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« Back to Should There Be Women in the Military? main page    Transcript for: Should There Be Women in the Military?Women in the Military ANNOUNCER: Think Tank is made possible by AMGEN,recipient of the Presidential National Medal of Technology. AMGEN,helping cancer patients through cellular and molecular biology.Improving lives today and bringing hope for tomorrow. Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation,the Lilly Endowment, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. MR. WATTENBERG: Hello, I'm Ben Wattenberg. This week on ThinkTank we take a look at the growing presence of women in the military. Is it working? What about the apparent sexual rampage at Aberdeen? What about women in combat? What about Tailhook? Joining us to sort through the conflict and consensus areLawrence Korb, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and anassistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration; CharlesMoskos, professor of sociology at Northwestern University and authorof All That We Can Be, Black Leadership and Racial Integration theArmy Way; Nancy Duff Campbell, co-president of the National Women'sLaw Center and a former professor at Georgetown University LawSchool; and Elaine Donnelly, the president of the Center for MilitaryReadiness and a member of the 1992 Presidential Commission of Womenin the Armed Forces. The topic before this house: women in the military -- progressand problems. This week on Think Tank. Since World War II, the number of women in the American ArmedForces has grown. Now it is at 15 percent. Most of those are insupport roles, not in combat, but that may be changing. There were40,000 women deployed in the Persian Gulf War theater. That includedsome who were shot down and held as prisoners. Women are now flyingcombat aircraft. So what's the problem? Well, here's one list: Pregnancies,sexual harassment, scandals at the service academies, doublestandards, congressional interference. It is alleged that morale hassuffered. A retired colonel recently took out a full-page ad in theWall Street Journal warning officers that 'you are abetting thedestruction of the warrior spirit in the U.S. Armed Forces.' Former Naval Secretary James Webb has warned that militaryleaders should 'demand that any adjustments in sexual roles meet thehistorically appropriate criterion of improving performance, andshould stop salving the egos of a group of never satisfied socialengineers.' Welcome fellow social engineers. Let's just go around the roomquickly. Charlie Moskos, is Jim Webb onto something? Has this wholedevelopment been sort of unannounced social engineering? MR. MOSKOS: Jim Webb is onto something. You really have toworry about changing a culture that has proven itself to be veryeffective in making a strong military. The situation and what'sdifferent today is, this is the first time in American history thatwe have a large number of women in the forces at the same time. They're not separated into a separate corps. So a lot of the oldways of thinking, the old rules and regulations, which were based oneither very few women or women in separate corps, that has to all berethought. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Elaine Donnelly? MS. DONNELLY: Jim Webb is correct. The military is there todefend the country. Right now, the armed forces are sufferingbecause of things being taken away, the budget cuts, but also theburden of social engineering. The military is a prime venue forsocial engineering because everyone must follow orders. So, if youhave certain civilians in the Pentagon, and we do, who look on themilitary as just another equal opportunity employer, you're going tocause a lot of problems. And that's why there is a lot of distressin the military today. MR. WATTENBERG: Nancy Duff Campbell, I suspect you do notagree with Jim Webb. MS. CAMPBELL: I do not. I do not think this is an experimentin social engineering. I think this is about having the best forcethat we can have. Women are coming into the military with highereducational levels. They're scoring higher on defense departmentintelligence tests. And we need them there. And they also have tohave the opportunity to serve their country just as men have over theyears. So I think this really is about having the best military forcewe can. MR. WATTENBERG: All right. Larry Korb, former colleague ofmine at AEI, now at the Brookings Institution? MR. KORB: Well, Jim is right, but not for the reason everybodyelse says. Women have made the military better. Without women, theall volunteer force would make, we'd have a much smaller pool to drawfrom. The standards of people coming in would be lower. And it'srather ironic, as this number of women in the military has increased,you've had people like