Team Member For Sexual Harassment example essay topic

Female Integration In Military Combat There is now more than ever, pressure to deploy women in heavy combat roles alongside men. It may be politically correct to say that women can do anything that men can, but it's also false. Granted, there are women who can live up to the physical challenges of war, but they are not the norm, nor will they ever be. Beyond even the physical drawbacks lie numerous legal and moral issues.

Women are three times more likely to be un deployable in a combat situation than men, mostly due to pregnancy. In fact, 56 percent of the mixed gender units deployed in the first Gulf War gave reports that women in their units became pregnant prior to combat, according to The Roper Poll of the Military. In modern warfare, teamwork is not one of the focuses, it is the focus. There are no infantry charges consisting of thousands of troops marching on others anymore. Wars are now fought in small skirmishes on battle zones that move unexpectedly overnight-the random order in which these "hot zones" pop up can only be likened to fuzz on a television screen.

Today's warriors are a highly mobile units consisting of usually less than 12 (sometimes as few as 2), lightly armed, specially trained soldiers. It is easy to see that a team can be put on hold at the last minute due to the pregnancy and ultimately, un deployability of one of its members. This is but one of the factors consistent with the military's current position on women in combat. Another factor is the fact that women have vaginas, and men want to be in them.

This simple biological notion deals with the very real problem of sexual harassment. Take, for instance, the foxhole; it is one thing to be bunked in a foxhole with a fellow heterosexual male-it is another to be in a foxhole with a female who may sue her bunkmate for inadvertently touching her while dug in. It is a right to be able to protect one's self against sexual harassment, therefore a difficult dilemma arises: One can not say a woman who has been "harassed" cant sue her harasser after returning to base, for that would be a violation of rights. But what about the fact that maybe a soldier should be concentrating on the tracers going over his head-not whether he's going to get sued for unwanted touching. The thing is this; a male and another male who have no interest in each other will not have to worry about gender or sexually-related issues while in combat, or when returning to base.

So why not get rid of the ability of a woman to prosecute a team member for sexual harassment? Frankly, if there are no repercussions for harassment, then what's going to stop the horny guy dug in next to his foxy bunkmate from harassing her? Absence of law does not work either. So we have too much harassment if we take away all law governing harassment in combat, and on the other side of the spectrum, one worries about harassment when females have the ability to sue. Factor three is cost; both material and psychological.

It costs money to integrate women into new roles. New agendas must be drawn out, extra lawyers and personnel hired to create these new agendas, and more court time and personnel to handle the inevitable influx of sexual harassment and sexual discrimination cases. Courts, even military courts, have their costs of operation. Psychologically speaking, women will lower morale.

I don't care how many times a person has seen G.I. Jane, morale is proven to be lower under high-stress conditions with a woman in a team. It takes a lot more guts to watch a woman being beaten in a P.O.W. camp than a man, and this brings about a problem with sensitive military intelligence. Is a man, who has been told his whole life that women are to be treated politely and humanely, going to snap and spill the goods after seeing his fellow female captor being beaten and tortured and raped? Quite possibly.

There is also a physical factor dealing with integrated units in combat situations. A one-hundred pound female is far less likely to be able to pull the guy next to her out of fire than I, a 155 pound male. Yes, women can lift weights and build muscle to do this, but for every pound a woman can put on, I can put on a pound and a half with the same effort, and that's neglecting the fact that she needs to get to 155 before I evens start. All in all, I'm not against females in the military; I'm against integrated units; there are simply too many incompatibilities. If there is to be an all-female unit in the future, let it be.

But don't cry when your mothers and sisters come home in body bags..