naraburns nihil supernum
6mo ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
The role of female soldiers in the IDF has always been somewhere between fascinating and horrifying to me. The below post by @CrashedPsychonaut mentions that the capture of an IDF garrison near the border fence involved a number of hapless young female soldiers, isolated at their posts and overrun. I imagine that some of these women were shot and killed, and I presume that others surrendered and were rounded up as hostages; the subsequent fate of these women is very distressing to imagine.
Some quick Googling indicates that approximately 40% of the IDF’s conscript soldiers were female as of 2021, comprising 25% of officers and 18% of combat soldiers. The latter two numbers, and especially the last one, are shockingly high to me. I had been under the impression that the IDF’s female conscripts were overwhelmingly shunted away into positions where a whole lot of things would need to go very unexpectedly wrong before there was any significant chance of them facing real combat. And, to be fair, it seems like in the case of that garrison, a whole lot of things did go very unexpectedly wrong. Still, it’s insane to me that a country with such overwhelmingly security concerns and so many threats surrounding it would put literally any important responsibility in the hands of female soldiers.
I’ve always been under the vague impression that the IDF’s inclusion of so many female soldiers was mostly a PR ploy; filling their ranks with photogenic young women makes people more likely to feel positively-inclined and prescribe towards it. It also allows them to circulate photos of busty women in camo wielding large guns, an archetype which seems to have significant (and, to me, inexplicable) appeal to a certain segment of the American mainstream right. The thought that these smiling young women could actually be sent to the front lines to do hand-to-hand urban combat against battle-hardened men is both inconceivable and appalling to me. I would expect most of them to surrender almost immediately if confronted with life-threatening combat situations. The impact on IDF morale of having a substantial number of its female soldiers captured or killed seems like it would be catastrophic, to say nothing of its practical strategic effects.
Can anyone offer more insight into the role of women in the IDF, and specifically their role in actual combat operations? Both historically and in terms of what we can expect to see in whatever upcoming operations are going to take place as a result of the current crisis?
The IDF uses female soldiers to great effect as trainers and instructors. From what I understand, male soldiers have been shown to be much more attentive and learn better when the instructor is an attractive female. This is what Gal Gadot did in her military service.
Most of the female soldiers in bases that were overrun during the initial attack were "lookouts" (tatspitaniot). Their job is to monitor the surveillance technology that tracks the Gaza border and alert about anything that seems suspicious. I don't think there's any reason to think that they would be at a disadvantage in a job like that compared to a male soldier, and it frees up the male soldier for a combat role which requires his physical abilities.
There are some border patrol units that are now mixed gender, but the traditional infantry and armor units are still male only. There was a famous Supreme Court case a few decades ago that required the IDF to allow women to enter the pilots course, but as I understand it only a handful of women have passed since then.
I’m not going to call modern combat the same thing as hunting, but a surprisingly large number of women post their big game hunting pics on Facebook groups. Yesterday one posted a picture of a cougar, and she had its dead bloody carcass slung over both shoulders. Another posted a pic of a deer she shot at 400 yards.
Women seem like they can be trained to kill with guns just fine. Are they as good as men? Perhaps not. But are they worse than not having them at all? Definitely not.
The funny thing's that if you really want to go nuts HBD-wise, there's a reasonable argument women have an advantage for some shooting sports and styles, famously including a couple Olympic-level matters.
Whether that extrapolates to combat is a separate matter -- not just for aggression reasons, but because combined small-arms armor and ammo is a lot of weight, which has to be fairly high on the body -- and there are some obvious issues with additional war crimes risks, but it's a funny aspect.
Squad of female IDF combat troops eliminated nearly 100 Hamas terrorists
Lt.-Col. Or Ben Yehuda, Caracal Battalion, praises her troops' bravery against Hamas, silencing doubts about female combat soldiers with their training, heroism, and life-saving actions.
Of course because of the fog of war the article is propaganda and scant with information about casualties.
There are two groups of analysis here; individual performance and unit culture.
On individual performance, female combat soldiers, at the median, are far, far worse than their male counterparts. This is to the surprise of no one. In the general population, bone density, upper body strength, and grip strength don't overlap more than 1- 2 % (meaning the bottom 1-2% of males with the top 1-2% of females). Even if a female is very motivated and hits the gym, the amount of room she has to make up is nigh on impossible.
