Nearly 1 in 3 Female Recruits Were Injured in Army Basic Training Last Year

Military.com ^ | May 18, 2023 | Steve Beynon

[Twotone]

Women are at least twice as likely as men to be injured in Army basic training, according to data collected over six years by the service.

Most of those injuries were musculoskeletal -- meaning they affect the bones, muscles, joints and tendons of female recruits. Military.com obtained the injury data as the Army is looking for ways to boost recovery for men and women moving through boot camp.

During 2022, nearly 30% of female recruits were injured on average each month during Army basic training. The average was 23% per month between 2017 and 2022, the data shows. During those years, about 12% of male recruits were injured each month.

The gap between male and female injuries in Army basic training isn't unique to the military.

Female athletes are also typically more prone to injury compared to their male counterparts, with women being more likely to receive bone and knee ligament injuries and stress fractures, according to a 2018 study published in the Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation medical journal. Part of that is due to women having smaller bones and less muscle mass.

[JonPreston]

And all of them hired disability attorneys

[Wally_Kalbacken]

A. We gotta make war more gentle.

[17th Miss Regt]

Liars. There is absolutely no difference between men and women. That is why men can become women so easily and vice versa! (/liberal)

[Opinionated Blowhard]

[rktman]

Is that like half of the trooper? Journalistic math is not my strong suit.

[Chode]

do I really have to say it???

[jimwatx]

I must be old school or something because I just don’t think it appropriate to put women in combat positions. Support positions sure. But if they want all this equality stuff then let them be drafted just like men, maybe that will wake them up. All I know is that if I had a daughter of draft age there’s no way I would allow her to be sent off to war.

[BenLurkin]

She throws like Obama.

[Responsibility2nd]

I don’t believe these numbers. The Army has reasons to lie so as to cover up their woke agendas.

Probably 2/3 of little gals are injured.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Before you throw a live grenade, you spend a whole day throwing mass dummies, from different positions.

She throws like a girl.

[rlmorel]

This is nothing New. It is Fact. And it isn't Sexist.

Even if an individual woman can train to get close to the standards (Unless they were lowered, which is ABSOLUTELY what the US Military has done) due to her lesser bone mass and muscle mass, she is going to be far more susceptible to injury. In the linked article below which shows indisputable military studies on this exact subject, women suffer disproportionately. (This study referenced was done back in the mid-Nineties)

See this passage from the article Women in Combat: The Question of Standards, by Jude Eden which I link to below:

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"...In other words, a platoon of the top female CrossFitters is still no match for a platoon of the top male CrossFitters. It does not matter that one individual female CrossFitter may be stronger and faster than one particular male. The idea that one woman somewhere might someday be able to make the infantry standard is totally inadequate to justify putting women in the units. Women have to be able to consistently and predictably make and maintain the men’s standards in order to demonstrate equal ability and be useful in combat.

Even on a lower general standard, women break at far higher rates than men, with longer-term injuries. More women leave the military, when or before their contracts are up. Women are regularly unavailable for duty for female issues. Chicago Tribune correspondent Kirsten Scharnberg reports in a 2005 article that women suffer post-traumatic stress disorder more acutely.16 The combat “opportunity” is sounding less and less equal all the time.

In his 2013 book Deadly Consequences: How Cowards Are Pushing Women Into Combat, retired Army col. Robert Maginnis describes several studies showing the physical suffering of women in combat:

A U.S. Navy study found the risk of anterior cruciate ligament injury associated with military training is almost ten times higher for women than for men.

A sex-blind study by the British military found that women were injured 7.5 times more often than men while training to the same standards. …

Women suffer twice as many lower-extremity injuries as men, an Army study found, and they fatigue much more quickly because of the difference in ‘size of muscle,’ which makes them more vulnerable to non-battle injury.

Marine Cpt. Katie Petronio writes of Officer Candidate School, “of candidates who were dropped from training because they were injured or not physically qualified, females were breaking at a much higher rate than males, 14 percent versus 4 percent. The same trends were seen at TBS [the Basic School] in 2011; the attrition rate for females was 13 percent versus 5 percent for males, and 5 percent of females were found not physically qualified compared with 1 percent of males.”

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Another thing to consider-because women do not have a naturally occurring source of steroids (testosterone) that men have, they have to train far, far harder to reach any level of physical strength and proficiency that even approaches what men can obtain naturally, and if they do get injured (or pregnant) and cannot train, it takes far, far longer to even approach their own previous physical high-water fitness mark. And that has significant implications on injuries, even those incurred while training, never mind combat.

For a really good reality-based assessment of this situation, written by a female Marine, check this link below by Jude Eden, USMC on women in combat and training that is linked above.

Here, from that article, is the passage that says it all:

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"...Meanwhile, the argument to maintain the combat exclusion makes itself easily in every aspect. Including women in combat units is bad for combat, bad for women, bad for men, bad for children, and bad for the country.

The argument for the combat exclusion is provable all the time, every time.

Political correctness has no chance against Nature. Her victories are staring us in the face at all times.

The men just keep being able to lift more and to run faster, harder, and longer with more weight on their backs while suffering fewer injuries. They just keep never getting pregnant.

The combat units have needs that women cannot meet. Women have needs that life in a combat unit cannot accommodate without accepting significant disadvantage and much greater expense. Where 99 percent of men can do the heavy-lifting tasks typical of gunners, but 85 percent of women cannot, there is no gap women need to fill..."

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And it isn't just the infantry, either. I watched a video of USMC artillery, and they were humping 155mm artillery shells off the back of a truck. They were pulling them off at chest height, duckwalking them over 15 yards, putting them on the ground, then going back and getting another one.

I think they are somewhere around 100 lbs per round.

Sure, there are women who could do that. But the average woman could not.

When in a combat situation, I can certainly imagine times where that nice loader or wheeled transporter is not going to be available, or you are simply in a situation where you gotta move the rounds fast using a bunch of people.

The end result, as noted, is that women are going to incur injuries at a higher rate than men do, simply as a result of biology, and in a combat situation, that means losing a skirmish, a battle, and a war.

[rlmorel]

You aren’t “old school”. You are sensible.

[rlmorel]

[dragnet2]

How sad is that?

[IrishBrigade]

ha ha ha....

[pas]

I would say men are almost as likely but continue to train and fight through the pain. I finished basic on a badly sprained ankle.

[jimwatx]

Great post.

[ansel12]

For some reason, people think that women are fine in support units, but they aren’t.

Some people also think we should draft women, which merely means that again, we are replacing desperately needed men, with females.

[rlmorel]

Thanks-I highly suggest reading the linked article “A Question of Standards”.

One of the best I have ever read, honest, and written by a woman who served in the USMC in Iraq.