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Comment by lsiebert | Hacker News Reader

Female warriors in a variety of cultures fought alongside with men, or lead people in battle. Some have disguised themselves as men (such as during the US civil war), whereas others have served openly. There were certainly some bad ass women during WWII ( http://mentalfloss.com/article/30254/8-female-fighters-world... has a few examples, plus there was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyudmila_Pavlichenko the russian sniper credited with 309 kills, which makes her the 16th deadliest sniper ever).

And women serve in combat in multiple countries, and have for decades in some. The US is rather late to the party, many countries have allowed women in combat roles for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_military_by_count...

But even in societies where women didn't themselves fight, women often provided logistical support, as well as working in factories, shipyards, an other places to produce materials for war.

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I see this argument all the time and it's so flatly wrong.

You are describing maybe 10% of the tail in terms of physical performance being on par with their male counterparts. And you're also describing _total wars of exhaustion_, where literally everyone had to fight because otherwise it's extinction. These are not arguments in favor of women in combat roles as policy - they're merely observations that Total War forces everyone to fight. Should we also draft kids because soldiers as young as 12 were fighting at Stalingrad?

When would a general draft be justified except when we are facing an existential threat?

In the event of an existential threat to the US I don't think we'd stop at just women. Anyone who is able bodied and can carry a weapon might have to fight.

There are degrees of existential treats. Compare "China and Russia try to nuke the US" with "Mexico tries to get California back" or "the UK is invaded and the US helps".

Citation please.

I'm not describing total wars. Canada, for example, has had women in combat roles for 36 years, and not because they were fighting for the country's survival in the early 1980s.

And even if your un-cited 10% figure was true, and most women couldn't fight as infantry because of a lack of upper body strength, there are combat roles such as being pilot where physical strength is of limited importance.

But it's not true, and it seems you are disparaging female veterans and their contributions.

Even if there weren't women combat roles( and a big part of this decision is because there are such roles now, since 2015) a draft could still bring in women as doctors, administrators, analysts, logistics officers and other roles, because the military isn't just about combat, it's a vast coordinated enterprise.

This argument is such a joke. I’ve seen combat and I’ve seen females in the military. Upper body strength is just one variable of many. I find it really bizarre that Americans are advocating for our ground forces to take on more complexity with gender integration at a time when we still can’t figure out how to beat insurgents that don’t even have the same hardware as us.

Ask yourself this: the ostensible “villain” (Russia) is doing the opposite of us with their Infantry units. Ask yourself why.

They're not making an argument about whether women are on par with men in terms of physical performance. They're making an argument along the lines that it's not abnormal for women to be conscripted along side men.

The determination for duties that would be performed based on physical fitness is to be had after conscription.

There are plenty of roles that don't require much strength.

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