All-male squads, teams and crews and gender-integrated squads, teams, and crews had a noticeable difference in their performance of the basic combat tasks of negotiating obstacles and evacuating casualties. For example, when negotiating the wall obstacle, male Marines threw their packs to the top of the wall, whereas female Marines required regular assistance in getting their packs to the top. During casualty evacuation assessments, there were notable differences in execution times between all-male and gender-integrated groups, except in the case where teams conducted a casualty evacuation as a one-Marine fireman’s carry of another (in which case it was most often a male Marine who “evacuated” the casualty)

Oh, so the trained soldiers who'd had loads of downtime to work out threw their packs to the top of the wall and the recently recruited green soldiers didn't?

What a surprise...

Seriously, why would they used inexperienced females mixed with experienced males if they didn't want to deliberately skew the result?

They obviously had access to raw recruits, but there's a deeply flawed methodology using experienced men with inexperienced women.

Can you name one physical activity in which females can compete with males? Are there any gender neutral pro sports leagues?

That's not what I'm arguing at all and it's disingenuous to frame the argument that way.

If they want the requirement to be an effective soldier is to be able to toss a pack of a certain weight to the top of a wall, then make it a training requirement and I'm sure suddenly lots of women would be able to do it.

By framing this discussion as men are stronger than women, you're technically right, but it's a meaningless measure.

The actual question is, can trained women be strong enough? That's what they were trying to simulate but they cheated and stacked the deck against the women. And your statement is meaningless against that measure.

And the other disingenuous part of the 'tests' is that was every man in a squad able to carry a wounded man? Or did the squads just tend to volunteer the strongest person each time which by the laws of average, because men are on average stronger than women, would tend to be a man? So it's another massaged statistic.

We disagree on the following issue. You consider that someone can be trained strong 'enough'. Even if that is true (which you have no basis to claim - but we can move on), the point you are missing is that this is a competition against teams.

Therefore we have to consider not whether women can be strong 'enough' but whether women can be equally strong to men (because if they are not going to be equally strong, the team with women on it would lose to all-male team).

That is why the sports analogy is relevant - because the most competent women compete against most competent men. And there is no athletic sport where women stand a chance.

Women seem especially well-adapted to the trauma spaceflight inflicts, and have better caloric efficiency, at least according to this NASA study:

https://www.nasa.gov/content/men-women-spaceflight-adaptatio...

I guess that sounds like justification to send women in space rather than put them in close form combat

Your question was whether there are any physical activities where women can compete with men. You were given one example where women outperform men in a physical activity.

Here are more details of women who had less training than men managed to outperform those men in physical activity.

http://history.nasa.gov/printFriendly/flats.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_13

1. I fail to see women outperforming men on this test. I see them passing the tests - same as men

2. Even if we assume that they outperformed men on the tests, it does not qualify as 'outperforming men in a physical activity'.

> Are there any gender neutral pro sports leagues?

Horse riding definitely neutral, so are motorsports.

Possibly others skill based without speed/strength element.

Thank you.

Regarding motorsports - I thought there was one woman who competed in US motorsport division (NASCAR) but didn't make it far? Are there any women who win at F1 or whatever?

Skeet shooting, which was mixed in the Olympics until a woman won, after which it was gender segregated. ;)

That's definitely a flaw in the study. On the other hand, I doubt using equally experienced males would change the conclusions significantly: majority of the tasks seem to have involved major physical effort, and you don't need a study to know that on average, males will perform better in physically demanding excercies.

Weapon use seems to have been a big part, and is that really a "major physical effort"? Unless you fire the rifle at the end of an obstacle course...

Ever ran with a machine gun?

The fact the women seem to have done as well as men wrt hit probability using the M4 but not the heavier weapons, really point to physical limitations and not lack of skills.

The casualty evacuation issue is also a major issue, men can carry both sexes, women will have trouble with many men, and will be completely unable to move the bigger men...

From personal experience in target sports, strength and fitness plays a surprisingly big part in weapons use. Being able to handle a weapon with the least of effort while maintaining a low heart rate makes aiming a lot easier.

It's not just a flaw, it invalidates every conclusion.

Who knows what the results would have been if both the men and women had been inexperienced, instead of skewing it to the men. How much working out had the experienced men done? How many tricks and techniques had they picked up to add to their abilities?

Also, what happens when both are experienced. Does it turn out that after a year the women build more strength on average to make up for present childhood norms emphasising femininity?

In addition to that it fails to point out another conclusion: maybe the current training is not adequate for mix-gender team.

That's not difficult to imagine that some conditioning or some pattern may not be as efficient with women, especially since that training is based on decades of all-male combat experience with only theoretical adjustment for including women.

Thought the same, but the reason given ( requiring assistance for climbing a wall, or aiming abilities) seem to point more at pure physical abilities rather than tactical experience.

Which is not really surprising. You wouldn't expect a female pro athlete to win against a male pro one, and the warfield is very physicaly demanding.

Even in Israel, I don't think ground fighting forces are composed of women. I've heard they were assigned to radar and monitoring tasks (not 100% sure, though).

>Even in Israel, I don't think ground fighting forces are composed of women.

Women have certainly served in combat roles, and been involved in action including lethal shooting, since 2000 (1). For example the Caracal combat batallion is 70% women(2), at least several of which are known to have been involved in firefights (clarification - killed people). There is also currently a sniper team lead by a woman officer and there is a female combat battalion commander.

Edit: The calculation for Israel is different. They are a small country and need conscription in order to maintain a viable combat force. They have a stark choice. Include women in combat roles, or increase the service term for men, or reduce the size of their combat force. But the fact is they have shown that women are perfectly capable of being operationally effective.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_Israel_Defense_Fo...

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caracal_Battalion

to say the least. they could have easily controlled for that, and gotten results which could serve as strong guidelines. their conclusion, stressing that "an inch" is enough to lose a war, makes it even sound suspicious. i mean, it is quite unsurprising that women will be worse in certain tasks, but a more correct study could have told us exactly where to draw the line. and in any case, IMO, gender should not be the criteria, but rather simply, e.g., can you throw the fucking pack over the wall? no? then desk job for you. what you have in your pants means nothing if you have the needed muscle and brains to do the job right. i mean, i'm a man, but i'm sure there are many women that could throw a backpack higher than me :D

There have been other tests of women against the male standard where women either did the same or outperformed the men, even though the women had more limited experience.

http://history.nasa.gov/printFriendly/flats.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_13

this study is definitely deeply flawed - and disappointing as this would have been a really interesting set of results if it wasn't uncontrolled.