We’ve given up on Canada’s military, so let’s abandon it altogether

[Underway]

For full disclosure there is one trade in the CAF that is not fully open to women.  Milpoints to whomever gets it right.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Chaplain (RC)?

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Unfortunately, there are many directives that specifically state that units are not to hold merit boards and that units are not to hold PERs or reference PERs for annual evaluations. The nature of the beast is that merit boards, regardless of direction, dont seem to want to go away. But you're right- merit boards do hurt transparency and allow for favouritism.

As for your example of the female- I'm sure there are cases of favouritism towards females (and minorities) just as there are cases of favouritism towards males, the difference is that while there are many males there are far fewer females (or minorities), so the pool against which they are judged is naturally lower, raising the implicit bias that are held. If you've only worked with 1 female and she's bad, it's natural to attribute that with all females. For what it's worth, I've seen endless examples of males who have been promoted due to their BBB profile (backyard BBQ buddy), being athletes (hockey players was mentioned, but I can think of a volleyball player and swimmer that have also fallen into this category), or being in great physical shape (but terrible at their jobs) that should never have.

As for the comments about physical fitness that have been on the thread- yes there is a physiological difference between men and women, with men generally being higher in upper body strength (though IDF studies have shown that females have been able to achieve similar results to males after basic training). However, the CAF standard is the FORCE test and the CA standard is the FORCE combat test. That's it. That's all. The other physical standards are trade related (to mostly infantry) but not official standards. When discussing the requirement for physical strength surpassing the basic standard than there is no administrative argument to be made. However, I do understand that some trades (infantry and combat engineer specifically) require more physical strength due to the nature of the task. I leave artillery out as it requires a specific upper body strength requirement for the gunline (lifting a 155 shell) but the remainder of the trade doesn't have this requirement and, tbh, lifting a 155 shell isn't an obstacle for females. Armour, I would argue, is similar for physical strength as it is largely related to stamina, which has less to do with upper body strength and more with cardio. The remainder of the CAF, in a real sense, has far less physical fitness requirement past the FORCE tests.

For argument sake, there are a total of 5400 infantry soldiers in the 9 Battalions (600 pers/Bn based on my knowledge of 2 VP being at 550 right now). Lets say there's another 1000 in ERE postings, bringing the infantry branch up to 6400 soldiers or a bit lower than 10% (9.4%) of the total of the CAF. If the infantry branch was even 10% female (540 soldiers) than the CAF would need to have 16,460 females in the other MOSIDs to hit the 25% mark. As there are many studies that show that females make better pilots than males, perhaps the delta could be made up in the pilot world.

I think you're pretty much spot on with this.  I'm of the opinion that women can do any job to the same standard that men can in the CAF with the exception of very physically demanding jobs like Infantry and Combat Engineers.  This is not to say that certain women can't do it, we are talking averages here. 

It has nothing to do with women not being smart, as intellectually capable, etc, it has everything to do with them being generally physically weaker than men which makes those occupations poor choices for them.  In some cases women are probably better choices for certain occupations than men as they are better at multitasking for instance. 

Of course as soon as we have exoskeleton suits than the playing field is levelled, until that time, a man's ability to lift greater loads under stress will give them a significant advantage. 

As for favouritism, don't think for a second the CAF isn't above using people as pawns for political/institutional gain. 

 

[dapaterson]

Chaplain is now a single trade, which includes RC pastoral associates, who can be female.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Chaplain is now a single trade, which includes RC pastoral associates, who can be female.

True, but he said "not fully open" to female. And in typical fashion, you all thought of RC Chaplain as opposed to Protestant ones (you colonized people, you!).

But, surprise: There are no female Rabbis and no female Imams - and they would be Chaplains, and no "pastoral associates" in those two religions.  ;D

 

[mariomike]

There are no female Rabbis and no female Imams - and they would be Chaplains, and no "pastoral associates" in those two religions. 

