P. M. E p. M. Eastern also on cspan3. Now a conversation on women in combat from the institute of World Politics. This is about an hour and 15 minutes. Okay, i guess we can get going. Welcome to everyone. My name is owens. We are an independent security school. We offer three masters degrees. We offer an executive and professional masters as well. In addition we have 18 certificates. Were very happy to cosponsor this event with mark moyar. We have a great speaker who is done a great deal of work in this area. Its a topical topic as you know. I think the department of redundancy department. But as i say we are cosponsoring this with the center for military and diplomatic history. And mark moyar, to say a couple words and i will introduce our moderator. Im dr. Mark moyar. I wanted to thank dr. Owens, and katie bridges and kevin dunne, you have done a wonderful job organizing this event. Thanks also to Lindsay Markell and daniel, the Foreign Policy initiative. We do events on history that have relevant to todays issues. Ive been hosting an average of one event per week since three months ago. And we like to bring in people who havent necessarily been heard inside the beltway. Theres a tendency as im sure a lot of you know to recycle the same speakers. So we were able to bring in our speaker from california and shes though shes well known has not spoken publicly in d. C. Before. This is the first event weve done on this subject. Certainly one i think that is very relevant to military affairs. Because its not just a cultural issue but i think one of military capabilities and readiness and people on both sides of the debate contend their policy is better in terms of maximizing u. S. Military capabilities. And we do see a lot of history involved in this discussion. Comparisons with things like bringing africanamericans into the military or women into other parts of the military or changing the policy on gay and lesbian service or the history of women in actual wars. So we very much look forward to a discussion of what we have learned, what we should learn from the past and what lessons of the past are not the ones to follow. Thank you. Thank you for having us. The introduces continue. Id like to introduce Elaine Donnelly who is the moderator today. Elaine and i go back aways working on this topic, not always together but for the most part we have been taking this issue seriously for a very long time. Elaine is the founder and president of the center for military readiness which is an independent nonpart Season Public policy organization that focuses on military readiness and social issues within the military. She has served on a Defense Advisory Committee on women in the services and the president ial commission on the assignment of women in the armed forces. Shes provide testimony to congress, published articles on military issues in a variety of publications. Which laid out many of the legal issues and a response to an article by madeleine morris. So she School Craft College and university of detroit and she lives in michigan. So elaine will now introduce our speaker. Mack owens and i go way back. The last time i saw you in person was at the Naval War College when you were a professor there. I always admired your writingance articles. And want to thank dr. Mark moyar for sponsoring this program and the institute for World Politics for hosting us here today. Ive also been a longtime admirer of dr. Anna simons on issues involving women in the military she has been chronicling women in history. This may be the first meeting of its kind a at a crucial time of change in the armed forces. This is, perhaps, the first opportunity that we will have to take stock and figure out where are we going with this . Is this a good idea for women or is it not . In 1992, professor anna simons earned a ph. D. In social anthropology at harvard university. Its an honor to introduce her. Since then she has been in the field of academia and teaching students common sense as well as everything she knows in the field of anthropology. Since 2007 she was in monterey, california and was an associate professor of anthropology at ucla and visiting instructor in anthropology in duke university. In 2011 she cowrote a common sense approach to global security. She has conducted Field Research in somalia and fort bragg and wrote a book called networks of disillusion, somalia undone in 1995. Her list of scholarly articles is six pages long. But she has been in all the major publications, new york times, washington post, boston globe and african news. She was also involved in politics for a while. She was an assistant to the governor of arizona, Bruce Babbitt and a speech writer for jimmy carter. I became aware of her when she wrote the company they keep life inside the u. S. Army special forces. She applied what she knew about anthropology to analyze that special culture of special operations. In that we have something in common because im a civilian but i have such enormous respect for the culture of people who serve, the rough men who defend our country. I think their interests, everything they believe needs to be given more study and more awareness and thats why were here tonight. Dr. Simons has brought insight into the community of warriors. There are some people who comment social justice warriors but they dont know what real warriors do. Dr. Simons does. I think the reality of civilian control of the military puts on all of us, civilian or former military, we all have a responsibility to watch what happens to the military. Theyre there to defend us and we need to be there to defend them. And with great pleasure, heres doctor professor simons. I should just go back to california now so as not to disappoint anyone after that introduction. But i want to thank idp and ipi for hosting and i want to thank mark for having inviting me. I think i want to thank mark. I think because while ive written about this topic off and on, publicly speaking out is always fraught and i would say if anyone in the room knows of anyone