Women can do anything a man can. There is no debate about that. This is not an old school world where physical strength matters. If you can fire a gun, work well in a team, and follow orders, you are a good soldier regardless of sex.

physical strength does matter in soldiers. The gear they need is heavy and they'd better be able to carry one of the wounded if they have to leave (see requirements earlier in thread) but as long as they can actually do those things(and not the "girly pushups" version) why not

You are a sad, bitter individual. I am honestly sorry for the experiences you have had with women.

As for the job market.. I'm late for work so I'll make this brief:
Sexism. Many times in those industries a company will hire a less qualified male, because he's male... and women know this, so only those who truly WANT to be an engineer or the like go to school for it. On the other hand, males know that it's still 'expected' that they have a good paying job to support their family and so go in to the high paying fields, even if they absolutely hate it.

While that's true it's sadly legal for the military to do whatever the hell they want to you, test non-FDA approved drugs, etc. and you must accept it, if you're in. Being the military's guinea pig is not something I would wish on my worst enemy. Our military needs to clean up its act and its image (the former being the most important), the thought of someone being forcibly involved in that against their will is repugnant to me.

By and large a lot of hawks supporting our questionable wars are conservative and their kids and grand kids are actually the ones serving and dying. We're pretty good at avoiding death on our side, now days, but we haven't fixed the PTSD and other issues plaguing veterans. In some ways these are more damaging because the sufferers are ignored and shunned if they even say anything.

I don't think it's realistic to have no military, but the size of our current military and our payments to contractors (and we know which kinds we're speaking of, and it's NOT the people actually trying to build shit) have got to be dramatically curtailed.

I don't think our draft is currently avoiding us any wars and were we ever in a position where it would sway the majority of our voting public I hate to condemn the unwilling to go fight and suffer just to drive the point home. There must be a better way.

Perhaps the first born of every politician and CEO of a private organization receiving military contracts should be required to serve on the front lines as a regular grunt during war time. That would make damn fucking sure that any war in which we were involved was absolutely necessary.
The physical requirements of some military positions are actually surprisingly high. You have to carry a lot more gear than you think, ammo is fucking heavy, even if your gun is as light as they can reasonably make it. The gear to keep you alive can weigh 80 over pounds irrc, no hiker would pack an 80 pound pack by choice. You're expected to be able to run with that gear, for miles.

There's limited men in the population that can do it without youth and training on their side, to say nothing of the women in the population who need both of the above and some slightly exceptional genes on their side.

Hahaha. What did anything I say have to do about personal experiences with women?

Women have always historically been the main opponents to women-in-combat. Women were also the main opponents for women-to-work-outside-the-home. With the rise of computers and plush office jobs, now many women have changed their minds. But note how they only want *those* jobs and not the job of the miner, engineer, or something that is very dangerous or dirty.

Well I have, certainly not all of them, but way more than a "handful", so is he allowed to speak now?

We lack specialist doctors in the US and UK because female doctors by and large are selecting to not enter the specialties (which require very long work weeks). There's a lot of information about it and whatever government head who was in charge of this in the UK a few years ago (herself a woman) was publicly lamenting this fact and trying to push women to do some of these harder, more stressful, and time consuming specialties. There's already a lot of GPs, but good luck finding a gastroenterologist with an open schedule in the next 8-12 weeks.

I've done my share of manual labor in my younger years and there were certain positions that rarely had any women in them, and the the position would have been theirs for the asking, because the quotas weren't filled. I'm not saying whoever asked wouldn't have been qualified, simply that they wouldn't have had to compete really to get the job, because there were no women in those groups. Had two women asked at the same time I'd bet 2 positions would have been created for them, that's how unbalanced it was and how worried most of these management groups were about it.

I don't really understand the whole push for gender equality when it comes to employment. I mean don't take that the wrong way -- I'm not implying that I don't think women have any less rights to do something than men do. I just don't see what the harm is in accepting that some roles are better suited for women and some for men. There are two different sexes for a reason. And besides, why would a woman want to do the dirty work that men do?