General Powell, and General Shalikashvili say,it's the best military we've ever had. Since women have been allowedto fly combat aircraft, the accident rates have actually dropped. So, yeah, Jim is right, but not for the reason that he says. MR. WATTENBERG: He also makes the point that nobody on activeduty in uniform can afford to be terribly critical of this situationbecause there is this tradition of civilian leadership, and everybodyis, he says, so politically correct these days, and if any generalofficer or field grade officer went around saying, hey, this thing isreally a bunch of liberal hogwash and it's screwing up the services,that guy is not going to make stars. MR. KORB: No, I don't think so. I mean, President Eisenhowerhad a wonderful phrase, he used to call it legalized insubordination. The right of the military to go public to speak to the Congress. Ifyou go before the Congress, they ask you to give your personalopinion, you can. If you look at the issue on letting -- droppingthe ban on homosexuals in the military, they were very outspoken. SoI don't think that that's true. I also think that, in regard to whatJim said here, is the military exists not just to defend a piece ofgeography, but a way of life. And if you left military leadersalone, we'd have all single white people, basically, in the military. MR. WATTENBERG: Why would you say that? MR. KORB: Because the military -- MR. WATTENBERG: Single, white? MR. KORB: Sure it would. MR. WATTENBERG: Since when does single come into it? I mean,we have a tradition of American armed forces going back to thebeginning of this Republic, I have not understood that they aresingle. MR. KORB: You may remember that in 1993, General Mundy, thecommandant of the Marine Corps didn't want married people. And itwas only society and the Congress, and the political leaders thatpushed him to integrate. General Bradley told President Truman tohis face, when President Truman issued his order in 1948, he said, wewill not do it until society does. MS. DONNELLY: Excuse me, General Mundy never said that hedidn't want married soldiers. MR. KORB: Marines. MS. DONNELLY: He did say though -- Marines. He did not saythat -- He didn't say that. He said that we should recruit peoplewho are going to be more deployable, who are going to stay in theforce longer, and I would disagree with Nancy, too. Although womenare very fine soldiers, and I suppose women in the military, whywould we have recruiting quotas right now for soldiers known to beless strong physically, less deployable due to pregnancy and childcare, who bring an element, not on their own part, but sexuality is afactor. We can't pretend that it isn't. If we say it is not afactor, that's getting into social fiction. When the forces aredrawing down, we need people who are more deployable, more strong,more versatile, not the other way around. The only reason we'redoing this and burdening the military with all of this -- all ofthese extra burdens, is because of politics. MR. MOSKOS: There is a point of a trade-off. I think what'sdriving a lot of this is the desire to have more female generals. And the trade-off is, do you want more problems in the juniorenlisted ranks with sexual harassment, as well as consensual sex,which is the elephant in the living room that nobody wants tomention, or do you want more female generals. I think there is atrade-off on this. And there won't be more female generals unlessthe combat arms are open to women. Now, the real population that we should listen to, and the onethat I think gets its voice least expressed are enlisted women. Theagenda between female officers and those female enlisted women whoare not officers is quite disparate, and I think we really have toaddress that question. What is best for enlisted women who do, afterall, make up 90 percent of the female force. MR. KORB: Well, nobody is disagreeing. Nobody is forcing -- MR. WATTENBERG: People are disagreeing, Larry. MR. KORB: Well, I mean, nobody is forcing women to go intocombat. Nobody is forcing women to go in the military. All we'resaying is that they should be allowed to, to use the Army phrase, tobe all that they can be. Nobody would deny that when it comes tosocial change and the military feels pressure, they sometimes try andmeet direct or indirect quotas, sometimes make mistakes in changingthe standards. Nobody would deny that. That happens inuniversities, it happens in business, when there's a feeling that youneed more of this group or that group. But those are problems thatcan be handled. MR. WATTENBERG: Should women be -- MS. DONNELLY: The difference is, though, somebody can losetheir life if you change the standard. MS. CAMPBELL: I think a lot of these are transitional problemsthat definitely we have to deal with when there are slip-ups. Butit's no different from