who is a young, aspiring graduate student in psychology there is no better topic to focus on than why people respond so emotionally to the issue of women in combat units. Im going to try to stay dispassionate and be provocative as i review what is missing from the women in combat unit debate. First i have to do the necessary disclaimer. Im not speaking on behalf of the Naval Post Graduate School on behalf of any entity in d. O. D. If only my views were d. O. D. s views there would be no debate. But of course meanwhile, others in the room, like elaine and other invitees have encyclopedic knowledge about the legislative and inside the beltway history of this issue and i know others have inside knowledge, the physiological realities of trying to meet certain physical standards. Im going to defer to them during question and answer during the questions and answers or discussion about injury rates, Readiness Challenges and so on. For the questions i want to raise they havent gone unasked as much as they have remained unanswered. Those who lobbied for lifting the combat exclusion ban have done a masterful job of putting opponents on the defensive. Just the fact i can use the words opponents and proponents signifies who has the political upper hand. Leon panetta was brilliant when he declared all Ground Combat units would be open to women in january 2016 unless the Service Chiefs could justify which specific units should remain closed. By putting the onus on the chiefs and civilian secretaries to defend the status quo he sandbagged any male in uniform who would found like a dinosaur if he argued for combat units to stay all male. They have also long engaged in clever sleight of hand. At this point only misogynists doubt womens capacity for courage under fire. Combat is not the issue, combat units are. Indeed, i dont know anyone who is more anxious for qualified women to be able to work with them on certain kinds of missions than special operators who some might say economicompr ultimate boys club. Women are an asset for reconnaissance work and other sensitive missions. Operators concern is how would womens presence help them close with and destroy the enemy more effectively. It cant. And wont unless you believe as some proponents do that women think sufficiently differently from men and without them combat units are missing womens unique approach. First, though, lets review why we have combat units in the first place. And why we should want them to be as single mindedly lethal and focused as possible. Unlike other payment units responsible for logistics, communications, intelligence and other functions, Ground Combat units exist to kill or destroy more of the enemy than they can kill of us no matter how long it takes, no matter how little support they receive and no matter how many casualties they suffer. Casualties, thats what the enemy seeks to inflict. Casualties or attrition is why combat units have to have interchangeability. When someone is wounded or killed someone else needs to take his place. It also brings me back to the idea that because women dont think like men they add value but if thats the case then women and men arent easily interchangeable, are they . A female casualty could only be replaced by another female which presents major logistical and other challenges. So which is it . Either men and women do think alike and are interchangeable so long as they meet the same physical standards in which case why add women . Or if men and women dont respond similarly and dont think alike and are excuse me well, then what does injecting females into small ten to 12man groups do to cohesion . Cohesion is a term i have come to despair of thanks to what academics have done to it. Forgot what you think it might mean. Academics have split it in two. Theres social cohesion which is how much people like each other and task cohesion which refers to the ability to do a job regardless of their differences and dislikes. Increasingly, academics have argued the only kind of cohesion that military units need is task cohesion. To remain effective no longer requires that individuals have anything more than the mission in common. But has anyone asked those in Ground Combat units or the sergeants major who oversee them how they define cohesion or whether academics may have gotten this wrong. And more significantly and what academics dont tackle at all is what wrecks cohesion. The study so common on gender integration didnt delve into this. Maybe thats because all sentient adults know what can wreck cohesion. But if you dont seek it, you dont have to find it. Men and women have been each others most consistent distraction since the beginning of time to. Pretend there wont be problems when message and women are together in emotionally intense situations, College Campuses anyone . Deface common sense. It also deface biology. Malemale competition and female choice. Cast back through history or literature, mens abiding interest in men and womens interest in having men be interested creates potential for rivalry, jealousy, favoritism, distrust and friction. Why would we want to interject any of this into combat units . Proponents of course say in the thick of combat no one is thinking about sex or gender. Okay, thats true but this is also a classic red herring argument. The potential for trouble lurks after or before the bullets are flying. Spend time around soldiers when day are coming down from adrenaline highs or are depressed or upset or bored or us fr frustrated they are prone to temptations. Red herring number two is that men voice the same obligations about blacks and gays and they got over those obligationjectio. They will get over this too. But attraction between the sexes is something altogether different from racism or bigotry which is at the end of the interest disinterest or like dislike spectrum. Number three is numerous allies have opened their combat units to women so we should too. Why have they done so . One aim is to model social justice. Theyre explicit about this, which of course, they