Where this gets compounded is over time and with compounding adversity. What I mean here is that a Superwoman might be able to pass things the a PFT (physical fitness test), marksmanship test, and things like obstacle courses and land nav over a single day on a U.S. base. In the field (and field exercises) however, the compounding of sleep deprivation and multiple days of moving combat loads and speed catches up. I couldn't find the article with quick Googling (I might later), but there was a report in the 2018 range of female US Marines admitting "we can hump the weight of a combat load for a long time, but we just can't move as fast from objective to objective." There's a saying in the SOF community that "selection is everyday." Just because you passed the test that first time and became an infantryman / ranger / SEAL / etc. doesn't mean that you're automatically a super solider for life. You have to work everyday and you have to perform everyday. In Ranger Battalion in the U.S. Army, there's something called RFS or Released For Standards. This means that you get kicked out for not being good enough in one way or another. Often times its leadership related (to keep guys from just making rank by hanging out forever) but it also isn't uncommon for a Ranger to all of a sudden fuck up a PFT because they had been slacking off and drinking every weekend. Back to Superwoman - she might be able to get through an indoc and selection, but I would put the odds of her maintaining those standards in a unit over time to be effectively zero.
Unit culture is the next layer. Every person in a unit is a mix of talents. One guy is a really great shot, and kind of OK at PT. Another guy is a PT stud, but isn't so great at land nav. The unit commander (say at the platoon level) is above average at PT and shooting, but isn't an all around badass, but he does get a bunch of gucci gear because he knows how to do acquisition voodoo. A female (especially enlisted) will, probably, be at the bottom of all of these categories. Her treatment will be no different than a male who is at the bottom of all of those categories; "you're last on the run, you can't shoot straight, you fell asleep on patrol, you can't carry the 240B with a full complement of ammo." It singles you out for extra ridicule and scrutiny. Sure, you're passing all of the minimums and standards, but you aren't great or even good at any one thing. It means the unit has to plan contingency around you always instead of slotting you into things you're good at to compensate for the things you're worse at.
I'll leave it there for now because I think those are the two main and enduring cases against women in combat. There are some edge things that also raise questions; what happens when (and it will happen) a female gets pregnant in combat? Will females potentially use sex to curry favor from peers and superiors (of course not, it's a professional force! that would never happen.
As far as Israeli female combat soldiers go; First, the definition of "combat" is a little stretched. Border guards are one thing (as are pilots), but a maneuver unit (infantry, armor, artillery) is another. Second, the Israeli model is still built heavily on conscripts and reservists supporting the active duty while not being anywhere near the latter's standards. I think the unfortunately reality is that many female Israeli "combat" soldiers didn't quite get into combat by choice.
As far as Israeli female combat soldiers go; First, the definition of "combat" is a little stretched. Border guards are one thing (as are pilots), but a maneuver unit (infantry, armor, artillery) is another. Second, the Israeli model is still built heavily on conscripts and reservists supporting the active duty while not being anywhere near the latter's standards. I think the unfortunately reality is that many female Israeli "combat" soldiers didn't quite get into combat by choice.
Yeah this part I think is relevant. The two most well-known (read: PR profiles of them) high percentage female infantry units are the 33rd Caracal and the 41st Lions of Jordan battalions stationed in relatively (and relative here being very operative) safe border areas. The area the 33rd are supposed to have been was overrun by Hamas during the 10/7 assault so not that safe.
How much less effective do you expect a woman to be in an average MOS?
I would expect the most difference in extreme positions (special forces) and those requiring the most brute strength. Kicking down doors and lugging heavy weapons, for example. But my intuition is that aiming and shooting a rifle—or manning a checkpoint—is roughly as easy for women as men. Per @naraburns’ link, the IDF seems to agree, and is disinclined to put women in the 10% most strenuous positions. Though it also says most armored units are male-only, and I can’t tell why that would be more physically demanding.
I’m not even sure if the IDF cav is volunteer/professional or if conscripts can be assigned to it. If the latter, then culture isn’t necessarily the deciding factor.
The original article statement was that 90% of jobs were “equally available” to men and women. Exceptions included urban commando units and some armored crews. Sounds like they wouldn’t even take volunteers, not that there weren’t enough of them.
Though it also says most armored units are male-only, and I can’t tell why that would be more physically demanding.
120mm cannon shells weigh something like 50 pounds, and the loader needs to sling them fast in a combat situation. .50 browning ammo is likewise bulky and heavy. Gas cans and hoses are heavy. Maintenance tools for tanks, equipment for tanks generally and the tasks involved, especially in the field, all are likely to involve a fair amount of strenuous activity. Think of the physical stereotypes for truckers and mechanics, or other jobs involving heavy machinery.
It is not only loading. On average Abrams tank requires 8 manhours of maintenance for 1 hour of operation. That is one of the reasons why Abrams is so big with crew of 4 instead of 3 and autoloader for Russian tanks: the fourth crew member is indispensable when it comes to making sure the tank is operational, as crew of four working on a tank will decrease the ratio of 8:1 to 2:1 with some redundancy there.