As a former service member who did have to serve with women, I can tell you that there are very legitimate logistical reasons for not allowing women to serve in combat roles, and it's not necessarily the women's fault. I was an aircraft mechanic, and men and women work along side one another in those fields. But, it's like 200 men for every one woman. When we'd deploy somewhere, there would usually only be a couple of women in our entire group. Special accommodations had to be made for these few, and it caused some problems. For example, on one of our deployments we were assigned with 7 dudes per one 200'ish sqft room. And these were people working split shifts, so getting good sleep was near impossible. We also shared a community bathroom (with all of the other rooms, not just 7 guys). Meanwhile, the women got put into the same rooms that officers had. They had their own rooms, with their own separate bathrooms. So it's equal treatment, but because of logistical issues, it really isn't.

I didn't mind dealing with the shit when I was in the military - that's just part of the lifestyle, and you learn to deal with it. But it definitely created some animosity, I guess you could say, over that issue. Reason being: When you're dealing with those living situations for months on end, and the person working next to you (a woman) starts complaining about something with the living arrangements, and you know they've had a nice and comfy living environment the whole time, it can start to eat away at you a bit. Also, sometimes those women turned into massive sluts while deployed, and so there is a health risk there as well (spreading STD's).

Overall, I just feel like there is a potential to lose more than we gain by letting woman serve on the front lines alongside men. Chances are they may not be quite as good in that role as a man would be, and it would add the potential for all of the issues that people have been pointing out. Let them have a shot at it, sure, but just don't be surprised if it doesn't work out all super happy feminist movement rainbow power party time good in the end. Maybe it will though, who knows.

He's speaking about something he has no experience in, other than maybe what he read on some other site, or heard from some bitter (probably multi-divorced) bloke.

I'm not denying that there ARE women like what he describes out there.. I will say, however, that they are a massive minority.

Also, as far as jobs in fields where women don't usually work, like where you mentioned.. the other thing you have to consider is that there is still the stigma that such places won't hire women, and so they don't even bother trying because "they won't get hired.", as well there's the issue of being the only woman working someplace surrounded by men, especially if it's a traditionally male-dominated field.. because men will either try to 'show her up' and make it clear 'she doesn't belong'.. or they'll fall all over themselves trying to help her in hopes of getting in to her pants. How much is true? Depends entirely on the guys in question.. however that doesn't help the fact that there's already those notions.

Sure, there are plenty of women who say "I don't NEED to go get that job.. so why would I?", but that is not the whole of it.

I don't buy this, not in the US, women have known about this stuff for decades. If they're not applying for those jobs it's because they don't want them. It could be for all manner of reasons, but the thought that they couldn't get it is extremely unlikely to be one of them.

yutz :)


dren

Backwards. Basically women tend to look upwards in the social hierarchy when assessing their potential mates and status in society. So, they give significantly more weight to the men who are CEOs and politiicians and little or no weight to other professions which are less desirable which are also dominated by men. Things such as working construction or on sanitation crews.

It's a form of confirmation bias where the distribution of outcomes is changed by ignoring the people who aren't doing as well and that cleaned up data set is used to justify entitlements. Entitlements which wouldn't be as easily granted if the whole population was considered.
I strongly disagree with that. I've known some women that could beat up professional football players. The blanket policy of banning them all was never really a particularly good idea. It always should have been handled like firefighters or police officers, anybody capable of doing the job should be eligible.

Must have misread what little info I could find on it. Thanks for that.

Actually, you completely agree with me, you just don't understand that you do.

I said that:

1) Women are weaker than men, and thus, less suited to physical tasks. This is demonstrably true.

2) Not all women will fit the average of course, no more than all men will be strong. So, as I explained, any woman that can meet the standardized criteria for a job should be able to do that job, as long as her feminine realities don't preclude her (IE, I understand the "no women on nuclear subs" limitation that many countries still impose).

The problem feminists have with that is that most women would be unable to meet the male requirements. Check out the figures for the Marine Corps Combat Fitness Test. The male figures in every category are consistently higher; also notice that men in the 46+ category are being held to a higher standard in every area than the 17-26 women who are half their age.

This is how badly things are slanted against women in physical roles, and this is why feminists bleating about equality and the like will never, ever agree to sharing the same standards, since this still "holds women back"; instead they want the bar adjusted (for women only) so that women can "fulfil their dreams" without having to first be fully capable of doing so.