Freedom of expression. And that legacy continues after she left. So she certainly made her mark on the world. And certainly showed that shes unflappable in the face of criticism and unflappable in the face of an attempt to undo all of the work that that fine organization is doing. For me, shes a great role model of how we conduct ourselves as women, in the face of what can be a little bit of a backslide from time to time. Its nice to have people we can see who embody strength and thick skin and certainly youve talked to you wrote in your book about how much you have how far youve come in this regard in in not letting the turkeys get you down. Your personal story makes the case for Public Policy that supports women, how do we get men to be allies in the fight to fight to further these policies when they dont experience these things personally . How do we make men care about feminism . Is we share our stories. Again not to be a broken record, but humanizing these issues just as i for example, as a state lawmaker, may not understand issues that are happening in the prison system. In my state. When people are coming and humanizing those experiences, it motivates me to want to be helpful. We have to make sure that we make men our allies in this fight. Because we wont achieve true gender equality without it, as ann marie slaughter invites us to consider. True gender equality comes from making sure were thinking about men as well. And the choices that they have in front of them. And making sure that they are free to choose as we currently are. Men who have daughters tend to really be much more open to these issues of gender equality, because they see it through the lens of their own daughters who they want to be happy and successful. And so making sure that were sharing those stories about each others experiences with our male counterparts at work or in the political arena. Or in our families, is very, very important. Through sharing stories. Its about empathy and helping people, men and women alike to understand our perspectives. And we do that through story telling and sharing. And vulnerability really. And authenticity. You embody that very well. What is your political future . I have absolutely no idea. Im working right now on creating an Advocacy Organization for women. Im very passionate about this issue, and certainly its the case that not being in Political Office doesnt mean that you have to go radio silent on things you care about. We can have just as big an impact outside of Political Office as we can inside it, and in had fact not being an Office Holder any more, or a candidate right now has been really freeing. I can say whatever i want to say and no one is message managing me. And i can really listen again to my heart and the things that matter deeply to me, and to spend my energies and efforts fighting for those. Thats what im going to do. If that takes me back into the political candidate or Office Holder arena, great. If it doesnt, ill still be fighting in a way that i hope will be effective and make an impact. Wonderful. I look forward to seeing your continued impact grow, thank you so much for being here and sharing your story with us. Thank you. And thank you all so much. [ applause ] the cspan cities tour visits cities across the country every other weekend. This month with congress on its summer recess, the cities tour is on cspan each day at 6 00 p. M. Eastern. Today lincoln nebraska, where well look at the design of the state capitol, the past and present of the first peoples of the plains and well talk with nebraska governor, that the is as at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. American history tv looks back 50 years to president johnson signing the medicare bill. An idea president truman inspired a generation earlier. Before signing the bill on july 30th, 1965, lbj said it was designed to ensure every citizen against the ravages of illness in his old age. Linda johnson robb, lbj Deputy Special Council and lbj president ial Library Director on the battle to pass medicare and medicaid, and why where president johnson succeeded when others failed. White house recordings of phone calls between lbj and his aids who talk about the politics and strategy behind the bill. Then at 10 00 p. M. , the medicare bill sign on july 30th, 1965, at the harry s. Truman president ial library in independence, missouri. Including remarks from president johnson and former president truman. All of this tonight on American History tv on cspan 3. Tonight on the communicators, author and British Technology pioneer kevin ashton on the creative process, and how that process takes work. Why did the Wright Brothers fly first, and what was the process they used because they werent the first people to have the idea of building a flying machine. And they werent the first people to try. So why did they succeed where everybody else failed . And the answer is, they understood the problem they were trying to solve much better than anybody else. And at the end of the day, being creative is not about having ideas in in the shower or ahha moments or lightning bolts of inspiration. Its about solving problems one step at a time. So understanding the problem of the piece of paper, which is a problem of balance was the key for the Wright Brothers starting on their course that ultimate l led to them flying. Kevin ashton on the communicators on cspan 2. With the senate in its august break, well feature book tv programming week nights in in prime time on cspan 2. And at the end of the summer, look for two book tv special programs. On saturday september 5th, were live from our nations capitol for the 15th annual National Book festival. Followed sunday with our former second lady, lynn cheney. Book tv on cspan 2, television for serious readers. Next, a look at changes for u. S. Service women since the 2013 recision of the defense departments Ground Combat exclusion policy, and