Women in the infantry
Stephen C Greenwell
COMM215
March 2, 2015
Colette Wanless-Sobel

With the passing of so many bills and orders in today's government, the largest standing issue is whether or not women should be allowed into the infantry roles or Military Occupation Specialties (MOS). Women should not be permitted into the infantry MOS for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the women who find themselves wanting a challenge are not able to pass the initial test of the Combat Endurance Test (CET). Secondly, the female body isn’t made for the stresses and rigors of extreme weight lifting, lack of sleep and overall mental preparedness to serve in an infantry MOS. Lastly, the Infantry Brotherhood will decline, and sexual assault/harassment cases will spike. At the end of this essay, you will be left knowing that women in the infantry isn't about everyone being equal, but everyone having a particular job to accomplish without putting others into unnecessary harms way.
Women of the Infantry Recently, we have seen a lot of commotion about whether of not women should be allowed in the infantry MOS. The Marine Corps has been doing a lot of testing on this subject to seek out volunteers for them to be integrated into the infantry MOS’s. Since the beginning of the integration experiment that started in June 2014, the Infantry Officers Course has seen 26 female Marines volunteer for the program. Of those 26 female Marines officers, not one has yet been able to pass the Combat Endurance Test. The Male Marines, who are subjected to the same CET, also struggle to make it through to become infantry officers. The course that started at the beginning of January 2015 has dropped 15 men out of a 118-person course. “Opportunities for female enlisted Marines to cycle through Infantry Training Battalion for seven MOS-specific ground combat training programs will also end soon, the newspaper reported. Marine Corps statistics shows that out of 240 volunteers, 106 were successful" (Ernst, 2015, para. 4). This number is widely misrepresented.
Unlike, the Officer Candidate Course that is only located in Quantico, VA, enlisted Marines are separated into two different training camps. All potential male Marines, or Recruits, west of the Mississippi River are sent to Marine Corps Recruit Depot (MCRD) San Diego, Ca. All male Recruits East of the Mississippi River are sent to MCRD Parris Island located in Beaufort, South Carolina. For the female Recruits, they will all go to MCRD Parris Island for training, regardless of where they originated. Everyone can tell you the differences between the West and East coast terrains. The fact that all 106 female Marines have passed the enlisted infantry course is significantly due in part because they have only been trained on the flat swamps of East Coast United States. Move those females to the steep mountainsides of Camp Pendleton in Southern California, and you'll see those numbers sharply decrease.
Female health in combat roles Let's say for instance that some women were able to make it into a infantry unit or MOS. Those women wouldn't last long, medically, and I believe psychotically as well. For instance, women have a similar muscle mapping structure compared to men but each is built for specific duties. Male and female metabolisms are entirely different. Men tend to burn calories at a much faster rate, than women. Women store extra fat in their breasts, hips and buttocks to provide for the child during pregnancy. Men benefit from the faster metabolism resulting in being much stronger and agile beings compared to women. This is an essential factor when it comes to combat. The differences between man and woman are slight but when you start adding addition weight to the person, prolonged patrols, lack of sleep, lack of showers/toilets and those differences grow exponentially. A female, company grade combat, engineer officer with five years of service, multiple combat deployments has pleaded her