This study was sexist and is perpetuating gender stereotypes which have existed in the male-dominated culture for the last few thousand years. Men and women are capable of performing the exact same tasks equally well. Any hiring should treat genders exactly equal.
> we're built differently both mentally and physically
You're incredibly sexist. You undoubtedly are part of the reason women are paid 60% what men are. I hope you are fired from wherever you work as you're part of the problem.
This is not Reddit. You first need to show evidence that women are paid 60% of what men are paid for the same jobs. Once you can’t (because the evidence says the opposite) you then need to show evidence that women choose jobs and make career choices different from men because of cultural reasons. Once you can’t do that either because the evidence shows the opposite then you’ll need to adjust your beliefs in light of the evidence like a proper reasonable person. After which you can stop telling all women their decisions to live life differently from men makes them inferior to men. It’s both hateful to men and women when you do that.
I'll give you that a man and a woman of the same physical size can each generally perform the same physical tasks. I'll also agree they should be paid the same.
However, saying the average sized woman can perform the same physical tasks as the average sized man is easily shown to be false using simple physics.
This is the wrong way to go about things; I'm a very strong beleiver in the principle of equality, that is, the equality in all social dealings of men and women, between races, abled and disabled, those of different nationalities, of different professions etc. But it must be stressed that asserting people have the same capabilities isn't the right way to go about it. Your principle will fail the second that we get to some imbalance which can't be whisked away as you're doing now - for example, you wouldn't make the same claim about someone with Down's syndrome being compared to someone without.
Your failing is that you predicate the idea of equality on utilitarian grounds, that is to say, you believe people should be treated equally, and so you try to justify this by saying they're actually the same in mental and physical tasks. This doesn't work, and it can't be generalised. There are differences, but we should be saying: those differences shouldn't matter to the worth of a person (if we really must go about considering people in the economic sense of having value, which I think is a concept worth repudiating).
The claim you're making seems much more like a strawman, so I'd be inclined to say you're trolling; a strawman very similar to yours was made by Tugan more than 100 years ago, and quickly put down by V.I. Lenin[0]:
>It goes without saying that in this respect men are not equal. No sensible person and no socialist forgets this. But this kind of equality has nothing whatever to do with socialism. If Mr. Tugan is quite unable to think, he is at least able to read; were lie to Lake the well-known work of one of the founders of scientific socialism, Frederick Engels, directed against Dühring, he would find there a special section explaining the absurdity of imagining that economic equality means anything else than the abolition of classes.
Don't think there would be much evolutionary pressure to have less pain during childbirth but feeling less pain when injured during hunting (a historically male activity) would certainly be useful and I could see it being selected for.
I heard that women are more stoical with visceral pain and men cope better with "exterior" pain. This makes sense but I've no idea if it's really true.
It's not clear how people can die from pain itself in childbirth, directly or indirectly, so I don't see how that could be selected for.
People can die indirectly from pain on the battlefield or while hunting, because it leaves you vulnerable to being killed while you're distracted by it. So there's definitely an adaptive advantage for men to develop pain resistance.
People die from pain-induced shock [1] all the time. I think the essential mechanism is that pain changes your heart rate and blood pressure. Small doses increase both, but large doses decrease both. A large enough dose can make your heart rate and blood pressure drop enough to cause shock.
The Israel army is famous for both the high rate of permanent injury of women during training, and for refusing to admit it, a la James Damore: https://youtu.be/iUSFF4NI_Us
Grass is green? That's news to me. I'm fine with having ingratiated divisions. If you can do your job I don't care if you identify as a god damn attack helicopter. As long as standards aren't different for women (they currently are) I don't care. With that said if women are going to be in combat they should also have to sign up for the selective service. While were at it let's get rid of alimony as well. We probably should address child custody while we are at it
didn't bother to read the article, but is it perhaps partly due to the fact that women are more likely to report their injuries compared to men? There can be a lot of pressure on men to just "suck it up" and not report injuries.
The breakdown of incidence reports strongly suggests that the cause is entirely predictable: loading up individuals to carry more than they can carry in good health, which is going to affect women (which are disproportionately smaller and less massive) more than men. The study made no attempt to control for that, which is quite frankly irresponsible.