Research Showing unit cohesion can take place in the company of both women and men. Women in International Security hosted this event. Is thank you, everybody. And welcome back, we have a thrilling panel for you coming right up. I think this next discussion gets right at the heart of everything were talking about to a great extent. Im the executive director of the Truman National security project. We are very, very proud to say that no exceptions is an initiative of truman and cnp and led by a Remarkable Group of women, including some combat leaders from our, o, and supported by an even larger number of men in the truman project, who also have combat service, i served in iraq and afghanistan. To me, you know, i dont know when this issue was settled for me. Im probably supposed to be an objective moderator. I just put my cards on the table. My sister is currently serving with the station as a detective in the gang unit of the new york police department. She could kick my butt ill tell you that for sure and over two years on the sharpened on the battlefield, ive seen more than enough examples of women distinguishing themselves, including in the close fight providing the kind of fire support, whether thats from a cockpit or another platform we desperately needed at various times, defending their convoys when they came under attack. For many of us, who have seen this movie out on the ground, this is a debate that was over a long time ago. Those are my cards and theyre on the table. Any pretense i will abandon now. How many currently serving or former members of the military, any military u. S. Or otherwise do we have in the audience today . Okay. I should have asked how many civilians were in the audience. Excellent. It is no exaggeration to say theres an absurd wealth of knowledge and experience in this room, thats why were going to try to make this more of a conversation than a series of presentations. I know wering looing forward to that. This is about the central caution of unit cohesion in leadership. We have with us four people that i think provide a great perspective on that across the board. Dr. Megan mckinsey. Shes a senior lecturer in the Government International relations department. And the center for the ufrt at sydney, she crosses gender studies and international development. Shes published in a number of top journals, including foreign affairs, parameters and studies. It includes interviews with over 50 female soldiers, mckinseys fourth book, beyond the band of brothers, the u. S. Military and the myth that women cant fight, debunks core arguments to keep women out of combat roles. It is one of my favorite miniseries, but im willing to see that. We also have dr. Robert egnall. Hes a visiting professor, and senior faculty provider. Hes on leave from the Swedish National defense college. Hes also the founding director of the stock helm center for strategic studies. Created in 2005 in response to accurate and nongovernmental policy advice. Were joined by my friend captain john rodriguez. Hes a junior peace fellow who works with me. John served six years in in active duty, including a combat deployment. If that place and name doesnt mean anything to you, perhaps it will if you look it up, i also had the privilege of spending a year there myself at a different time. John provides an incredible experience, thats sort of infantry unit in a daily grind close fight. Very high intensity in the number of cases, thats a perspective thats needed in this conversation, were happy to have him. Hes a member of the Maryland National guard and has worked as a National Security intern at human rights. Were also joined by mary beth brigeman. She everybody issed on active duty for eight years including a deployment to iraq during the 2003 invasion. Mary beth worked for a Robotics Company for three years where she helped with ied robots for marines. Shes a student of policy management at georgetown university. This is a great panel and im going to start it by turning to dr. Mckinsey. And asking her to if you could tell us about the question that lends its name to the pa l panel. Thank you. I am the outsider in the room, im a researcher and i spent the last several years looking at the topic of women in combat. Because i started my research in sierra leone. There was a High Percentage of women that participated in that conflict. I talked to a lot of the women who participated. I got a lot of feedback that said, well, they werent really soldiers they were just following. Some of the arguments were similar in the debates that were happening around the combat exclusion for women in the united states. Thats how i made that shift i spent the last three years sifting through all the research i could find on women in combat. Ill talk about that, i wanted to say thank you to weiss for inviting me. Its a real honor to be here. Focusing on cohesion, one of the most common arguments to justify the combat exclusion in the u. S. And elsewhere has been the position that women undermine the types of bonding for combat troops to operate efficiently. The cohesion presumes that all male combat units are cohesive and more effective than mixed ginder units. This became the dominant argument for excluding women from bad in the two decades leading up to the january 2013 decision to remove the combat exclusion and it remains the main argument used by other militaries across the world to retain the combat exclusion. Today id like to talk about the role of myth, emotion and gender bias in many shaping the debates around combat cohesion. Theres really two points id like to make. The first is that there is an extensive amount of research on women and cohesion. The question is addressed in actually a Staggering Amount of well funded studies in the u. S. And abroad. At present theres a greater need to reflect on the results of these findings which ill get to in a minute. Rather than call for another study