I suspect this isn’t about military effectiveness or even so much about enlisted women having the opportunity to serve in front line infantry units. Like women on submarines, it’s about female officers who want to command infantry units (or submarines), because they see it as a necessary or at least helpful path for promotion. In other words, they don’t really care about combat effectiveness so much as their own self interests.
In regards to drafting women and/or making them register for the selective service, that’s true equality. I don’t like it, but if it’s forced on us, let’s quit kidding ourselves. True equality means women have to meet the exact same physical fitness standards as the men they serve with. There shouldn’t be separate standards for men and women. If it’s necessary for a man to carry a 70 lb pack for 30 miles, then a woman must be able to do the same. Otherwise, the men end up picking up the slack while the women congratulate themselves on their independence and equality.
“Otherwise, the men end up picking up the slack while the women congratulate themselves on their independence and equality.”
Sure, just as happens in workplaces across the country in the private sector. Women (including those with no families) regularly are heading for the door before their male counterparts (after regularly arriving later than them in the morning). Over the past year I’ve never worked so few hours (at a full-time job) because my boss wanted to promote a female who was basically “playing office” to serve as his personal companion (can’t say there is anything sexual, though co-workers imply that - I’ll give the two involved the benefit of the doubt without hard proof). Since then I don’t come in early/miss lunch/leave late; I call it “working girls’ hours”, and it is the first time in over ten years I’ve tried it. Work gets hectic squeezing it into a shortened day, but that also makes the time fly. Because the boss sees her routinely come in later/leave earlier, he has no complaint; while I work our “standard” number of full-time hours; she doesn’t. After years of 50-60 hour workweeks, it feels like a part-time job.