4-star: Women will excel in the military's toughest jobs
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  1. #1
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    Exclamation 4-star: Women will excel in the military's toughest jobs

    There’s not a military job that a qualified woman can’t do, the Pentagon's No. 2 general said.

    The challenge will be in recruiting and retaining those women, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Paul Selva explained at the annual Officer Women’s Leadership Symposium outside Washington, D.C., and how the military carries out its integration of women into its newly opened specialties, from the Army Rangers to the Navy SEALs.

    “I am absolutely convinced — we haven’t got a single job in the military that a woman can’t do as well as a man,” Selva told the audience of about 200 service academy, active-duty and veteran women.

    He doesn’t expect, however, that opening the last combat jobs will create a flood of women into the services or to those specialties.

    “The decision this year to open all career fields to both men and women means that in theory we could recruit 50 percent of our force as women,” he said. “It won’t happen. My prediction is the best we’ll get is 20 percent.”

    Those are the Defense Department’s current average accession numbers for women, and they haven’t budged in years. Beyond that, Selva added, more than half of those women will leave the military before they hit 10 years of service.

    The only way to shift that balance is to open opportunities for women and to address the reasons why women leave, he said. Chief among them is the desire to start a family, and in that vein, the Defense Department decided to extend paid maternity leave to 12 weeks this year.

    They are also working, Selva added, to offer men three weeks of paternity leave.

    Leaders also have to make changes from the top.

    “Leadership does not discriminate. People do,” he said. “When we promote capable, motivated leaders, the concept of leadership doesn’t discriminate.”

    If you walk into a senior leader’s office and you only see staff of the same gender, or the same service, or the same job community – that’s a problem, he said.

    “We have to convince our leaders to take a little bit of risk,” he added. “And most of our leaders I know in our military are not only willing, they’re actually doing it.”

    Leading from the front

    The first priority for completely integrating the military is making sure that newly opened communities have some female leadership in place, Selva said, both for the prospective junior women joining the units and for the men to acclimate to taking orders from women.

    “You’re going to put them in an environment where women were not allowed, and suddenly women are allowed, and in pretty close quarters, you need to have leaders,” he said.

    In the Marine Corps, that means moving women who have qualified in a previously closed military occupational specialty to units like infantry and armor, so that all new reports can look to female role models.

    “The harder leadership challenge is going to be having lady role models for the men in those organizations” said Selva, who is a career Air Force officer.

    The Army and Navy are taking a similar approach, though no women have completed Army infantry school or Navy special warfare training to date. Instead, experienced female leaders will round out the support cadre in those units ahead of time.

    Selva took audience questions, including one from a young woman who asked about the backlash of opening these specialties — particularly the suspicion that women are only succeeding in these new jobs because they’re being propped up.

    “It could backfire in a New York minute. That’s why we all need to lead through this carefully,” he replied. “We have to be really careful that we don’t set up an environment where a young lieutenant from West Point is hired because she fills a quota. Even the perception of that is wrong.”

    And the military has to be careful about even allowing that perception, he added, that qualified and talented women are being chosen because they fill a quota.

    “And our leaders have to say that. And by the way, they have to believe it,” he said. “Which means the people they hire around them have to display that attitude.”

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  2. #2
    Suspected he was an Air Force general all the way to the end of the article where it was confirmed. Our commandant says the whole thing is a bad idea. Whose opinion is more credible?


  3. #3
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    Way back when, here were women warriors, they were called Amazons, and they did exhist. But, they had no choice but to handle it theirselves. After being captured by the male race, and tamed, so to speak, hey go used to the guys handling he hard stuff. and most of us are good with that. So, why does someone always have to mess up whats working. And any guy that has had a mom, or grlfriend, or wife, has taken orders from a woman.


  4. #4
    Back to Rocky's post - the key word there is qualified.

    And the problem is that "qualified" has to mean the same thing for every swingin' Richard or Susie, or it ends up meaning nothing.

    Maybe the Air Force needs "lady role models" but I think the Marine Corps still needs MARINE role models!

    That's all I had to say.

    s/f

    Last edited by Rocky C; 04-27-16 at 04:13 PM.

  5. #5
    Despite what this Air Farce POGUE general thinks or says, it WILL eventually come down to the services being ORDERED by the PENTAGON and SECRETARIES of all 5 services "to qualify women for all jobs / MOS's" and assign them to operational units.
    In order for that to happen, STANDARDS WILL BE WAIVED, MODIFIED, OR IGNORED ... as in the case of the Army's "two successful female ranger candidates" who were given multiple opportunities and "re-do's" to overcome training obstacles that ARE NOT AVAILABLE TO MALE CANDIDATES... by their own admission, the two women were able to get "a second bite at the apple" in several of the training evolutions that normally result in the candidate being "washed out" if HE fails it, ONE CHANCE ONLY FOR MALES, do it until you pass or quit for females..... does not sound like the "same standards" to me....


  6. #6
    Whether they want it to work or not they are going to force it to work. Also of course an Airforce general can say they are going to excel at everything because besides being a PJ WTF is hard about being in the Airforce? Getting a paper cut? Not getting enough cookies to shove in your face at the chow hall?


  7. #7
    In Ranger School you can repeat it as much as you like unless:
    1. You are medically disqualified.
    2. You drop (quit) on request.
    3. The instructors feel you are not Ranger material due to very, VERY poor performance/incompetence, lack of physical fitness or integrity issues.

    This is according to Marines and Soldiers who have attended this course.


  8. #8
    Mongoose
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    If they let them train only on those few days a month ( you know what I mean ).....they will surly make it. I dang sure wouldn't want to be the one to tell them to go home and knit sweaters.


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