Prejudice in Disguise

Growing up in Singapore, I came to internalize the idea that it is men’s responsibility to protect the women in their lives. The thought of a woman putting herself in harm’s way to protect me makes me cringe.

But I have also served alongside many women in my nation’s armed forces. Many of them are now serving in combat command roles, and when I complete my term of service after college, one of them may be my commander in the field. It is no coincidence that so many of them made it to command school, for the few women who are prepared to ignore centuries of social expectation and enlist in a traditionally male-dominated organization tend to be more motivated and resilient than the average recruit.

They were tougher soldiers, better fighters, and more capable leaders than most of the men in their cohort. My country is, objectively speaking, a safer place because I am now studying at Harvard and they are in my place on our front lines.

I am uncomfortable with the idea of women serving in combat, and due to my upbringing I probably always will be. But being uncomfortable with something is not a rational argument for prohibiting it. The arguments against women serving in combat positions—the threat of rape, undermining unit cohesion, physical ability—are merely attempts at rationalizing an innate prejudice built on patriarchal notions of gender. In the field, you don’t care whether the soldier next to you is male or female—all you care about is whether they will get the job done and save you and your platoon a weekend’s worth of extra duty.

If female soldiers are qualified, motivated, and competent, which they are, their governments should let them serve just like everyone else.

Ren Jie Teoh ’16 lives in Thayer Hall.

Technology Enables Women to Participate in Combat

In the often politically fraught debate on women’s participation in armed combat in the United States, two positions often clash—women’s rights to equal opportunity in a free society and their effectiveness in combat. To take some of the heat out of this debate, it may be useful to consider a broader historical perspective.

Only until the latter part of the nineteenth century did advancements in weapons technology free women from some of the earlier, physical obstacles of participating in military campaigns. In prior history, close quarter combat had favoured the exclusion of women on grounds of physical disparity with men. Yet during the American Civil War, the Union Army, recruiting from an informed, free citizenry, included a few intrepid woman soldiers. To participate they had to be disguised as men. Equipped with not-too-heavy muskets and armed with Minié balls, these combat pioneers were able to kill at a distance of 400 yards.

Perhaps the first instance of organized women’s soldiering in a modern, industrialized, and egalitarian, although not democratic society was the Soviet Army during the Second World War. This war, in which the stock of available male recruits was seriously depleted, saw brigades of women snipers roaming the front lines killing Germans with advanced telescopic rifles at a distance, again negating the physical disadvantage of women in close-quarter combat.

Today, all but few casualties of war are caused by distantly operating weapons systems. Radar-directed artillery, fighter and bomber jets, as well as drones can all be flown and commanded by women. Advancing technology will continue to pave the way for women’s participation in all forms of combat, with or without political advocacy.