Co-ed Combat: The New Evidence That Women Shouldn't Fight the Nation's Wars by Kingsley Browne

Product Details

Synopsis

A scholar makes a definitive, controversial argument against women in combat

More than 155,000 female troops have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002. And more than seventy of those women have died. While that's a small fraction of all American casualties, those deaths exceed the number of military women who died in Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War combined.

Clearly, women in combat isn't a theoretical issue anymore. Women now fly combat aircraft and serve on warships. Even the remaining all-male corners of the military are blurring the lines in Iraq. And for many advocates, this trend is considered progress—toward a better, "gender neutral" military.

Co-ed Combat makes the opposite case, based on research in anthropology, biology, history, psychology, sociology, and law, as well as military memoirs. It asks hard questions that challenge the assumptions of feminists.
For instance:
• Has warfare really changed so much as to reverse the almost unanimous history of all-male armed forces?
• Are men and women really equivalent in combat skills, even leaving aside physical strength?
• Do female troops respond to traditional types of motivations?
• Can the bonds of unit cohesion form in a co-ed military unit?
• Can an all-volunteer military afford to reject women?

This is a controversial book, likely to draw a passionate response from both conservatives and liberals.

Kirkus Reviews

Dense polemic arguing that women are unfit to serve in the armed forces will likely convince only those who already agree with the author's contention. Browne (Law/Wayne State Univ. Law School) joins a distinguished group of male authorities who, for two centuries, have explained that science proves women are unfit to hold property, own a business, vote, practice medicine, fly a commercial airliner or join a police force. Science certainly missed the boat with these, but Browne maintains that facts, not his personal beliefs, prove that women make poor soldiers. Despite presenting an avalanche of studies, Browne follows the common activist tactic of setting up and systematically knocking down straw men-usually "woman's liberationists" who believe men and women are identical. He devotes many pages to proving women are smaller and weaker than men, a critical defect even in noncombatants, he insists. Browne's closely reasoned arguments often skirt the main point. He assembles studies proving that men possess greater situational awareness and physical coordination and relates many stories of heroism involving great strength or intense pain, which, he maintains, women could not duplicate. Yet he provides no evidence that superiors think that female soldiers are performing at a lower level than their male counterparts. Many readers will agree that allowing women to pass physical-training tests with a lower score is dubious, and the author provides many thoughtful observations on the differences between men and women. But he delivers a lawyer's, not a scientist's, case. Like a good lawyer, he makes his position clear at the beginning, bolsters it with evidence to support it and brushes asideevidence that does not. Readers genuinely interested in exploring both sides of the controversy of women as soldiers will quickly realize they're getting only one here.

Biography

Kingsley Browne is a professor of law at Wayne State University Law School, specializing in employment discrimination and other aspects of employment law. He also teaches evidence, torts, and a seminar in law, biology, and behavior. Prior to law school, he did graduate work in physical anthropology. A former U.S. Supreme Court clerk, he spent five years in private practice before switching to teaching.