Just Cause was the largest and the smoothest United States airborne operation since World War II. In one lightning stroke, Manuel Noriega was removed from power, a new democratic government was given a chance to take root, some 12,000 American citizens living in Panama were protected from potential harm, and the crucial Panama Canal was safeguarded. In the wake of the Panama invasion, a headline in the New York Times stated:

Woman Leads GI's in Panama Combat

A day earlier, Marlin Fitzwater, President Bush's press secretary, had told White House Correspondents that Army Captain Linda L. Bray, the commander of a military police unit had been ordered to take a group of her male soldiers to capture a dog kennel that was heavily defended by Panamanian troops.

A flood of stories that portrayed Linda Bray as a present-day Amazon warrior appeared in scores of newspapers in the United States describing in riveting detail how a three-hour firefight erupted when she and her men attacked the dog kennel and how she had crashed through a fence in her jeep to come to grips with the enemy force.

When the fierce shootout ceased and the kennel had been captured, media report stated, there were many dead Panamanian soldiers strewn about. A post-battle interview with Captain Bray quoted her as saying, "I joined the Army for the excitement, the challenge, and loyalty to my country."³

Advocates of placing women in combat units were elated over the Linda Bray story. Columnist Anna Quindlen of The New York Times no doubt sought to reinforce the feminist contention that body strength is of no significance in fighting by pointing out that Bray was 1.55m tall and weighed a little more than 45 kg. "Captain Bray gave women in the Army a chance to [do the job]", Quindlen stated. "She came, she saw, she conquered."⁴

US House Representative Patricia Schroeder, chairperson of the House Armed Services subcommittee on personnel, lost no time in appearing before the television cameras to say that the attack led by Captain Bray demonstrated that women should be allowed to carry out direct combat roles. Schroeder disclosed she planned to introduce legislation enabling Army women to assume all military roles, including direct combat.

A week later, a very different story appeared in the Los Angeles Times. Unnamed Army officers were quoted saying the original report of Bray's heroics was "grossly exaggerated." The kennel was lightly held, the firefight lasted ten minutes and no one was killed or injured. Bray was not present during the firefight but was half a mile away at her command post. Arriving late for the fight, she stood by while her driver used the jeep to force the gate open. By then, the kennel's defenders had fled. The lone Panamanian captured was a harmless civilian who showed up later to check on the dogs.

This did nothing to quieten calls for the repeal of the combat exclusions, all made in the name of Linda Bray. For the popular press, the case for repeal was finally proven. Shortly afterward, Schroeder introduced a bill to repeal the Army's combat exclusions for a four-year trial period, but at House hearings in March, most military witnesses politely opposed the proposal. Legislators were also lukewarm, praising women but admitting doubts and advising caution. The bill died quietly. It was born a year too early.

The Gulf War against Iraq was a watershed in the history of women in the military. Shortly after the war, the military's timid arguments against expanding military women's roles were swept away in a gush of media admiration.

As it happened, the ground war in February was so swift and so successful that it conquered not only the Iraqi defences but all of America's accumulated fears about going to war - the fear of getting involved in distant foreign conflicts, the fear of escalating military actions, the fear of lost and shattered lives - and the fear of sending women to war and losing them in combat.

The postwar push for the repeal of the combat exclusion did not really begin until after April, when Senator John McCain, during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, commented that the sterling performance of women in the Gulf justified a new look at the ban on women in combat roles, particularly aviation roles. McCain's opinion carried weight because he was himself not only a veteran navy pilot but also a former prisoner of war. Many events led to the issue being discussed at the US Senate Armed Services Committee in June. By then, many on the committee gave the impression of being cautious and uncommitted, saying the Gulf War was far too limited an engagement to serve as the basis for drawing any conclusions about the military use of women, good or bad. With each party arguing for their own causes, Congress passed the buck to the White House who promptly formed the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces to address this issue.

The Commission consists of a mixed group of people, both civilians, current and ex-military members. The Commission voted on a very mixed bag of 17 recommendations included in its final report: against quotas, for gender-specific physical training standards, for gender-neutral physical job standards, for gender-normed precommissioning standards, against women in ground combat, against women in combat aviation, for women on combat ships, against women in special operations, and detailed recommendations on how to deal with pregnancy, motherhood, single parents and deployment.

The Gang of Five (a label given to a group of five of the commissioners who were vehemently opposed to women in combat) successfully fought to have the "Alternative Views: The Case Against Women in Combat" included in the final report. In the report, it expanded on the issues of combat aviation and combat ships, basing everything on combat effectiveness, while noting that the drive for change was motivated not by a concern for the good of the military but by the demand for equal rights.

"The Case Against Women in Combat" was followed by a lengthy dissent on the recommendations against women in combat aviation, signed by all seven commissioners who voted against that recommendation. Three commissioners dissented from the Commission's recommendation against ground combat for women, arguing that women were already serving in ground combat and had thoroughly proved themselves in the Persian Gulf. All in all, there were four sets of dissents made against the Commission's recommendations.