"Joan Friedman became the first woman to serve as a rabbi in Canada in 1980, when she was appointed as an Assistant Rabbi at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women_rabbis

 

[Piece of Cake]

I'm of the opinion that women can do any job to the same standard that men can in the CAF with the exception of very physically demanding jobs like Infantry and Combat Engineers.  This is not to say that certain women can't do it, we are talking averages here. 

Ecological fallacy!

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Ecological fallacy!

Whatever you say sweetie  8)

Shout louder, that's what they teach the SJWs  :nod:

 

[daftandbarmy]

Of course as soon as we have exoskeleton suits than the playing field is levelled, until that time, a man's ability to lift greater loads under stress will give them a significant advantage. 

Or, until we institute the right way to develop people physically (because we break a lot of men too due to hammer headed and unskilled/ unqualified/ unscientific fitness training delivery).

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Or, until we institute the right way to develop people physically (because we break a lot of men too due to hammer headed and unskilled/ unqualified/ unscientific fitness training delivery).

So true, how many times have you been injured and been given some cepacol, foot powder and been told to get back on the horse?

I had better medical care when I was a rugby player at RMC, full access to physio, athletic therapists, etc.  The military lets go of a lot of people with perfectly treatable issues if caught early on and corrected.

 

[Underway]

Or, until we institute the right way to develop people physically (because we break a lot of men too due to hammer headed and unskilled/ unqualified/ unscientific fitness training delivery).

Yes.  If you want to develop people physically then we need to properly invest in and train people physically.  We have no issues with training people on educational requirements for their job, with a fully developed TDO signed off plan. Despite our grumbling we are actually quite good at training people.  But to get them there physically it comes under the "your own responsibility" category.  That's fine after BMQ, but during BMQ and perhaps even whatever SQ is now.

It might be expensive to do but hell we've got 1-3 billion we can't spend every year.  I'm sure a bunch of that you can throw at the problem.


** note:  Chaplain is the correct answer, because divinity qualifications (whatever their source) are not equally granted to men and women in all religions.**

 

[Navy_Pete]

Yes.  If you want to develop people physically then we need to properly invest in and train people physically.  We have no issues with training people on educational requirements for their job, with a fully developed TDO signed off plan. Despite our grumbling we are actually quite good at training people.  But to get them there physically it comes under the "your own responsibility" category.  That's fine after BMQ, but during BMQ and perhaps even whatever SQ is now.

It might be expensive to do but hell we've got 1-3 billion we can't spend every year.  I'm sure a bunch of that you can throw at the problem.


** note:  Chaplain is the correct answer, because divinity qualifications (whatever their source) are not equally granted to men and women in all religions.**

I've found that the PSP staff in the NCR are of better quality then what I saw in Halifax for support. I also wrecked my back in basic and had good physio and PSP support in St.. Jean, but unless you were recovering from an injury you never had access to them.

The lack of preventative measures is weird though; even simple things like getting my cubicle raised means I need to go to sick parade to get a physio referral, go to physio to get a referral for an assessment, then take the assessment and open a ticket to have someone raise my desk 2" and remove one of the cuboards in 6-12 months. It's crazy, as it's pretty obvious that the desk set up for someone that is 5'8" won't work when your 6'2", and hunching over all day is good for no one.

At least on the Navy side, we're terrible for the 'human factor engineering' when setting up work areas. The US has pumped in massive amounts of money to the air side, and there has been some research on the ship's combat systems, but all the day to day stuff (steering, cooking, the engineering consoles, tool crib set up) that people always use is ignored until someone gets hurt, or we run into something. It's pretty silly. 

 

[Jarnhamar]

So true, how many times have you been injured and been given some cepacol, foot powder and been told to get back on the horse?

I had better medical care when I was a rugby player at RMC, full access to physio, athletic therapists, etc.  The military lets go of a lot of people with perfectly treatable issues if caught early on and corrected.

We could offer performance enhancing drugs to soldiers who want to build lots of muscle. If someone someone can get prescribed testosterone and steroids to become a man (cool) then I should have access to the same (with some HGH on the side)  in case I want to hand throw a TOW missile or fire the C16 without the cradle  8)

 

[Cloud Cover]

Jarnhamar: I'm pretty certain the objective of the current government is to reduce the amount of testosterone in the CAF, not increase it.

