I'll sincerely try to be objective on this.
From my knowledge/experience of the Norwegian military, to their credit, females in the their military do actually mirror closer to men in their standards and requirements- more than any other military I have ever seen. For example, rooms are mixed (that one blew my mind), and in field training events there's much less emphasis on modesty for the chicks changing, and for at least the basic entry training, it's pretty equalized but those universal standards are quite low. I'm not sure if it was lowered to accomodate women at some some earlier point.
That kind of integration would never happen in the US military, because no commander would ever take on that risk for fraternization, cries of harrassment, etc. I have to reluctantly give Norway kudos for that level of integration, if only because they were able to do it on that level without it being a total cluster.
The problem that I saw with that level of integration however, is that in those integrated units the men lack that kind of raw aggression and comraderie that comes from being with a group of guys with no chicks. Throw one girl into the mix, even a "cool" girl, and the dynamics change.
The physical deficiencies, the injury rates, and the extra burden placed on men is well known by the forum so I won't get into that. But I end with this:
The value of an all female unit, for "intelligence" purposes, is completely useless.
In Iraq they had the same concept, and every single white knight journalist, General, and politician LOVED these all female units as if they were turning the tide of the war. Whatever marginal (at best) value they added with their intelligence gathering, was far outweighed by the burden they brought with them. The mindset was that you HAD to use them on missions, even if there was no need. Sort of like forcing someone to use sledgehammer for some tack nails. If they ever got mixed with a male unit, there was always some handjob action going around, and from an operational perspective, the senior staff OBSESSED about what these female teams were up to - because of their psychological imperative to protect women. The amount of attention and resources dedicated to these female teams was ridiculous and unwarranted and for sure the same thing will happen with these Norwegian girls, because they are "special".
I'll end with a very tragic story that shows my point. In 2007, there was Command Sergeant Major and a Corporal who were both killed together by the same suicide bomber in Iraq. This was more or less during the height of the war, and were several fatalities a day on average. At that point, very few -if any- Command Sergeant Majors had been killed. This is a very significant position in an unit that had a big leadership and mentorship role for thousands of Marines. Several hundred corporals had been killed by that point in the war, and a Corporal may have responsibility for a handful of other troops, if any. I want to stress unequivocally that both deaths are tragic, and their sacrifices were great. But hopefully you see the difference in military significance I am alluding to.
The next day, the Corporal's death and picture took up nearly the full front cover of Stars and Stripes. The Command Sergeant Major was a small paragraph buried in the middle. Why was this?
Because the Corporal was a young pretty woman.
opcorn2:
