Women in the Military

The presence of women in the military has always been an issue and as women are fighting for more and more equality this has come to the forefront of some of the issues. This specifically has caused much controversy particularly in the Marines. Women who have the desire to serve feel that the standards that are being asked of them are outrageous and setting them up to fail. Now clearly there are two sides to this argument. It is hard to find a middle ground to this argument as either you are for women serving or against it.

The marines, along with the stamina requirements, only requires women to do three pull ups to meet this standard. Now clearly for some women this may be a struggle as they struggle to pull their weight along with the gear that the Marines are required to use. This has lead to a lot of problems with women advocates arguing that theses standards should be reduced for women. To me that is quite preposterous. Women already have a lower set of physical standards and times that they must meet compared to men. To lower these any more just because women cannot meet these standards is ridiculous.

Now do not get me wrong, I am all for women serving. If a woman feels that it is her patriotic duty to serve for our nation I fully agree that she should have that opportunity to do so. However, putting an unqualified woman into the field who cannot meet the basic necessities is like giving a weapon to a child. Those standards are for a reason. They are there so that in the heat of battle a person is physically able to undergo any issues that should arise. To lower these standards would be putting others in harms way as they cannot rely on the person next to them to have their back.

The reason that the Marines have been brought into the spotlight is that they have the hardest physical standards for a basic infantry unit to get in. In fact there are a very small amount of women that have ever become Marines let alone Marine officers. Women do have every opportunity to join these elite positions. It is not that they are being excluded from them but rather there are very few who can meet the requirements necessary to perform the given tasks.



Knickerbocker, Brad. "Just Three Pull-ups: Too Many for Women in the Marine Corps?" The Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor, 4 Jan. 2014. Web. 03 Oct. 2014.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2014/0104/Just-three-pull-ups-Too-many-for-women-in-the-Marine-Corps