Even with a fully automated military making warfare something closer to Call of Duty, there's no reason to expect a meritocratic force to be anywhere close to parity. How many top Call of Duty players are female?
why you think so? have you checked how it worked so far?
That’s why I’m asking people who are more knowledgeable about specific history to weigh in. I’m not pretending to have any significant background knowledge on the topic. I have my intuitions based on my observations of human behavior, but I would like to have those intuitions confirmed or disconfirmed by actual examples or research. I wouldn’t really know where to start in terms of finding out how effective female soldiers have been throughout the history of the IDF, and I don’t think I would be able to trust the information I would find using my rudimentary searching skills.
From the Israeli point of view, there never was a choice. The women are already in the fight whether they like it or not, might as well teach them to be good at it.
Israel is a tiny place, about the size of New Hampshire. It has porous borders, which due to the settlements, cannot practically be secured. Israel's enemies are visually identical and do not wear uniforms. Violence can, and will, pop up anywhere, and Israel's enemies prefer to target women and children.
Israeli women are combatants, whether they like it or not. Giving them the training, experience, and equipment to deal with that unfortunate fact seems to be the only logical step.
There's a bit of a perversity here though, in that while apparently women cannot be spared from combat, Haredi Jews can. Okay, fair enough if you're in an existential fight for survival and you need all the soldiers you can get, male or female. But for women to be drafted into combat while men stay safe behind them studying the Torah is gross to me.
Unsettling though that might be, there are a lot more women than Haredim. Apparently this was even more true in 1948, and the original exemption only covered a few hundred wordcels scholars. Meanwhile the female conscription excluded mothers and banned women from frontline positions. That was relaxed in the 70s and 80s.
Let's be honest - a woman captured by an enemy - especially Jewish woman by hamas - her end will be worse, prolonged and more painful than that of men if they have the time to soare. Women have a huge vulnerability that a small weak men don't. Hamas are not equal opportunities gang rapists.
And you have to ballance that. So it is best if they are not on the first line, especially against the likes of Hamaa/ISIS - then save the last bullet for yourself is probably a good advice.
I can’t tell if your main objection is that you think they’re completely useless or if it’s a chivalry/”we must protect the eggs” thing. Every ‘defense’ of women on that subject straddles that line. Do you have any reason to assume male soldiers would have been more effective in the towers?
As for me, though I applaud the IDF’s efforts, I don’t think 18% (and corresponding casualties – though they are not corresponding at present) is quite cutting it, politically speaking. Women’s voting rights, all voting rights (like those of pacifists), should be curtailed to the group's casualty/combat proportion, ie, 18% would mean they get less than a quarter the voting power of a man. Political power ultimately derives from the barrel of a gun. One man, one gun, one pint of blood, one vote. We in the west, by and large living on “strategic islands”, can afford to ignore that reality, but israel cannot carry freeloaders indefinitely.
Do you have any reason to assume male soldiers would have been more effective in the towers?
No but probably would have gotten a cleaner/faster death
From what I have read about the attack and the atrocities - when hamas had time and were feeling playful it was the women and children that paid the higher price.
I can’t tell if your main objection is that you think they’re completely useless or if it’s a chivalry/”we must protect the eggs” thing. Every ‘defense’ of women on that subject straddles that line. Do you have any reason to assume male soldiers would have been more effective in the towers?
¿Por qué no los dos?
Look, I’ve never served in the military and never seen combat. I’ve never watched anybody die. I’ve never even been in a fistfight. It’s possible that my intuitions around this issue are totally miscalibrated.
But yes, it does seem very likely to me that the modal female soldier is substantially less effective in close combat than the modal male soldier is. There are very significant differences in temperament, personality, hormonal distribution, etc., between men and women. Testosterone levels alone would seem incredibly relevant to one’s performance in a fast-moving and harrowing scenario in which a combination of violent aggression, mental clarity under pressure, and quick and decisive reactions are required.
I’m not suggesting that women are useless, but simply that their usefulness in combat is considerably outweighed by the importance of their survival as future bearers of children. And also, as I mentioned, it seems that combat morale and unit cohesion are impacted significantly and negatively by the presence of women, at least according to studies that have been published. Again, the idea of large numbers of young women being put in direct harm’s way and then being captured to later be raped or tortured is utterly appalling to me, and would seem likely to have a significant mental effect on IDF soldiers in a way over and above the effect of a similar number of male soldiers being captured or killed.
There are very significant differences in temperament, personality, hormonal distribution, etc., between men and women.
I am not a soldier. But I am on the far end of the distribution for ‘ability to deal with killing’. I’m not a psychopath, I don’t like slaughtering animals though nor do I find it burdensome, but there is a surprising number of full grown men- and an unsurprisingly huge number of women- who can’t directly kill a complex mammal. I have watched full grown and not effeminate men have crying fits over slaughtering lambs and hogs; talked to toughened older men with no shortage of trauma who recounted near tears in their eyes that, working at the slaughterhouse when younger, they insisted on moving from the kill side to the cut side because killing cattle was too difficult to deal with psychologically.
And the biggest correlate of the ability to just put a gun up against an animal’s head, pull the trigger now it’s dead, eat it for dinner or send it to the freezer, is having a beard along your whole jawline. I presume this has something to do with testosterone. And obviously people aren’t animals, I hope I never have to find out whether I can kill a person without flinching. But regardless, ‘difficulty with killing an animal in a calm, cold way’ is probably very strongly correlated with ‘inability to kill your enemies without panicking and doing stupid things out of instinct’. And I suspect the distribution between the two sexes is such that 99.8% of humans with the latter ability are male.
I think you need to differentiate killing humans versus killing animals. I think it's common for people to be more disturbed by videos of animal cruelty than even the most gruesome tortures and executions of human beings. I wouldn't assume that someone who has difficulty killing an animal would have difficulty killing a person that they felt justified in killing.
Look, I’ve never served in the military and never seen combat. I’ve never watched anybody die. I’ve never even been in a fistfight. It’s possible that my intuitions around this issue are totally miscalibrated.
But yes, it does seem very likely to me that the modal female soldier is substantially less effective in close combat than the modal male soldier is.
I don't have direct personal experience here either, but I am a connoisseur of police bodycam footage. Having watched well over a thousand of them at this point (I know because I download them and can count how many are in the folder), I can confidently offer my opinion, whatever it's worth, that women are indeed substantially worse than men at dealing with life or death situations, on average. And presumably female police officers are already a more selective group than female conscripts in this regard.
There are commendable exceptions, of course, but in general I notice women are just far more likely to become paralyzed with fear or behave erratically and clumsily, doing things like confusing their gun for a taser, or confusing their taser for a gun and just generally exhibiting less courage and tactical intuition and improvisation. The difference in physical strength obviously comes into play, too.
Given the obvious difference in evolutionary pressure between the sexes with regards to violence, I think our baseline expectation, even in the absence of evidence and anecdotes, should be that there's a significant sex difference here.
but in general I notice women are just far more likely to become paralyzed with fear
Funny thing is, in another context this is used as a defense of women (e.g. Don Lemon got a bunch of shit for asking why an assault victim froze up instead of fighting - or biting - back)
Here's one of the most amazing videos I've seen, where a female cop shoots the wrong person after allowing an awful situation to brew, and a male cop shows up and regulates in 5 seconds: https://youtube.com/watch?v=RguOVwO2PjA
The quantity of wombs is not the limiting factor in human reproduction anymore. If societies cared, they would draft women's wombs like they draft men's lives.
I don't recognize the need to accomodate your squeamishness, rooted as it is in disregard for the lives of my kind. What is rape to death? However, if you feel that strongly about it, you could shelter one woman from her obligations by taking on both her duty and yours, bleeding twice. Just as long as I don't have to do double-duty myself.
Last time I checked, the IDF was fighting with assault rifles and the like, not sticks and stones.
If you get hit with an assault rifle, there will be little difference if the shooter was a man, woman or child.
I think it would be sensible to tie commando roles to physical ability, which would make them overwhelmingly male, but sometimes you just want a warm body with a rifle.
Child soldiers exist, and likely are on average weaker than adult women. If they were very ineffective (like one adult male being as effective as ten of them) African warlords would likely prefer to use their limited amount of weapons to arm adults (even though they are harder to control).
And if you go to complex weapon systems, the male advantage gets even smaller. Even if there was some inherent male advantage to steering drones or driving trucks, you likely have so many drones and trucks that you will look for "ok" and not "best of the best" when hiring.
I do not share your intuition that women are more likely to surrender in life-threatening situations. Especially when the enemy is Hamas, where the only sex difference in a surrender outcome is that they might rape women before they kill them.
I have never seen it stated in so many words, but my impression is that a big factor here is sheer numbers. When PM Ben-Gurion implemented the draft, the population of Israel was about 1.5 million. Israel's Muslim/Arab neighbors were not then inclined to train or field female soldiers at all, but in the fight against the existence of Israel there was no need: they were (and are) substantially more numerous. I cannot tell you whether the Six-Day War could have been won without the conscripting of women; perhaps it is so. But in the history that happened, conscripting of women was baked in as part of Israel's strategy, and that strategy carried the day. So here we are.
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Notes -
The role of female soldiers in the IDF has always been somewhere between fascinating and horrifying to me. The below post by @CrashedPsychonaut mentions that the capture of an IDF garrison near the border fence involved a number of hapless young female soldiers, isolated at their posts and overrun. I imagine that some of these women were shot and killed, and I presume that others surrendered and were rounded up as hostages; the subsequent fate of these women is very distressing to imagine.
Some quick Googling indicates that approximately 40% of the IDF’s conscript soldiers were female as of 2021, comprising 25% of officers and 18% of combat soldiers. The latter two numbers, and especially the last one, are shockingly high to me. I had been under the impression that the IDF’s female conscripts were overwhelmingly shunted away into positions where a whole lot of things would need to go very unexpectedly wrong before there was any significant chance of them facing real combat. And, to be fair, it seems like in the case of that garrison, a whole lot of things did go very unexpectedly wrong. Still, it’s insane to me that a country with such overwhelmingly security concerns and so many threats surrounding it would put literally any important responsibility in the hands of female soldiers.
I’ve always been under the vague impression that the IDF’s inclusion of so many female soldiers was mostly a PR ploy; filling their ranks with photogenic young women makes people more likely to feel positively-inclined and prescribe towards it. It also allows them to circulate photos of busty women in camo wielding large guns, an archetype which seems to have significant (and, to me, inexplicable) appeal to a certain segment of the American mainstream right. The thought that these smiling young women could actually be sent to the front lines to do hand-to-hand urban combat against battle-hardened men is both inconceivable and appalling to me. I would expect most of them to surrender almost immediately if confronted with life-threatening combat situations. The impact on IDF morale of having a substantial number of its female soldiers captured or killed seems like it would be catastrophic, to say nothing of its practical strategic effects.
Can anyone offer more insight into the role of women in the IDF, and specifically their role in actual combat operations? Both historically and in terms of what we can expect to see in whatever upcoming operations are going to take place as a result of the current crisis?
The IDF uses female soldiers to great effect as trainers and instructors. From what I understand, male soldiers have been shown to be much more attentive and learn better when the instructor is an attractive female. This is what Gal Gadot did in her military service.
Most of the female soldiers in bases that were overrun during the initial attack were "lookouts" (tatspitaniot). Their job is to monitor the surveillance technology that tracks the Gaza border and alert about anything that seems suspicious. I don't think there's any reason to think that they would be at a disadvantage in a job like that compared to a male soldier, and it frees up the male soldier for a combat role which requires his physical abilities.
There are some border patrol units that are now mixed gender, but the traditional infantry and armor units are still male only. There was a famous Supreme Court case a few decades ago that required the IDF to allow women to enter the pilots course, but as I understand it only a handful of women have passed since then.
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I’m not going to call modern combat the same thing as hunting, but a surprisingly large number of women post their big game hunting pics on Facebook groups. Yesterday one posted a picture of a cougar, and she had its dead bloody carcass slung over both shoulders. Another posted a pic of a deer she shot at 400 yards.
Women seem like they can be trained to kill with guns just fine. Are they as good as men? Perhaps not. But are they worse than not having them at all? Definitely not.
The funny thing's that if you really want to go nuts HBD-wise, there's a reasonable argument women have an advantage for some shooting sports and styles, famously including a couple Olympic-level matters.
Whether that extrapolates to combat is a separate matter -- not just for aggression reasons, but because combined small-arms armor and ammo is a lot of weight, which has to be fairly high on the body -- and there are some obvious issues with additional war crimes risks, but it's a funny aspect.
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This cuts both ways: Imagine being so inferior to the IDF that your brave warriors are killed by women
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-769134
Of course because of the fog of war the article is propaganda and scant with information about casualties.
The Ghosts of Tel Aviv they are, I suppose.
ghosts they may be, but they are women ghosts!!
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I've been following this, and it's US Military cousin, for years.
In fact, we've a fresh article on it.
There are two groups of analysis here; individual performance and unit culture.
On individual performance, female combat soldiers, at the median, are far, far worse than their male counterparts. This is to the surprise of no one. In the general population, bone density, upper body strength, and grip strength don't overlap more than 1- 2 % (meaning the bottom 1-2% of males with the top 1-2% of females). Even if a female is very motivated and hits the gym, the amount of room she has to make up is nigh on impossible.
