
Marine experiment finds women get injured more frequently - jriot
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/09/10/marine-experiment-finds-women-get-injured-more-frequently-shoot-less-accurately-than-men/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c73cb8f858f2
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jcranmer
To some extent, this is not surprising. However, the conclusions that are
going to be drawn from the evidence are pretty unsubstantiated.

Women and men have different physiologies, particularly in terms of how the
typical "average" build works out and in terms of the configuration of hips.
The finding that women are going to have more hip injuries than men should not
consequently be surprising, and other injuries relating to, for example,
carrying more than they should be carrying, being relatively higher in women
is also to be expected.

However, the problem is that the methodology ends up being poor. People
advocating for integration of women into the infantry or other physically
intensive jobs are not expecting to use different physical fitness criterion
for women and men for these jobs, so comparing average women to average men is
not the appropriate metric to be evaluating them.

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sa46
What would you do differently than the Marines experiment? What's the
appropriate metric?

I don't really see a better way than measuring task performance.

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sliken
Mixed sex units are a worst case for a women. Sure carrying gear designed for
larger men causes more injuries for women. Sure dragging men is harder on a
smaller women. Sure being accurate with a heavier gun (designed for a man) is
harder.

But how about comparing male units with female units. Women are smaller, take
less resources, can fit in smaller spaces, are easier to carry, etc. A
truck/plane/boat/whatever can carry more women, and you need less food for
each one.

I suspect women given the chance could cause problems for the male
competition. Less ego, less er, male. Try some wargames between males vs
females. Evaluate their strategy, handling stress, etc. If men are as bad as
guessing women's strategy as they at predicting women's feelings they are in
for a very hard time indeed. I've heard that men have a substantial advantage
in a marathon, but are completely wasted at the end. Women take longer to get
to the finish line, but are not nearly as decimated by it.

I seem to recall that NASA did a study and came to the conclusion that women
were better suited for space. Just as smart, somewhat smaller, more finger
dexterity, and consumed less water, oxygen, and food. This led to a rather
unpopular conclusion that most astronauts should be female.

So sure, if your metric is bigger/stronger = better then yes men win every
time.

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MrBuddyCasino
Women also feel pain more strongly than men and have a lower tolerance for it:

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235215461...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352154618300615)

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lainga
I was told in high school that the opposite was true, because of childbirth.

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naasking
It's not clear how people can die from pain itself in childbirth, directly or
indirectly, so I don't see how that could be selected for.

People can die indirectly from pain on the battlefield or while hunting,
because it leaves you vulnerable to being killed while you're distracted by
it. So there's definitely an adaptive advantage for men to develop pain
resistance.

~~~
Tomminn
People die from pain-induced shock [1] all the time. I think the essential
mechanism is that pain changes your heart rate and blood pressure. Small doses
increase both, but large doses decrease both. A large enough dose can make
your heart rate and blood pressure drop enough to cause shock.

[1]
[https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Neurogenic_shock](https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Neurogenic_shock)

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scythe
If you ask "what did men evolve to do that women didn't?", math, politics,
philosophy and engineering would be wrong answers, because for most of human
history (and all preindustrial history) only a tiny fraction of people did
those things, and in some societies they _were_ women. By contrast, war is
fundamentally human -- it has been with us for as long as records are
available, and societies often conscripted large fractions of the population
-- and historically it was almost entirely performed by men. The only more
masculine activity than war is peeing while standing up.

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hamitron
> “It has been scientifically proven that overall physical fitness — not
> gender — correlates to injury,”

I think the takeaway should be how do we reduce injury with respect to
different body types

~~~
eykanspelgud
I disagree.

I see it more as natural selection. Training is usually what a soldier might
have to go through in real combat. I don't think accommodating different body
types will be useful when the war time environment selects for a particular
fit _, and those not adapted to it will not survive, or worse - be a burden to
the lives of others.

Sure, we can do things to reduce injury for people of different body types,
but it would make more sense to me to select for those who already have a
particular fitness.

_when I say fit, I mean fit to the environment, not necessarily physical
fitness.

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5555624
Note that the date on the article is 10 September 10 2015.

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ghufran_syed
It’s a shame they didn’t have an arm of the study looking at female-only
units. As it is, they are comparing men-only with mixed units, so there is no
way to determine how much of the effect is due to being in a mixed vs single
gender unit. I recall in England that women did better academically in single-
sex schools than they did in mixed schools. It’s conceivable the same might
(or might not) be true here.

Of course, they also need to ensure equivalent levels of fitness and
experience, which doesn’t seem to have been the case here.

~~~
whb07
There wouldn’t be a critical number of women required to create a standard
Marine rifle platoon.

You’re essentially talking of 3 squads of 12+ people/squad. Never mind a
supporting platoon of weapons(machine guns/mortars/assault) which is 40+
members.

So on a good day you’re talking of maybe 50 seriously jacked women (just to
compare to an average male) that has to choose to become part of the infantry.

Do you know how you hear “there are no devs anywhere! Lol zomg “ well, this
actually applies to the military in general. Never mind finding super jacked
women who are choosing to go to the military, then pick the infantry, then
pick the Marines.

So out of all that, as a young woman going to the military,why would I go do
infantry and be miserable in water/desert, no showers for weeks on end,
carrying heavy equipment for miles.... or I could get the same pay and be
promoted faster as a clerk/accounting/cook/driver.

Israel is able to have some women sniper platoons (who are pretty hot) because
they require mandatory service.

Source: Marine and yes I’ve seen the female IDF

Edit: English

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rootw0rm
didn't bother to read the article, but is it perhaps partly due to the fact
that women are more likely to report their injuries compared to men? There can
be a lot of pressure on men to just "suck it up" and not report injuries.

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jcranmer
The breakdown of incidence reports strongly suggests that the cause is
entirely predictable: loading up individuals to carry more than they can carry
in good health, which is going to affect women (which are disproportionately
smaller and less massive) more than men. The study made no attempt to control
for that, which is quite frankly irresponsible.

~~~
lainga
Don't you have to carry the same amount of equipment, and thus equal weight,
as a soldier of any gender?

~~~
jcranmer
Yes. As I mentioned in another comment, however, pretty much everyone who
wants to expand these sorts of positions to women expect that they would be
held to the same standards (e.g., fitness requirements) that men in these
positions, while the study itself drew from women based only on the current
fitness standards, which are easier for women than men.

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tajen
The Israel army is famous for both the high rate of permanent injury of women
during training, and for refusing to admit it, a la James Damore:
[https://youtu.be/iUSFF4NI_Us](https://youtu.be/iUSFF4NI_Us)