Yes. As I mentioned in another comment, however, pretty much everyone who wants to expand these sorts of positions to women expect that they would be held to the same standards (e.g., fitness requirements) that men in these positions, while the study itself drew from women based only on the current fitness standards, which are easier for women than men.
I see it more as natural selection. Training is usually what a soldier might have to go through in real combat. I don't think accommodating different body types will be useful when the war time environment selects for a particular fit, and those not adapted to it will not survive, or worse - be a burden to the lives of others.
Sure, we can do things to reduce injury for people of different body types, but it would make more sense to me to select for those who already have a particular fitness.
when I say fit, I mean fit to the environment, not necessarily physical fitness.
To some extent, this is not surprising. However, the conclusions that are going to be drawn from the evidence are pretty unsubstantiated.
Women and men have different physiologies, particularly in terms of how the typical "average" build works out and in terms of the configuration of hips. The finding that women are going to have more hip injuries than men should not consequently be surprising, and other injuries relating to, for example, carrying more than they should be carrying, being relatively higher in women is also to be expected.
However, the problem is that the methodology ends up being poor. People advocating for integration of women into the infantry or other physically intensive jobs are not expecting to use different physical fitness criterion for women and men for these jobs, so comparing average women to average men is not the appropriate metric to be evaluating them.
Mixed sex units are a worst case for a women. Sure carrying gear designed for larger men causes more injuries for women. Sure dragging men is harder on a smaller women. Sure being accurate with a heavier gun (designed for a man) is harder.
But how about comparing male units with female units. Women are smaller, take less resources, can fit in smaller spaces, are easier to carry, etc. A truck/plane/boat/whatever can carry more women, and you need less food for each one.
I suspect women given the chance could cause problems for the male competition. Less ego, less er, male. Try some wargames between males vs females. Evaluate their strategy, handling stress, etc. If men are as bad as guessing women's strategy as they at predicting women's feelings they are in for a very hard time indeed. I've heard that men have a substantial advantage in a marathon, but are completely wasted at the end. Women take longer to get to the finish line, but are not nearly as decimated by it.
I seem to recall that NASA did a study and came to the conclusion that women were better suited for space. Just as smart, somewhat smaller, more finger dexterity, and consumed less water, oxygen, and food. This led to a rather unpopular conclusion that most astronauts should be female.
So sure, if your metric is bigger/stronger = better then yes men win every time.
If you ask "what did men evolve to do that women didn't?", math, politics, philosophy and engineering would be wrong answers, because for most of human history (and all preindustrial history) only a tiny fraction of people did those things, and in some societies they were women. By contrast, war is fundamentally human -- it has been with us for as long as records are available, and societies often conscripted large fractions of the population -- and historically it was almost entirely performed by men. The only more masculine activity than war is peeing while standing up.
It’s a shame they didn’t have an arm of the study looking at female-only units. As it is, they are comparing men-only with mixed units, so there is no way to determine how much of the effect is due to being in a mixed vs single gender unit. I recall in England that women did better academically in single-sex schools than they did in mixed schools. It’s conceivable the same might (or might not) be true here.
Of course, they also need to ensure equivalent levels of fitness and experience, which doesn’t seem to have been the case here.
There wouldn’t be a critical number of women required to create a standard Marine rifle platoon.
You’re essentially talking of 3 squads of 12+ people/squad. Never mind a supporting platoon of weapons(machine guns/mortars/assault) which is 40+ members.
So on a good day you’re talking of maybe 50 seriously jacked women (just to compare to an average male) that has to choose to become part of the infantry.
Do you know how you hear “there are no devs anywhere! Lol zomg “ well, this actually applies to the military in general. Never mind finding super jacked women who are choosing to go to the military, then pick the infantry, then pick the Marines.
So out of all that, as a young woman going to the military,why would I go do infantry and be miserable in water/desert, no showers for weeks on end, carrying heavy equipment for miles.... or I could get the same pay and be promoted faster as a clerk/accounting/cook/driver.
Israel is able to have some women sniper platoons (who are pretty hot) because they require mandatory service.
43 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 238 ms ] threadYou're incredibly sexist. You undoubtedly are part of the reason women are paid 60% what men are. I hope you are fired from wherever you work as you're part of the problem.
All: please don't feed trolls by replying.