Where this gets compounded is over time and with compounding adversity. What I mean here is that a Superwoman might be able to pass things the a PFT (physical fitness test), marksmanship test, and things like obstacle courses and land nav over a single day on a U.S. base. In the field (and field exercises) however, the compounding of sleep deprivation and multiple days of moving combat loads and speed catches up. I couldn't find the article with quick Googling (I might later), but there was a report in the 2018 range of female US Marines admitting "we can hump the weight of a combat load for a long time, but we just can't move as fast from objective to objective." There's a saying in the SOF community that "selection is everyday." Just because you passed the test that first time and became an infantryman / ranger / SEAL / etc. doesn't mean that you're automatically a super solider for life. You have to work everyday and you have to perform everyday. In Ranger Battalion in the U.S. Army, there's something called RFS or Released For Standards. This means that you get kicked out for not being good enough in one way or another. Often times its leadership related (to keep guys from just making rank by hanging out forever) but it also isn't uncommon for a Ranger to all of a sudden fuck up a PFT because they had been slacking off and drinking every weekend. Back to Superwoman - she might be able to get through an indoc and selection, but I would put the odds of her maintaining those standards in a unit over time to be effectively zero.
Unit culture is the next layer. Every person in a unit is a mix of talents. One guy is a really great shot, and kind of OK at PT. Another guy is a PT stud, but isn't so great at land nav. The unit commander (say at the platoon level) is above average at PT and shooting, but isn't an all around badass, but he does get a bunch of gucci gear because he knows how to do acquisition voodoo. A female (especially enlisted) will, probably, be at the bottom of all of these categories. Her treatment will be no different than a male who is at the bottom of all of those categories; "you're last on the run, you can't shoot straight, you fell asleep on patrol, you can't carry the 240B with a full complement of ammo." It singles you out for extra ridicule and scrutiny. Sure, you're passing all of the minimums and standards, but you aren't great or even good at any one thing. It means the unit has to plan contingency around you always instead of slotting you into things you're good at to compensate for the things you're worse at.
I'll leave it there for now because I think those are the two main and enduring cases against women in combat. There are some edge things that also raise questions; what happens when (and it will happen) a female gets pregnant in combat? Will females potentially use sex to curry favor from peers and superiors (of course not, it's a professional force! that would never happen.
As far as Israeli female combat soldiers go; First, the definition of "combat" is a little stretched. Border guards are one thing (as are pilots), but a maneuver unit (infantry, armor, artillery) is another. Second, the Israeli model is still built heavily on conscripts and reservists supporting the active duty while not being anywhere near the latter's standards. I think the unfortunately reality is that many female Israeli "combat" soldiers didn't quite get into combat by choice.
Yeah this part I think is relevant. The two most well-known (read: PR profiles of them) high percentage female infantry units are the 33rd Caracal and the 41st Lions of Jordan battalions stationed in relatively (and relative here being very operative) safe border areas. The area the 33rd are supposed to have been was overrun by Hamas during the 10/7 assault so not that safe.
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How much less effective do you expect a woman to be in an average MOS?
I would expect the most difference in extreme positions (special forces) and those requiring the most brute strength. Kicking down doors and lugging heavy weapons, for example. But my intuition is that aiming and shooting a rifle—or manning a checkpoint—is roughly as easy for women as men. Per @naraburns’ link, the IDF seems to agree, and is disinclined to put women in the 10% most strenuous positions. Though it also says most armored units are male-only, and I can’t tell why that would be more physically demanding.
Re: Armor units. They have their own cultural flavor. To the point where my friends who are officers can spot dudes in the calvary from a distance.
It's not the sort of culture that attracts women.
I’m not even sure if the IDF cav is volunteer/professional or if conscripts can be assigned to it. If the latter, then culture isn’t necessarily the deciding factor.
The original article statement was that 90% of jobs were “equally available” to men and women. Exceptions included urban commando units and some armored crews. Sounds like they wouldn’t even take volunteers, not that there weren’t enough of them.
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120mm cannon shells weigh something like 50 pounds, and the loader needs to sling them fast in a combat situation. .50 browning ammo is likewise bulky and heavy. Gas cans and hoses are heavy. Maintenance tools for tanks, equipment for tanks generally and the tasks involved, especially in the field, all are likely to involve a fair amount of strenuous activity. Think of the physical stereotypes for truckers and mechanics, or other jobs involving heavy machinery.
You mean to say a high schooler wouldn't be able to do it with ease?
She does appear to be struggling.
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Can’t believe I forgot about loading. Good point.
It is not only loading. On average Abrams tank requires 8 manhours of maintenance for 1 hour of operation. That is one of the reasons why Abrams is so big with crew of 4 instead of 3 and autoloader for Russian tanks: the fourth crew member is indispensable when it comes to making sure the tank is operational, as crew of four working on a tank will decrease the ratio of 8:1 to 2:1 with some redundancy there.