can well afford to be. Why . Because who in the end do they know will come to theiresq resc . I dont mean disrespect but few of our allies can get anywhere without our help. Thus leaving our Ground Combat units is the only thin line between us and harm. So how, again, will injecting women into their midst make them more lethal in combat . And what havent proponents been made to answer this . Or maybe advocates here would tell us that our Ground Combat units, likewise need to serve purposes other than combat as well. For instance, maybe they need to do something beyond excelling at fighting and need to exemplify social justice or equity. But if equity is what proponents care about then why dont they lobby for a draft and universal service or for those who invoke patriotism, love of country and womens desire to defend the United States in the same way men do, why not argue for all female units or finance those concerned about Career Advancement which favors combat officers why not challenge the Promotion System overall since anyone, male or female who is not in a Ground Combat unit must be similarly disadvantaged. But more research does need to be done. Are there positions that would or could prepare a woman to compete for a shot at being able to be a wartime Combatant Commander without her having to lead an infantry squad, a platoon or special forces team first. Could a woman do other jobs and be able to lead a brigade or a division . Which rungs would combat soldiers say they need their commanders to have climbed . Pose these questions to enough men in uniform and it might turn out there is a way or several ways to finesse the issue of getting more women into senior military command positions without having to alter the makeup of Ground Combat units. Is it conceivable that a woman can lead in mens eyes without having been a grunt first. Maybe she doesnt have the speed, strength or stamina but if she is strategically smarter, why not . If this is one incomplete area of research, a second involves data that already exists. Tens of millions of dollars have been spend on studies. For obvious reasons to do with budgets, neither the army or marine corps will air their dirty laundry. How many hours have been lost to investigations and disciplinary actions related to sexual assaults and or allegations. Publicly everyone says glowing things about combat support and female engagement teams. And some officers i know are deeply grateful they were sent women who could search and interact with afghan women. Their teams have no problems with women who are in bat is support teams living on their fire bases. But some teams were torn apart. How many . Wheres the data . And why isnt this considered relevant . Of course, read the studies and they acknowledge between the lines that look too closely in this direction would prove devastating. Why . Because one conclusion reached prior to the lifting of the ban is that men and women should really be trained together. You shouldnt just thrust them together down range. When they train together they bond more familially. They become protective of rather than predatory of one another. Which is interesting since once again the real prospect of attrition is being ignored. But say one of these units that had bonded thanks to training together takes a gender casualty. Then what . Does the whole unit need to be pulled out so it can retrain together. The question is if training together from the outset is so critical what does that mean when there is attrition . For anyone not familiar with them, and as i hope im making clear, combat units have no civilian analog. No other entities are designed to be sent into harms way for such indefinite periods of time in order to inflict harm. Wildfire firefighters might come closest in terms of having to cope in a similarly unstable 24 7 environment. But every job you might think is comparable to combat involves shift work, employees dont only get to go home but they get a break from one another. They can decompress and regroup apart. Not so in Ground Combat units, although people then say, what about astronauts, surely theyre stuck together and have to get along. To which my first oneword response is attrition. Does nasa face attrition and interchangeability challenges once astronauts are in space . My second oneword response is aggressiveness. Even if we forget all the other differences between astronauts and combat soldiers in terms of age, presumed maturity levels and the screening astronauts receive, nasa doesnt need testosteronefilled fighters. Ground combat units do. What else is associated with testosterone . According to what advertisers keep bombarding us with, with testosterone comes an increasing interest in sex. Maybe that is marketing spin and maybe what we were taught in high school is wrong but its in all seriousness, for all the attention paid to cortisol and whether men and women handle stress similarly, what about testosterone. Who has canvassed the literature about that . And if they havent, why havent they and what does that suggest . Missing from the studies done before opening Ground Combat units to women and what has been avoided in the debate thus far suggests and confirms this topic has been too politicized for too long. The research is incomplete. At best, the studies done are insufficiently rigorous. At worst theyve been biassed. So if as seems to be the case we live in an era where social science is allowed to trump common sense, at a minimum social scientists need to be sent back to the drawing board on this topic. [ applause ] we have plenty of time for questions and answer. You have made some provocative statements and i really appreciate it. Just a couple that come to mind first and then of course wed like people in the audience to ask you some questions. The argument has been made we need women in the special Operations Forces because that would make them smarter. The women have more degrees and graduate degrees and this would increase the quality of special Operations Forces. This