when women became fire-fighters and when womenbecame police officers. People said they couldn't do the job then,that there would be different standards, et cetera. And there wassexual harassment when they first came in. But as their numbersgrew, as people saw they could do the job, and as the standards werevalidated for what the job really was, women have succeeded in thosefields. MR. WATTENBERG: Do you think women should be in combat? MS. CAMPBELL: Yes, I do think women should be in combat. MR. WATTENBERG: Only voluntarily or that's part of the generalcontract when they go? MS. CAMPBELL: No. I think that should be part of the job justas it is for men. Now, of course, in an all volunteer army, peoplehave a lot of choice right now about what fields they go into, men aswell as women. I think women should be treated the same way. MS. DONNELLY: There's no such thing as voluntary combat. Onceyou're in the military, there is no such thing as voluntary combat. Can you imagine deploying people and then you have a choice whetheror not to go? MS. CAMPBELL: I'm not disagreeing, Elaine. I'm notdisagreeing with you. MS. DONNELLY: It doesn't make any sense. And, Nancy, iscorrect, that is her position. I happen to disagree. And accordingto a recent study done by a Harvard researcher, only 3 percent ofenlisted women would agree with the policy of mandatory combatassignment. Once they're in uniform, it will be mandatory. In fact,the rules have already changed of positions that used to be closed. Such as air cavalry helicopters that go ahead of the tanks. They'reshot down, they become prisoners of war. Those positions are now opento women, and I don't think this nation is ready for the kind ofmassive abuse of women at the hands of the enemy that we're going tosee under the new rules. MR. WATTENBERG: Hold on a second. Nobody is mandatorily madea helicopter pilot. I mean, that is a volunteer very elite group ofyoung men, and perhaps some young women. MS. DONNELLY: Right, but they didn't have to fly thosehelicopters over in front of the front line as a scout in an aircavalry situation and the pressure is already on -- MR. WATTENBERG: I understand, but if they didn't want to dothat, they wouldn't have gone into the helicopter corps. MS. DONNELLY: Well, that's right, but there are supplyhelicopters, and there are attack helicopters. There are those thatare air cavalry helicopters. MR. MOSKOS: Ben, the issue is interesting in the Gulf War,where we did lose some women, largely through SCUD attacks. Therewasn't great upset, by the way, in the country about the death ofwomen as one might have expected, including me. MS. CAMPBELL: That's right. MR. MOSKOS: And it didn't occur. There wasn't great upset. Actually, there's more upset about single mothers being sent overthan there was about women dying in that war. MS. DONNELLY: Very serious anxiety about that, yes. MR. MOSKOS: But the question about the pilots, again, it's anofficer issue. I always want to refocus this thing down to theenlisted women who feel that the feminist agenda is not speaking totheir own direct concerns. In our willingness, you know, to breakglass ceilings, I don't want to break bones either. I mean, that'swhat we're talking about. We're breaking women's bones to breakglass ceilings. MS. DONNELLY: Charlie's right about that. MS. CAMPBELL: But we don't set military policy based on whatmen want to do, enlisted men versus officers. And, in fact, if youlook at the Harvard study, if you look at the Harvard study, therewas actually a lot more disparity between noncommissioned officersand officers than there was between enlisted women and officers. Thepoint is, we're not setting military policy based on sort of whatpeople want to do, we're trying to get the best force. MS. DONNELLY: If you want to have the best force, you want tohave people who are strong and up to the job, there's no gendernorming on the battlefield. So all of these techniques, comparableeffort, supposedly being the same, as equal standards, all of thesethings are going to fall and hit the wall of reality in the naturalmobilization. And, by the way, to say that we want to have the combat rulesrepealed, exemptions taken away from women so that somebody can be,you know, the next four-star general or the next chairman of thejoint chiefs of staff, excuse me, that's not a good enough reason,even if it were true. MR. WATTENBERG: Hold on a second. MS. DONNELLY: And it's not true because women are promoted atrates equal to or faster than men. And that's been documented timeafter time. MR. WATTENBERG: Yeah, but this gets back to the point thatCharlie made originally, and I just want to clear it up for ourviewers, this idea about women becoming generals, and it's hard inthe armed services for anybody to become a general officer unlessthey've served in