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Even with a fully automated military making warfare something closer to Call of Duty, there's no reason to expect a meritocratic force to be anywhere close to parity. How many top Call of Duty players are female?
You’ve lost me.
I don’t think I said anything about parity? There are apparently 10% of IDF jobs which don’t allow women outright.
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why you think so? have you checked how it worked so far?
They are pushed into position such as support roles at airports, drone operators, in observation posts (last one worked out poorly this time).
That’s why I’m asking people who are more knowledgeable about specific history to weigh in. I’m not pretending to have any significant background knowledge on the topic. I have my intuitions based on my observations of human behavior, but I would like to have those intuitions confirmed or disconfirmed by actual examples or research. I wouldn’t really know where to start in terms of finding out how effective female soldiers have been throughout the history of the IDF, and I don’t think I would be able to trust the information I would find using my rudimentary searching skills.
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From the Israeli point of view, there never was a choice. The women are already in the fight whether they like it or not, might as well teach them to be good at it.
Israel is a tiny place, about the size of New Hampshire. It has porous borders, which due to the settlements, cannot practically be secured. Israel's enemies are visually identical and do not wear uniforms. Violence can, and will, pop up anywhere, and Israel's enemies prefer to target women and children.
Israeli women are combatants, whether they like it or not. Giving them the training, experience, and equipment to deal with that unfortunate fact seems to be the only logical step.
There's a bit of a perversity here though, in that while apparently women cannot be spared from combat, Haredi Jews can. Okay, fair enough if you're in an existential fight for survival and you need all the soldiers you can get, male or female. But for women to be drafted into combat while men stay safe behind them studying the Torah is gross to me.
This is politics, unfortunately. But since the Hamas attack thousands of Haredim have volunteered to be drafted.
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Haredi participation in the IDF has been growing, actually leading to conflicts about the gender-integrated nature of the IDF.
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Unsettling though that might be, there are a lot more women than Haredim. Apparently this was even more true in 1948, and the original exemption only covered a few hundred
wordcelsscholars. Meanwhile the female conscription excluded mothers and banned women from frontline positions. That was relaxed in the 70s and 80s.More options
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Let's be honest - a woman captured by an enemy - especially Jewish woman by hamas - her end will be worse, prolonged and more painful than that of men if they have the time to soare. Women have a huge vulnerability that a small weak men don't. Hamas are not equal opportunities gang rapists.
And you have to ballance that. So it is best if they are not on the first line, especially against the likes of Hamaa/ISIS - then save the last bullet for yourself is probably a good advice.
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I can’t tell if your main objection is that you think they’re completely useless or if it’s a chivalry/”we must protect the eggs” thing. Every ‘defense’ of women on that subject straddles that line. Do you have any reason to assume male soldiers would have been more effective in the towers?
As for me, though I applaud the IDF’s efforts, I don’t think 18% (and corresponding casualties – though they are not corresponding at present) is quite cutting it, politically speaking. Women’s voting rights, all voting rights (like those of pacifists), should be curtailed to the group's casualty/combat proportion, ie, 18% would mean they get less than a quarter the voting power of a man. Political power ultimately derives from the barrel of a gun. One man, one gun, one pint of blood, one vote. We in the west, by and large living on “strategic islands”, can afford to ignore that reality, but israel cannot carry freeloaders indefinitely.
No but probably would have gotten a cleaner/faster death
From what I have read about the attack and the atrocities - when hamas had time and were feeling playful it was the women and children that paid the higher price.
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¿Por qué no los dos?
Look, I’ve never served in the military and never seen combat. I’ve never watched anybody die. I’ve never even been in a fistfight. It’s possible that my intuitions around this issue are totally miscalibrated.
But yes, it does seem very likely to me that the modal female soldier is substantially less effective in close combat than the modal male soldier is. There are very significant differences in temperament, personality, hormonal distribution, etc., between men and women. Testosterone levels alone would seem incredibly relevant to one’s performance in a fast-moving and harrowing scenario in which a combination of violent aggression, mental clarity under pressure, and quick and decisive reactions are required.
I’m not suggesting that women are useless, but simply that their usefulness in combat is considerably outweighed by the importance of their survival as future bearers of children. And also, as I mentioned, it seems that combat morale and unit cohesion are impacted significantly and negatively by the presence of women, at least according to studies that have been published. Again, the idea of large numbers of young women being put in direct harm’s way and then being captured to later be raped or tortured is utterly appalling to me, and would seem likely to have a significant mental effect on IDF soldiers in a way over and above the effect of a similar number of male soldiers being captured or killed.
