General > Discussion

Female soldiers?

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Rei:

--- Quote ---Nope.....but the fact is that females and males are very very different.....
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That's the exact rationalle that has been given at each point in time that the military has resisted allowing women into different roles -- and each time, it's fallen flat when women were allowed to take part.  

The last time around was the whole "women can't be fighter pilots".  Women were allowed to enter training since 1976, and their scores (as with each time in history) were exceptional, averaging higher than the men once they adjusted the seats.  Yet the military refused to let them fly, insisting to congress that women simply couldn't manage being fighter pilots.  It wasn't until '93 that the SecDef changed the rules.
 
Hell, women can be fighter pilots now in the bloody *Pakistani* air force.


--- Quote --- Read something about biology, human evolution.....
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You picked the wrong person.  I make a living *programming brain imaging software*.  Of course there are differences in functional imaging.  There are smaller but statistically significant differences in structural imaging as well (the hypothalmus is a big example, although that's the region for sexual activity, body temperature, etc, so not exactly what you're looking for  ;)).

 However, when it comes to actual mental task performance, almost all of the tasks you can assign, there is such a low correleation to gender when there even is one at all that it would be absolutely irrelevant for sex-selecting for military roles.  That is to say, the major differences are between individuals of the same gender as opposed to between genders.  On a given spatial test, if a man averages a score of 60/100, you may expect women, on average, to get perhaps 55/100, but to range widely from, say, 25/100 to 85/100.  The sort of results that you get do not, by any stretch, justify blanket bans or even extreme ratios.  If it were based solely on ability, you would expect slight sexual differences, but not major.

This all assumes that in non-physical tasks, that men *actually are* better, given a role.  The evidence for this simply does not exist.

Now, men *do* have a natural physical strength advantage over women.  In America, men average about 50% more skeletal muscle mass than women.  Now, part of that is likely attributable to lifestyle differences, but I would be surprised if the difference with comparable backgrounds is less than 25-30%.  There's also smaller, but still relevant differences in endurance levels (although women have greater flexibility on average).  Even still, natural variance makes justifying a blanket ban on women even in physically-challenging roles unreasonable.  

This all assumes that such an elite force as PHALANX wouldn't involve any sort of tech (even simple steroids) to counterbalance this.  
 

--- Quote --- Females in army is almost sick as males giving the birth to the child.......
--- End quote ---


To surpass you, women simply need to be to form a cogent sentence.  Care to rephrase?  I certainly hope that English isn't your native tongue.

By the way -- I know you jest, but it may surprise you to learn how malleable human bodies are when it comes to gender.  I've seen a person who was born male pump enough milk to feed a baby, and a women given enough testosterone will have "part of their anatomy" enlarge to 2-3 inches in length.  Gender isn't this stark dichotomy that you'd like to imagine it as.
 

--- Quote ---Males were fighting and hunting for hundreads thousands of years and evolution gave them better reflexes, stronger muscles...etc.
--- End quote ---


Muscle mass has already been covered.  As for "reflexes", I doubt you actually mean "reflexes", such as kicking when your knee gets hit.  You mean "reaction time".  Men have slightly faster average reaction times (only by about 10% on average, and there's much more variation within genders than between them) (Noble, Bellis, Engel, et al), but women average more accuracy in reaction tasks -- including aiming (Barral and Debu, 2004).  Muscle contraction times are equal between men and women on average (Botwinick and Thompson, 1966).

This would seem to suggest that while women wouldn't be better with an RPG on average, they'd be better as a sniper on average.   Note the use of the words "on average".  Of course, this fits history -- the USSR let women serve in World War II, and some of their best snipers were women.


--- Quote --- I have report from UK and US army about female soldiers in infantry....
 
 Did u know that female soldiers has almost 8 time greater cjances to be injured in 20 km march over rough terain than male soldiers....etc.
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And naturally, you'll cite the ref, right?  According to this ref (www.armyg1.army.mil/nr/wita/women-army.doc), when they adjusted the equipment to fit women in 1979, the Army basic training injury rate dropped from 10% to 3%.  

Ah, here's a good article: www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3912/is_200007/ai_n8908939.  In Marine Corps basic training, about 25% of men and 50% of women were injured (twice the rate, not 20 times).  The primary injury among women was bone stress reactions.  As bone strength is largely due to how much stress your bones typically receive (bone density increases when it is stressed), that means that these women simply had not been exposed to as much stress on their frames before (i.e., social factors, not innate).  Note that the rate of these injuries was quite small, all withstanding: 0.39% per hour of basic training, and Marine Corps training isn't famed for being easy on its candidates.


--- Quote ---I worked in Special police forces btw.
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US Special Forces?  So your native language *is* English?  How embarrassing.
 

--- Quote ---What about children in army/infantry....
--- End quote ---


Now you're really being insulting, given that the skeletal muscle and endurance ratios aren't even in the same ballpark and on mental tasks the statistical differences *are* between populations, not within them.

Could you have been more insulting?  Here, I'll help: "If you let women into infantry, what about lemurs?"

NicSO:
Nice info btw.:-)

Im not from US, Im from Europe.....

Tell me......what do u think about evolution etc.........

I have red about huge differences in brain and bones/muscles.....

Tell me more then!

NicSO:
btw. arent we mammals????

What about evoluton (hundreads thousands of years males were fighting, that was their natural role (like all mammals))....u say that means nothing?

Do u know why females have voices like children (high)........

Hoehrer:
This discussion is as irrelevant as unneeded.

The only way to satisfy every person in this matter would be to remove the gender+names+models completely and make some pseudo-humans for the game. Otherwise somebody will always complain.
We will not go there, so we'll stick wich a random selection of everything (in this case soldier-stats + percentage of males/females + nationality). The posted example is one of these random selections. No bad intentions are behind the final result of these selections.

If the rpecentage is always this far off it's certainly a bug and should be reported as such.

To make this short: In UFO:AI a soldier is a soldier is a soldier. Except for the random differences in the stats for all of them alike they are no different. We will not include any prejudice/biased view. Even if they are 'scientitically proofen', so-called 'facts'or whatever, this doesn't matter for the game.

I hope i made this point clear and didn't offend anyone,
Werner

pelos:
Frankly, the more women. the better. It's always nicer to look at those than guys, even in a computer game. :-)

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