combat and had their ticket punched. MS. DONNELLY: It happens all the time, Ben. And you don'tneed to force enlisted women into combat so that other women can be ageneral somewhere, that is just a false analysis. MR. WATTENBERG: Do you agree with that, Nancy? MS. CAMPBELL: I'm not sure what the point is that I'm beingasked to agree with. MR. WATTENBERG: Well, no, no. The -- MR. KORB: What's really driving this is desire for more femalegenerals. I think what's driving this is the whole question ofallowing women to pursue careers which traditionally had been closedto them. You were talking about what happened since World War II. Between '48 and '67, women that would enlist were limited to 2percent of the military and to what they called traditionalspecialties, clerks, typists, medical, for example. And after '67,we dropped the 2 percent limit. We went to the volunteer military.We would not have been able to meet our quotas of the qualifiedpeople had we not expanded the pool to women. If you read peoplelike Admiral Zumwalt, when he came into NAS, he said, we're not goingto make it unless we broaden our recruit pool. MR. WATTENBERG: Admiral Zumwalt was not for putting women onaircraft carriers for six months at a time or whatever. MR. KORB: But what happened was, that as the number of womenincreased and reached the 15 percent number, you could not keep them'in these traditional specialties.' And as they were allowed intothe support things -- for example, women were flying tankers, thatwas not a combat aircraft. Well, if you were just -- if I have onebullet and I have a tanker and I've got a fighter and a bomber upthere, and one missile, I'm going to get the tanker, because I don'thave to worry about the fighter. MR. MOSKOS: Larry, you're still talking about officers. Iwant to ask you one question -- MR. KORB: We're talking about opportunity, Charlie. MR. MOSKOS: Let me ask you a simple question, both Nancy andLarry. Should there be unisex physical standards in combat arms? MS. CAMPBELL: Right now, the differences in physical standardsare physical fitness standards. Yes, there should be uniformedstandards for meeting particular military occupations. MR. MOSKOS: So the combat arms, if they're very rigorous,you'd have unisexed? MS. CAMPBELL: For the combat arms, that is right. That'sright. MR. MOSKOS: So how many women aren't going to pass thoseunisex standards? MS. CAMPBELL: Well, I think we don't know yet because wehaven't tried it. MR. MOSKOS: Oh, we do know. We do know. MS. CAMPBELL: Just a second. We don't have standards. Wedon't yet have the standards. The Congress has been pressuring themilitary to have standards and to show that those standards arerelated to the job specification. MR. MOSKOS: But, Nancy -- MS. DONNELLY: In return, if we have a standard where women aresupposed to meet it the same as the men, organizations such as yours,the Dacowitz Committee, the feminist outside groups complain, that'snot fair to the women because they can't succeed as well as the men. Why, because they have different physical capabilities that are notgoing to change. MS. CAMPBELL: No, we don't complain about that. MR. KORB: Now, wait, if I can, we're mixing up a number ofthings here. We need standards. MS. DONNELLY: So then you come in with this idea of comparableeffort being equality, but it's not the same thing. MS. CAMPBELL: I've already said that, Elaine. MR. KORB: Okay, wait. We need standards for every job in themilitary, mental, moral and physical. All you have to ensure, and Iwrestled with this for five years when we were trying to deal withthis, is that the standards are related to the job. If I say, forexample, you want to be a college professor, you have to have a PhD,all right. Then, you can tell me whether, in fact, that's areasonable -- MR. WATTENBERG: Yeah, but suppose we're talking, I think thatCharlie was alluding to it, to being an infantryman, an infantryperson, an infantry entity, whatever you want to call it these days,and you say, well, you have to be able to run so fast and live somuch, and carry an M-1 and do all of these things. And let's justsay, for the sake of argument, it turns out that 90 percent of menwould qualify for that, and 15 percent of women. MR. MOSKOS: Which is about right. MS. CAMPBELL: Then you'll have 90 percent men and 15 percentwomen. MS. DONNELLY: Every time the Pentagon has tried to haveobjective standards that would hold women to the same level as themen and the women failed in greater numbers, as you said, thensomebody comes in, the political pressure from the organized feministgroups, who say that that's unfair to women, and they always gettheir way. Why? Because the generals are afraid of being accused ofanti- women. MR. WATTENBERG: Hold on one second. Company, halt. Okay. Now, Larry mentioned the word 'moral' and