I am not a soldier. But I am on the far end of the distribution for ‘ability to deal with killing’. I’m not a psychopath, I don’t like slaughtering animals though nor do I find it burdensome, but there is a surprising number of full grown men- and an unsurprisingly huge number of women- who can’t directly kill a complex mammal. I have watched full grown and not effeminate men have crying fits over slaughtering lambs and hogs; talked to toughened older men with no shortage of trauma who recounted near tears in their eyes that, working at the slaughterhouse when younger, they insisted on moving from the kill side to the cut side because killing cattle was too difficult to deal with psychologically.
And the biggest correlate of the ability to just put a gun up against an animal’s head, pull the trigger now it’s dead, eat it for dinner or send it to the freezer, is having a beard along your whole jawline. I presume this has something to do with testosterone. And obviously people aren’t animals, I hope I never have to find out whether I can kill a person without flinching. But regardless, ‘difficulty with killing an animal in a calm, cold way’ is probably very strongly correlated with ‘inability to kill your enemies without panicking and doing stupid things out of instinct’. And I suspect the distribution between the two sexes is such that 99.8% of humans with the latter ability are male.
I think you need to differentiate killing humans versus killing animals. I think it's common for people to be more disturbed by videos of animal cruelty than even the most gruesome tortures and executions of human beings. I wouldn't assume that someone who has difficulty killing an animal would have difficulty killing a person that they felt justified in killing.
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That is extreme claim, and I doubt that it is true (from proxies like violently abusive women).
1:499 seems way too extreme to me.
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I don't have direct personal experience here either, but I am a connoisseur of police bodycam footage. Having watched well over a thousand of them at this point (I know because I download them and can count how many are in the folder), I can confidently offer my opinion, whatever it's worth, that women are indeed substantially worse than men at dealing with life or death situations, on average. And presumably female police officers are already a more selective group than female conscripts in this regard.
There are commendable exceptions, of course, but in general I notice women are just far more likely to become paralyzed with fear or behave erratically and clumsily, doing things like confusing their gun for a taser, or confusing their taser for a gun and just generally exhibiting less courage and tactical intuition and improvisation. The difference in physical strength obviously comes into play, too.
Given the obvious difference in evolutionary pressure between the sexes with regards to violence, I think our baseline expectation, even in the absence of evidence and anecdotes, should be that there's a significant sex difference here.
Funny thing is, in another context this is used as a defense of women (e.g. Don Lemon got a bunch of shit for asking why an assault victim froze up instead of fighting - or biting - back)
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Here's one of the most amazing videos I've seen, where a female cop shoots the wrong person after allowing an awful situation to brew, and a male cop shows up and regulates in 5 seconds: https://youtube.com/watch?v=RguOVwO2PjA
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The quantity of wombs is not the limiting factor in human reproduction anymore. If societies cared, they would draft women's wombs like they draft men's lives.
I don't recognize the need to accomodate your squeamishness, rooted as it is in disregard for the lives of my kind. What is rape to death? However, if you feel that strongly about it, you could shelter one woman from her obligations by taking on both her duty and yours, bleeding twice. Just as long as I don't have to do double-duty myself.
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Last time I checked, the IDF was fighting with assault rifles and the like, not sticks and stones.
If you get hit with an assault rifle, there will be little difference if the shooter was a man, woman or child.
I think it would be sensible to tie commando roles to physical ability, which would make them overwhelmingly male, but sometimes you just want a warm body with a rifle.
Child soldiers exist, and likely are on average weaker than adult women. If they were very ineffective (like one adult male being as effective as ten of them) African warlords would likely prefer to use their limited amount of weapons to arm adults (even though they are harder to control).
And if you go to complex weapon systems, the male advantage gets even smaller. Even if there was some inherent male advantage to steering drones or driving trucks, you likely have so many drones and trucks that you will look for "ok" and not "best of the best" when hiring.
I do not share your intuition that women are more likely to surrender in life-threatening situations. Especially when the enemy is Hamas, where the only sex difference in a surrender outcome is that they might rape women before they kill them.
Weapons are not exactly in low supply in Africa.
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Their combat role is supposed to be limited, due to obvious physiological differences.
I have never seen it stated in so many words, but my impression is that a big factor here is sheer numbers. When PM Ben-Gurion implemented the draft, the population of Israel was about 1.5 million. Israel's Muslim/Arab neighbors were not then inclined to train or field female soldiers at all, but in the fight against the existence of Israel there was no need: they were (and are) substantially more numerous. I cannot tell you whether the Six-Day War could have been won without the conscripting of women; perhaps it is so. But in the history that happened, conscripting of women was baked in as part of Israel's strategy, and that strategy carried the day. So here we are.
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