The report also included personal statements from twelve commissioners, some of them pages long. Most of the statements stuck to the issues addressed by the Commission but bitter complaints were made by the Gang of Five on the influence of the conservative commissioners. At the other spectrum, one wrote that "the work of this Commission has been an insult to all servicewomen".

At the end of the day, all the work came to naught. The final votes on women in combat were taken on Election Day 1992. By the end of the day, with Bill Clinton as the projected winner of the presidential election, it was clear that the Commission's work was superfluous - a new political order had arrived. Two months later, the raging issue was not women in combat - which was a done deal - but homosexuals in the military. The Clinton administration threw out the Presidential Commission recommendations on combat in April 1993 and bulldozed the US military to open combat cockpits, combat ships and certain Army vocations to women. Only Army and Marine units engaged in direct combat with an enemy - infantry, armour and much of field artillery ­ remained closed to women.

­ Dr. Darryl Henderson, Commission member who
identified some 133 facts established by the
Commission, only two of which supported
the integration of women on the
basis of military effectiveness.

Compared to the average male Army recruit, the average female Army recruit is 4.8 inches shorter, weighs 31.7 pounds less, and has 37.4 pounds less muscle mass and 5.7 pounds more fat mass. In general, women are at a distinct disadvantage when performing military tasks requiring muscular strength because of their lower muscle mass. Since fat mass is inversely related to aerobic capacity and heat tolerance, the average woman is also at a disadvantage when performing aerobic activities such as marching with heavy loads (related to the lower cardio-respiratory capacity of women) and working in the heat.

Research findings have indicated a high risk for injuries during Army basic combat training. During training, 51% of women and 27% of men were injured. The risk of lower extremity injury for women was 2.13 times that of men and for stress fractures, 4.71 times that of men. The higher risk of injury for women was related to a lower level of fitness when compared to men.

It has also been reported that 54% of women sustained reportable injuries during Army basic training. These injuries resulted in an average time loss of 13 days. During this study, women participated in an integrated conditioning programme and completed extensive road marches wearing combat boots. Incidence of injury was related to greater body weight and body fat and limited leg strength.

In general, women are more sensitive to the effects of thermal stress due to several factors which include lower cardio-respiratory fitness, higher body fat content and lower skin surface area. During marches at a set pace, women exercise at a greater percentage of their aerobic capacity than men, resulting in a higher heart rate, oxygen consumption and heat production. Because of this higher metabolic rate, women experience an earlier onset of fatigue and are at greater risk of heat injury then men during forced marches in a hot environment. Studies, however, have not found operationally significant gender differences in heat tolerance among acclimatised men and women of similar fitness. Women's physical advantages are that they are less susceptible to altitude sickness and, normally have a greater tolerance of cold temperature due to their extra body fat.

The testimony of Army Lieutenant Colonel William Gregor puts the disparities in the physical ability of men and women in sharper perspective. Gregor, a former faculty member at West Point, had compared the performance of 3540 male and 623 female West Point and Army ROTC cadets at summer camp. The study focused on whether women meet the same physical fitness standards as men. His conclusion, broadly stated, is that they do not. Evidence Gregor presented to the Commission include⁵:

"If we can't win a war without our mothers, what kind of a sorry fighting force are we? Even the evil Saddam Hussein doesn't send mothers to fight his war."

Sally Quinn, Washington Post, after seeing a picture of an Army specialist single parent cradling her seven-week-old infant daughter before leaving for Fort Benning

Surprisingly, having read about the various arguments put forth by the proponents in expanding the role of women in the military, the constant refrain is the desire to provide for equal opportunity, one of American's most sacred cultural values, a sine qua non of American justice. Proponents liken the current restrictions to that of the discriminations faced by the Afro-Americans in the 60s and 70s. The passion that Americans placed on individual rights and equal opportunity transcends all things and cannot be lightly dismissed.

Of course, proponents have long maintained that equal opportunities do not imply having differing standards. They believed that gender-neutral strength / endurance and performance-based standards should be adopted as a basis for judging the capability of women for the various military jobs. To this end, the proponent elements of the Commission have indicated that aviation, field artillery, air defence artillery and combat engineers should be opened to women. As to what these qualification standards are to be, the Commissioners are decidedly silent.

One glaring motive of this great push has to do with the career advancement system in the US Army which puts a premium on soldiers who have chalked up active combat duties. Restricting combat roles to women is tantamount to restricting their career prospects. Hence, it will come as no surprise that the majority of in-service women who were in favour of the role expansion were commissioned officers.

Opponents point to several commonly held reasons for not supporting the expansion of women's role in the military. Having mixed-sex institution will severely affect unit cohesion, increase the workload of the men due to non-availability of women through pregnancy and motherhood, increase the risk of sexual fraternisation and increase the risk of women being held prisoners of war. In addition to these factors, the reduction of standards to ensure that women qualify for their commission presents certain morale problems for men which will further reduce unit cohesion, which is of paramount importance in a combat unit.

To each of these, the proponents argued that unit cohesion is not a single-gender experience, as can be shown by successful civilian mixed-gender institutions like the Police Force. In fact, the proponents argue that mixed-gender units can and have the ability to out perform all-male units; the women worked harder to gain male approval and the men worked harder not to be outdone by the women, thereby increasing unit effectiveness. Parenthood is a shared responsibility which involves both men and women while men account for greater non-availability due to disciplinary problems. On the issue of female prisoners of war, the testimony of flight surgeon, MAJ Rhonda Cornum, served to outline the "occupational hazards" faced by women in combat.