 

[ballz]

As for the comments about physical fitness that have been on the thread- yes there is a physiological difference between men and women, with men generally being higher in upper body strength (though IDF studies have shown that females have been able to achieve similar results to males after basic training).

Yup, that's it... just upper body strength :facepalm:

I leave artillery out as it requires a specific upper body strength requirement for the gunline (lifting a 155 shell) but the remainder of the trade doesn't have this requirement and, tbh, lifting a 155 shell isn't an obstacle for females. Armour, I would argue, is similar for physical strength as it is largely related to stamina, which has less to do with upper body strength and more with cardio. The remainder of the CAF, in a real sense, has far less physical fitness requirement past the FORCE tests.

I'm glad you have finally addressed your thoughts on the physiological differences so that I can understand where you sit... which is somewhere very far out in left field if you think the only difference in physical capability is upper body strength.

Practically every measure of cardiovascular fitness is better in men. The average man has about a 40% high VO2 max than the average woman, and even adjusted for weight has a 20% higher VO2 max... there are no weight classes in combat by the way. https://www.livestrong.com/article/546912-gender-vs-level-of-cardiovascular-fitness/

This website uses a bell curve to create "squat standards," by gender. The sample sizes they use are enormous. The median 200 lb male vs the median 200 lb female lifter is 320 lb vs 196 lbs.
https://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards/squat/lb

There are mountains of other data that show this, I can't believe you will sit here and try to pretend this is just fake news.

Ecological fallacy!

Both of you only do more harm than good to gender equality issues if you purposefully ignore the facts because you don't like them. You make it impossible to have an objective conversation that might actually lead to correcting gender inequalities that are a result of social constructs. Women are physically weaker in almost every meaningful way by a huge margin... it is not a social construct, it's just reality. Facts don't care about your feelings.

I think you're pretty much spot on with this.  I'm of the opinion that women can do any job to the same standard that men can in the CAF with the exception of very physically demanding jobs like Infantry and Combat Engineers.  This is not to say that certain women can't do it, we are talking averages here. 

It has nothing to do with women not being smart, as intellectually capable, etc, it has everything to do with them being generally physically weaker than men which makes those occupations poor choices for them.  In some cases women are probably better choices for certain occupations than men as they are better at multitasking for instance.

I would literally be interested in objectively discussing whether women can make better infanteers or combat engineers than men. Perhaps they are 15x smarter and 15x more efficient, and their transformational leadership leads to reorganizing into ways that make the fighting force so effective it overcomes all of the physical advantages that males have. But this discussion can't happen if we can't even get past the most glaringly obvious difference between the two genders that already has mountains of empirical evidence behind it.

Personally, I've been trying to find some studies on men vs women in chess but it's hard to find anything useful to compare especially since men outnumber women in chess 16 to 1. Maybe women are more intellectually suited to war-gaming than men are and we are failing to leverage that? I find these are all interesting rabbit holes to go down.

Of course as soon as we have exoskeleton suits than the playing field is levelled, until that time, a man's ability to lift greater loads under stress will give them a significant advantage. 

I tend to think that even with exoskeletons, humans at war with other humans are going to push the human body to it's physical limitations. An exoskeleton that carries my 100 lb ruck sack for me just means I'll end up with a 200 lb ruck sack. That's my feeling on it anyway but it is always interesting to see how technology changes everything.

For argument sake, there are a total of 5400 infantry soldiers in the 9 Battalions (600 pers/Bn based on my knowledge of 2 VP being at 550 right now). Lets say there's another 1000 in ERE postings, bringing the infantry branch up to 6400 soldiers or a bit lower than 10% (9.4%) of the total of the CAF. If the infantry branch was even 10% female (540 soldiers) than the CAF would need to have 16,460 females in the other MOSIDs to hit the 25% mark. As there are many studies that show that females make better pilots than males, perhaps the delta could be made up in the pilot world.