However, saying the average sized woman can perform the same physical tasks as the average sized man is easily shown to be false using simple physics.
Your failing is that you predicate the idea of equality on utilitarian grounds, that is to say, you believe people should be treated equally, and so you try to justify this by saying they're actually the same in mental and physical tasks. This doesn't work, and it can't be generalised. There are differences, but we should be saying: those differences shouldn't matter to the worth of a person (if we really must go about considering people in the economic sense of having value, which I think is a concept worth repudiating).
The claim you're making seems much more like a strawman, so I'd be inclined to say you're trolling; a strawman very similar to yours was made by Tugan more than 100 years ago, and quickly put down by V.I. Lenin[0]:
>It goes without saying that in this respect men are not equal. No sensible person and no socialist forgets this. But this kind of equality has nothing whatever to do with socialism. If Mr. Tugan is quite unable to think, he is at least able to read; were lie to Lake the well-known work of one of the founders of scientific socialism, Frederick Engels, directed against Dühring, he would find there a special section explaining the absurdity of imagining that economic equality means anything else than the abolition of classes.
[0] https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/mar/11.htm
All: please don't feed trolls by replying. You also make HN worse if you do this.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235215461...
People can die indirectly from pain on the battlefield or while hunting, because it leaves you vulnerable to being killed while you're distracted by it. So there's definitely an adaptive advantage for men to develop pain resistance.
[1] https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Neurogenic_shock
I think the takeaway should be how do we reduce injury with respect to different body types
I see it more as natural selection. Training is usually what a soldier might have to go through in real combat. I don't think accommodating different body types will be useful when the war time environment selects for a particular fit, and those not adapted to it will not survive, or worse - be a burden to the lives of others.
Sure, we can do things to reduce injury for people of different body types, but it would make more sense to me to select for those who already have a particular fitness.
when I say fit, I mean fit to the environment, not necessarily physical fitness.
Women and men have different physiologies, particularly in terms of how the typical "average" build works out and in terms of the configuration of hips. The finding that women are going to have more hip injuries than men should not consequently be surprising, and other injuries relating to, for example, carrying more than they should be carrying, being relatively higher in women is also to be expected.
However, the problem is that the methodology ends up being poor. People advocating for integration of women into the infantry or other physically intensive jobs are not expecting to use different physical fitness criterion for women and men for these jobs, so comparing average women to average men is not the appropriate metric to be evaluating them.
I don't really see a better way than measuring task performance.
But how about comparing male units with female units. Women are smaller, take less resources, can fit in smaller spaces, are easier to carry, etc. A truck/plane/boat/whatever can carry more women, and you need less food for each one.
I suspect women given the chance could cause problems for the male competition. Less ego, less er, male. Try some wargames between males vs females. Evaluate their strategy, handling stress, etc. If men are as bad as guessing women's strategy as they at predicting women's feelings they are in for a very hard time indeed. I've heard that men have a substantial advantage in a marathon, but are completely wasted at the end. Women take longer to get to the finish line, but are not nearly as decimated by it.
I seem to recall that NASA did a study and came to the conclusion that women were better suited for space. Just as smart, somewhat smaller, more finger dexterity, and consumed less water, oxygen, and food. This led to a rather unpopular conclusion that most astronauts should be female.
So sure, if your metric is bigger/stronger = better then yes men win every time.
Of course, they also need to ensure equivalent levels of fitness and experience, which doesn’t seem to have been the case here.
You’re essentially talking of 3 squads of 12+ people/squad. Never mind a supporting platoon of weapons(machine guns/mortars/assault) which is 40+ members.
So on a good day you’re talking of maybe 50 seriously jacked women (just to compare to an average male) that has to choose to become part of the infantry.
Do you know how you hear “there are no devs anywhere! Lol zomg “ well, this actually applies to the military in general. Never mind finding super jacked women who are choosing to go to the military, then pick the infantry, then pick the Marines.
So out of all that, as a young woman going to the military,why would I go do infantry and be miserable in water/desert, no showers for weeks on end, carrying heavy equipment for miles.... or I could get the same pay and be promoted faster as a clerk/accounting/cook/driver.
Israel is able to have some women sniper platoons (who are pretty hot) because they require mandatory service.
Source: Marine and yes I’ve seen the female IDF
Edit: English