Women in Combat Arms

A recent comment to a post about the new Transformers movie got me thinking (always a dangerous thing, when a woman thinks) about women in the military.

Almost all the combat arms in the US military bar female applicants, right?

Why?

I realize that physically men are like 30% bigger and stronger, on average, and I know that personally I couldn’t be in ANY part of the military due to the fact that I’d never survive basic training, but there ARE women out there who could do the job. No matter how small the numbers might be, does that mean we should prevent them completely? If the requirement is to lift X amount of weight and go X amount of miles and shoot X far or whatnot, and a woman can do it, why not let her?

You know there are women out there who want and can successfully do the job.

Does anybody have any thoughts, ideas, links, etc., on this?