on cohesion. Second in my book, i argue that all male units have been central to military identity in in the u. S. For a long time. There are deeply associated assumptions with the band of brothers. From my perspective, cohesion arguments rather than simply focusing on Mission Effectiveness, can be code for preeverybody issing the band of brothers. While cohesion is treated as a group dynamic. Much of the debate is driven by emotion and stereotypes. Lets start with the evidence related to combat cohesion. Studies show the need to desegregate between social and task cohesion. It refers to the emotional bonds between members of the group. Particularly the feelings of trust and camaraderie. Task cohesion is defined as the commitment of a group toward a shared mission or objectives. Put another way, it refers to whether Group Members like one another. Task cohesion reer fers to whet they can work well together. Researchers often ignore the difference and measure them together. Theres some indicators that women slightly impact social cohesi cohesion. We tend to want to, would with people who are similar to us to learn that men tend to feel more socially bonded to male colleagues is no surprise but those studies that isolate have found that task cohesion is more strongly linked to Mission Effectiveness than cohesion. One major study concluded military performance depends on whether Service Members are committed to the same professional goals, not on whether they like one another. Knowing the task cohesion is a greater indicator of effectiveness, when we focus on task cohesion, women are not a factor. Leadership is, theres room to learn from other militaries that have integrated women into combat. Research found that cohesion can be inspired through shared commitment irrespective of previous social or personal interactions. And a canadian report determined that the cohesion of a mixed gender combat unit was primarily a leadership challenge in turn, research that con natures cohesion, mistakenly under estimates the role of leadership and training. They lead to flawed conclusions about women and cohesion now, gets to the heart of the matter. Theres quite a few studies that indicate that find little relationship between the integration of women and various understandings of cohesion. The military conducted a test. These conclusions were supported by a 1993 gao report that found that gender was not listed as participants and theyve done a couple excellent studies on this. The real cohesion story was one of leadership. Something thats often overlooked here is the fact that similar cohesion arguments were used and put to rest when it came to africanamerican troops and gay and lesbian Service Members. Also we tend to ignore the potential negative effects of social cohesion. In had various workplace settings, overly cohesive groups have been associated with group think as well as enhanced problem solving and Decision Making skills. Moving on to my broader point about gender and cohesion i think theres two main indicators that there may be gender bias in relation to discussions on cohesion. First is that cohesion is often referred to either implicitly or explicit i will as male bonding. Second, evidence indicates that the main impediment may be mens attitudes, not women themselves. Or their ability to perform. This first point. Cohesion is male bonding. Were looking at the public debates, some descriptions tend to assume that unit cohesiveness requires segregation, its actually the masculine nature of the bonding thats essential. Anthony king acknowledges that soes yolgsists have preferred to look at the masculine roles. Kingsley brown made the following observation men fight for many reasons, probably the most powerful one is the male bonding with their comrades. Perhaps for fundment aal reasons, women do not invoke in men the same feelings of comradeship that men do. Defining military cohesion and troop effectiveness by masculine rituals actually places women as outsiders and as a threat by their very nature. This perspective cant be countered with more research, it requires a change in perspective, this is why attitudes mat ter going to the second indicator i mentioned research earlier that shows little correlation between women and reduced cohesion. There are some studies that actually show, that find the contrary, if you dig deeper into these studies you can find interesting conclusions. Let me explain one study found that units with higher numbers of women may report lower levels of cohesion. Women report lower levels of cohesion. Another study found that women negatively impact cohesion, mens sense of women impacted cohesion. The more accepting men were of women the higher rates of cohesion in a group. Here you have a separate factor this has been reproduced on mixed gender units. This is really important, because it means that mens attitudes toward women and their acceptance of women not women themselves, might be the key factor in levels of cohesion. Its also important because it seems that irrespective of womens performance, negative attitudes persistent impact how a group describes its cohesion. Just a couple weeks ago, the resultsive goodin to special Operations Forces were reported and this was a survey used to gauge apprehensions that troops may have to women in combat the results did show several misgivings and concerns, including concerns about Sexual Assault. We need to understand how these misgivings might impact Group Dynamics and reported levels of cohesion. We also need to acknowledge that Sexual Assault is not a agagend cohesion problem. Its a Sexual Assault problem. The main issue may be mens attitudes and perceptions, so we may want to spend our attention focusing on cultural change. Debates on women in combat leave several questions unanswered. Why does there seem to be more concern with women and cohesion with regard to combat units. Do they only limit