the word 'sex' has come uphere before, and I might have even brought it up myself. You have the situation, it's in the newspapers daily, the Aberdeen situation ofwhat seems to be severe sexual harassment. I mean, big time uglynasty stuff. These sorts of things have been cropping up all over. You have the situation, I guess, going back to Jim Webb citing unitsthat he was aware of where 50 percent of the women in the unit werepregnant. You have the situation on aircraft carriers, men and womenliving -- young, healthy, and this argument always comes up, young,healthy people. MR. MOSKOS: You put men and women together and shakevigorously, and don't be surprised. MR. WATTENBERG: Put them on aircraft carrier for a few monthswith no shore leave, and they're going to get together. Is thisgood, bad, indifferent? MS. DONNELLY: It detracts from readiness. There's just no wayyou can get around it. People are human and leadership is important. You always encourage good discipline, but people do react in veryhuman ways, both men and women. To make policies that don't allowfor human failings, that's a flawed procedure. It's a flawed policy. And it's causing a lot of problems in the military. It doesn'tmatter how good a sailor you are, if you're not there when the boatleaves the dock, it makes the job harder for everyone else. MR. MOSKOS: Ben, let me sort of advocate a kind of middleposition on this question. I think because it is a new ball gamewith large numbers of women who are not in a separate corps, theseare kinds of the ways we might have to rethink the state of affairs. One is, having a female component in the inspector general system towhich women who feel they are suffering sexual harassment can report. One of the shocking things is that women have not been reportingsexual harassment in a timely manner that one might expect. There'ssomething wrong in the organization, leave aside the culture. Wemight have to rethink the fraternization rule. Maybe it should beonly prohibited in certain environments, like a training environment,or the field environment. We have data from the Persian Gulf War, bythe way, where women report that sexual activity in Gulf was greaterthan it was back in their home stations. Something we have toconfront. These are the kinds of, I think, avenues that we have toseriously explore. What can you change in the organization? By the way, half of my department, if you said superiors andsubordinates aren't supposed to have sex, half of my departmentprobably wouldn't be married to their wives you know. MR. KORB: Look, the Uniform Code of Military Justice says thatadultery is a felony under the military law. Very few prosecutionsfor that. If, when I was on active duty as a Naval flyer, if we wereenforcing that statute, we would not have been able to go to war inmany cases. MS. CAMPBELL: Eisenhower. MR. MOSKOS: Eisenhower, that's been verified as far as Iunderstand it. MR. KORB: They also prohibit certain acts that the majority ofmarried people in this country do. I don't see them busting intopeople's bedrooms on the bases. So, you've got to change -- Iremember when I taught at the Coast Guard Academy and women firstcame in. They used to have a law or a regulation that said that theseniors could not even dance with the incoming freshmen. Well, thatlasted about, you know, the first week, and then they changed that. And I think that's what Charlie is trying to say. Part of theproblem we create for ourselves is, we have something enacted in the'50s, and we leave it alone and we don't change it as the situationchanges. MS. DONNELLY: Change it towards what? I mean, if we're goingto have -- MR. KORB: Well, Charlie just told you. MS. DONNELLY: If we're going to have a gender integratedmilitary in which sexuality and sexual involvements are routine, thenwhat you have is a problem with the unit cohesion. Why? Because twopeople bond to each other, they exclude everyone else. The problemis more complicated when you inject it into combat units, even moreso than support units. We don't have to do this. MR. MOSKOS: Let me just interject two other facts which aresort of -- which are relevant. One is, one of the big differences inthe volunteer force compared to the old draft motivated force is, ofcourse, the huge number of married junior enlisted people. Wheretypically the service member was a single male, now he's typicallyand she a married person. And that makes a difference, too. So thisis a kind -- and the other fact that has to be sort of recognized isthe attrition rate, referring to people who don't complete their termof enlistment, is extraordinarily high. You would expect the headsof the service -- by the way, this is the best fighting force thatwe've ever had. I consider that a slur on the force that I servedin, or World War II force. MR. KORB: They didn't say that in the '70s, though, Charlie,when the AVF started. MR. MOSKOS: But they did, actually. They did say that in the'70s. MR. KORB: I thought the complained about the hollow military? MR. MOSKOS: No, that was when you had the secretary of theArmy saying it was the best force we ever had. Remember the fightswe fought about that. When you have an attrition rate for females approaching 40-45percent -- by the way, it's not that much better for males, I mightadd, it's about -- it's in the 30 to 35 percent range for males,there's something funny there. How do you have a force -- by theway, in the draft Army, the attrition rate was 10 percent, I mightadd, who didn't complete their tour of service. MR. WATTENBERG: What is accounting for that? MR. MOSKOS: It's about 30 to 35 percent for men, and 40 to 45percent for women. MR. KORB: I'll tell you what accounts for it. In the draft,you didn't -- people wanted to get out, so you didn't push them out. I would argue, and Charlie and I can redebate the whole all volunteerforce, you know. MR. WATTENBERG: Aren't you standing that on your head? If aperson wanted to get out, you'd think more of them would get out? MR. KORB: No, no. I mean, if I'm a draftee, I don't want to-- most draftees don't want to be drafted. And so, when I got tobasic training or whatever it is, I goof off, and you don't get ridof me because that's what I want. MR. WATTENBERG: Oh, I see. MR. KORB: Now, under the volunteer thing, if they make amistake and bring a person in and he or she is not up to thestandards, they shake their hand, they say, your country appreciatesit, but go back because you're not fit for military service, becauseif you keep them and the longer you keep them in, the more money youspend training on them, the more you have invested in them. So Ithink, if we're comparing -- MR. MOSKOS: What do you make of the sex ratio difference here,though, Larry? Why are the women attriting at such a high rate? MR. KORB: I think the reason they are is that a lot of womencome into the military not understanding what's involved. MS. DONNELLY: Women have better things to do. MR. KORB: And the propensity of women to enlist is lower thanmen. MR. WATTENBERG: We are running out of time, and I am going tochange the topic for a moment, not really, which is this, let's justchat about it briefly, by and large, with all the problems and we'vecertainly explored the problems, is the growth of women in themilitary, has that been a good thing? Why don't we start with you? MS. DONNELLY: In terms of military readiness, the closer youget to the combat positions, I would say, no. Integration of womenin noncombat positions I think has been a fairly good thing. But wehave to keep our eye on the ball. What is the purpose of themilitary? Careers are important, but the needs of the military mustcome first if there is a conflict. MR. MOSKOS: Generally, the answer is yes. It has made for abetter military up to this point. But by pushing the envelope furtherinto the combat arms where sexuality and physical strength becomemuch more operative, it will be very counter productive. MR. KORB: I think I'm surprised that my colleagues here havesaid it's a good thing. You wouldn't think that from the earlierdiscussion. I think it's been a great thing. And I think, if youdrop all of the limitations, set reasonable standards, the problemwill go away. MS. CAMPBELL: I totally agree, and I think you'll have morewomen coming in. And as more come in, people will see that there aredifferences among people that don't relate to gender, and I thinkwe'll have a very effective force. MR. WATTENBERG: I think it's been medium. Thank you very much, Lawrence Korb, Elaine Donnelly, NancyCampbell, and Charles Moskos. And thank you. For Think Tank, I'm Ben Wattenberg. ANNOUNCER: We at Think Tank depend on your views to make ourshow better. Please send your questions and comments to: New RiverMedia, 1150 Seventeenth Street, Northwest, Washington, D.C. 20036;or e-mail us at thinktank@pbs.org. To learn more about Think Tankvisit PBS On-line at www.pbs.org. And please let us know where youwatch Think Tank. This has been a production of BJW, Incorporated, in associationwith New River Media, which are solely responsible for its content. Think Tank is made possible by AMGEN, recipient of thePresidential National Medal of Technology. AMGEN, helping cancerpatients through cellular and molecular biology. Improving livestoday and bringing hope for tomorrow. Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation,the Lilly Endowment and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Back to top  Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Dodge Jones Foundation, and Pfizer, Inc. ©Copyright Think Tank. All rights reserved. 
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