This node is speaking strictly about the
United States Armed Forces and may not apply to readers from other countries:
This is a controversial
issue which is sometime heatedly debated about in
military circles: Should
women be alowed to serve in
infantry/
tank or other "front line"
combat units? For years women were only allowed to serve in service and support roles (admin, medical,
intelligence, supply, etc..) however recently women have been allowed in "combat support" roles such as infantry
headquarters units and as combat pilots. However, women are still not permitted in "front line" combat units. There are many arguments for and against it. I personally am for the idea with one condition.
Anyone who has been in the military can tell you that men and women have to maintain a different physical standard, as well the physical standard is lowered as one ages. I find something basically wrong with this. If you're in a
war, is the enemy not going to chase after you as quickly just because you're older, or a woman? No, I don't think so.
The United States military needs to get out of this rather discriminatory practice, and the easiest way of doing this that I can see is saying "It takes
X to be a soldier", if anyone can meet those requirements, no matter their
race,
age or
gender, guess what?, you can be a soldier. Now they may perhaps want to relax the standards for admin type positions, and perhaps even have different standards for each Military
Occupational Specialty. All right now it may take a woman who's in really good physical condition to be in the infantry, if that's what it takes, that's what it takes. If the regulations says "a
soldier must be able to do 42 push-ups in two minutes to be an infantry soldier", then anyone who can, and wants to should be able to.