And what happens if, after all the social constructs have been broken down, and the best people for all jobs are in the jobs they do best, and we are not at 50/50? Then what? And what if we are at 50/50 but we are not at 50/50 for all trades, because some trades are at 60/40 and others are at 40/60? Then what? Has gender equality been achieved or do we need equality of outcomes? Because the latter (equality of outcome) is what all the modern day Marxists want at all costs, and it's quite frankly a terrible idea.

 

[Piece of Cake]

Here's the thing, many females who may be interested in joining the CAF as infantry, may choose not to, if all they hear is "women are not strong enough, women have no upper body strength ect."

Can women be in the infantry. Yes.  No one has presented any stats to say otherwise.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Here's the thing, many females who may be interested in joining the CAF as infantry, may choose not to, if all they hear is "women are not strong enough, women have no upper body strength ect."

Can women be in the infantry. Yes.  No one has presented any stats to say otherwise.

Tells us we are making baseless claims only to make an equally baseless claim "that many women would join the infantry if only there weren't so many telling them they couldn't do it".

Women can serve in the infantry right now, the question is, should they?

The reason the CAF has no quantifiable evidence on any of this is it's actually illegal for us to test due to Employment Equity Act, Charter of Rights and Freedoms, etc.  If we were to test an all female infantry platoon vs an all male infantry platoon in combat skills, we would be breaking the law. 

 

[Eye In The Sky]

Here's the thing, many females who may be interested in joining the CAF as infantry, may choose not to, if all they hear is "women are not strong enough, women have no upper body strength ect."

Can women be in the infantry. Yes.  No one has presented any stats to say otherwise.

Question - have you ever served in a combat arms unit?

 

[BeyondTheNow]

Let’s get one thing straight, period. I’m female. SOME women can do mainly male-dominated, physically demanding, jobs that the majority of people struggle with, men and women. SOME women kick ass at jobs like infantry. SOME women can bench/squat/dead-lift weight amounts which surpass quite a few men’s. SOME women can out-run, out-smart, out-wit, out-lift, out-shoot, out-play, out-whatever tons of men. Likewise, there are a crap-ton of men who would make awful infantry soldiers, regardless of who the ‘stronger’ sex is. Bottom line is that certain jobs aren’t fitted for everyone, plain and simple. And the fact of it is (which I’ve said somewhere else on this site, but can’t find the post) if you take the strongest male in the world (determined by any method of physical testing) and you take the strongest female in the world (determined by said same physical testing) the male will be stronger. It’s the way it is. It’s the way it’s always been. We are made differently. Our bodies are simply not designed to withstand the same things. SOME women are physically exceptional. SOME men the same. On average, yes, women are weaker but there are still many who can do the heavy, hard, physically stressful/demanding jobs that mainly men perform. It’s just a matter of those women coming forward and doing it.

So, with that said, let’s not delve further into the whole ‘who is stronger, who’s better fitted, better equipped, who should or shouldn’t be doing what’ and get back on track with the original ideas this thread started with.

 

[a_majoor]

Just an observation, in line with Ballz thoughts.

Back in the day, when the EXPRES test was still the standard, it recognized the difference in upper body strength and VO2 Max, with different requirements for pushups for men and women (interesting, even older men like myself were still required to do more pushups than 19 year old female recruits).

While this might have been very scientifically designed, it failed to address the real operational point that equipment does not magically change its characteristics based on if a man or woman is carrying it. A C-6 still weighs 11Kg, and it still comes with an SF kit, a teaser belt and (between the gun team) 440 rounds of 7.62mm link. In my own persona experience, most of the female infantry solders who passed the  EXPRES test fell down in the field because they could not be loaded down with the extra ammo and equipment for the platoon support weapons. This meant that there were always a few soldiers in the platoon who simply never carried the kit, and the burden shifted onto the remainder of the platoon, with the obvious risks of exhaustion, ankle and joint injuries and people falling out because they were no longer able to carry the extra load without relief.

In that regard, the FORCES test is much, much better, since there are no exemptions based on sex or age.