fail: "All the work that the task force did, the rounds that we shot, didn't mean anything if he had already made up his mind."
No one babied the women or held them to a lower standard during training and testing, Capt. Mark Lenzi, the weapons company commander for the task force, told the Union-Tribune in March at Twentynine Palms.
The men and women repeatedly ran the gauntlet during an intense 45-minute trial that had them charging uphill with heavy weapons, evacuating a 220-pound casualty dummy and scaling a tall container.
"A significant amount of this job is your ability to withstand misery and suffering," Lenzi said. "The key ... is never allowing them to feel sorry for themselves. If we put it like it's some insurmountable infantry challenge, they won't be able to do it."
With proper training, "They'll rise to the occasion. They just have to believe in it," Lenzi said. But size and strength does matter. "The machine gun doesn't care who's carrying it, and neither do the people you're going to shoot on the other end. It favors someone bigger, stronger, and more durable."
Reaction
On the other side of the debate, military women who support the end of all gender restrictions for employment praised Mabus for what they described as his leadership and acumen at gauging weaknesses in the Marine Corps research.
"His points are dead center -- all on target. This is a historic opportunity that will make our force stronger in the generations to come," said Marine Reserve Maj. Katey Van Dam, a former Cobra attack helicopter pilot and combat veteran who co-founded the "No Exceptions" initiative of the Truman Project and Center for National Policy.
Marine Lt. Col. Kate Germano said Mabus' "willingness to question the veracity of the combat integration study results will ensure that in the future, all Marines will have the chance to earn their place in the most challenging of jobs, regardless of gender."
Germano, who was fired from command recently of the Marine recruit battalion that trains all female enlistees in the Corps, said the status quo won't cut it to prepare women for ground combat jobs. She had argued for tougher standards for female Marines, but a Marine investigation substantiated complaints of "toxic leadership."
"In order to prevent any perception of lowering standards, senior leaders are going to have to acknowledge that revolutionary change is needed in terms of how we recruit and train women to be Marines. ... Setting universal high standards for recruitment, performance, and conduct will be the only way to keep the faith of both male and female Marines and ensure we can meet our national security obligations in the future," she said.
Nancy Duff Campbell, co-president of the National Women's Law Center, said the Marine Corps study raises potential constitutional concerns in her eyes. "At best it was only measuring the performance of some women and some men, and a very limited number of them at that," she said.
"If we want to have the best military in the world -- and we do -- we should not exclude 50 percent of the population from any military job simply because of gender. If the best man for the job is a woman, she should get the job," she said.
Infantry
Looking ahead, the Marines will follow orders and carry on as they always do, according to an infantry company commander, former instructor at The Basic School for Marine officers, and veteran of heavy combat in Sangin, Afghanistan.
The active duty captain, who asked not to be named so he could speak freely, said he doesn't think women belong in the combat arms because of their smaller stature, the benefits of all-male camaraderie, and feminine hygiene needs. He lost 30 pounds during his 2010 combat tour and became infested with fleas. His experiences of grunt life at war included patrolling for hours at a time in murky canals and going without showers for days.
"As a staff platoon commander at The Basic School I had some extremely talented females who were in exceptional shape. These ladies could handle everything that the men did," he said. But the Cross-Fit trained superwomen are the minority. "Are you going to stick one girl in a battalion of a thousand men?" he asked.
If the Corps is forced to accept women in the combat arms -- just as it was forced to accept stricter rules of engagement in the war zone and the open service of gays -- it won't be as catastrophic as many Marines fear, the captain predicted.
"If they come in the infantry, it's not going to be the end of the world. The Marine Corps will continue to go on ... We will do what we are told and make it work," he said.
Staff writer Jeanette Steele contributed to this report.
http://www.military1.com/military-career/article/1546067014-navy-to-open-all-jobs-to-women-despite-experiment