On 27 Feb, 1991, the last day of the four-day ground war, Cornum and seven other crew members were flying low and fast over the Iraqi desert in a Black Hawk search-and-rescue helicopter. Accompanied by 2 Apache attack helicopters and directed by an AWACS radar plane overhead, they were answering an emergency call to retrieve a downed and injured Air Force pilot. The Black Hawk crew was startled when the seemingly empty desert suddenly erupted into flashes of green light and the crack of anti-aircraft guns. In the end, five of the crew members died as a result of the crash while Cornum and two other crew members were taken POWs by the Iraqis. When they were released on day seven of their captivity, the question on every reporter asked was whether Cornum had been sexually molested by their captors. The Army said no. A year later it turned out that the Army had lied.

During the Presidential Commission, Cornum confessed that she had been "violated manually, vaginally and rectally." Only Cornum's broken arms and screams of pain kept the Iraqi from consummating the assault. "I would have gotten raped but he couldn't get my flight suit off," says Cornum. Cornum has been least disturbed. "Getting raped or abused or whatever is one more bad thing that can happen to you as a prisoner of war. There're about 400 bad things that I can think of and it's not the worst of them," Cornum had testified, calling her incident an "occupational hazard".⁶

Perhaps the most explosive issue is that of sexual fraternisation and harassment. The Tailhook and Aberdeen scandals within the US military go to show that women are vulnerable to harassment by men who are supposedly less susceptible due to their training. Even senior military women in the US are not spared when the first female three-star general in the US military, LT-GEN Claudia Kennedy, the US Army's deputy chief of staff for intelligence, had accused MAJ-GEN Larry Smith, who ironically was to assume the appointment of deputy inspector general in charge of investigating sexual harassment complaints, for sexually harassing her in 1996.⁷ Opponents also argued that the men will be vulnerable to false accusations of sexual harassment from disgruntled women colleagues or subordinates, distracting issues the military can ill-afford. Preventing women from entering the military will instantly make this a non-issue. Proponents countered that it takes two hands to clap, hence it was totally unjustifiable to put all the blame on the women.

Regardless of the arguments and counter-arguments, the statement of Charles Moskos, a fiercely neutral member serving the commission, to his fellow commissioners is poignant:

"You raised a question, Mr Chair[man], where the burden of proof should lie. Other things being equal, you say, well, then let equal opportunity triumph. Well, most evidence that we've heard here ­ and there will be some debate about the degree ­ is that mixed-gender units, particularly as it gets closer to the combat area, have lower deployment rates, higher attrition, less physical strength, more sexual activity, higher costs, et cetera, et cetera. It would seem to me the burden of proof would be on the side of saying equal opportunity is of such significance that we're going to override some of these costs."

MAJ Rhonda Cornum,
former POW during the Gulf War.

The Army needs to clearly articulate the purpose for the recruitment of women into the Army despite the potential challenges. Is it a simple case of granting equal opportunities to women or does it firmly believe that it is the case of the best person for the job? Is there a combat exclusion policy banning the deployment of female Army personnel in times of war as the case in Germany, France, Israel and Russia⁸? If indeed there is, are the women who join the Army to contribute in combat aware of such a policy? The point is that we do not have a consistent interpretation on what we expect of our women who join the Army hoping to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the men. If women are not expected to participate in war, then they should not be combat officers.

Whether it is policy's direction or over-protective commanders, articulating clearly the policy on women in the Army will go a long way to address two potentially explosive issues. First, it will allow the servicewomen to understand their exact role within the Army and, hence to be able to better contribute to the ultimate cause. Secondly, it will alleviate apprehension amongst the servicemen that indeed, the integration of women into the Army has been a well thought-through process culminating towards a win-win arrangement.

The success of a policy depends on the implementation process as much as on the policy itself. The lesser physical ability of women is tacitly acknowledged through the lower standards in the Individual Physical Proficiency Test (IPPT) and other related selection tests that has been gender-normed to allow women to be able to meaningfully participate in the various military courses. If indeed, women are deemed as capable as men to do the job, why have two separate standards? Why disallow servicemen the opportunity to participate in the airborne course when they could easily clear the qualification tests that has been modified for women and NCC members? Unlike the case of IPPT where it is pegged to a standard expected of the individual service personnel, the purpose of qualification tests is unambiguous. The differing standards simply do not make sense unless the motivation is to ensure that women do not lose out. What's more, why exempt women from IPPT indefinitely the moment they become mothers, if they continue to hold on to combat appointments? Why, too, are women participating in a modified Standard Obstacle Course (SOC) if it is deemed as an important gauge of a unit's operational readiness? We have clearly a long way to go in formulating a consistent standard for combat personnel, regardless of whether they are men or women.

GEN (Ret) Norman Schwarzkopf,
Former CINC CENTCOM
and Commander of Operations
Desert Shield and Desert Storm