Report: Women should be allowed to serve in combat

Interesting write-up. I disagree with many of her assumptions and conclusions, but it remains to be seen if indeed that results of the recruits as a whole do fall when women are integrated into training.

She made that claim, yes, but I don't see where she backed it up with evidence. I took it as an opinion that could be interpreted a couple of different ways. For example, when she says that "ABC.com reports that “Mabus also warned Marine Corps leaders not to use any concerns about integrating women into combat jobs as ways to delay the process.”, it sounded to me as if the order had been implemented and it was time to follow orders - that's what chain of command is for, right? That doesn't sound like "trying to whitewash results, that sounds like making sure orders are carried out. But that's my take on it, I'm sure there's more to the story than this.

In this paragraph:

In the 1999 Congressional Commission on Military Training and Gender-Related Issues, the commission’s chairman, Anita Blair said, “gender-integrated training entails special problems that simply do not arise in gender-separate training. These problems revolve around the difficulties of providing appropriate privacy for both sexes, accommodating fundamental physiological differences, and controlling sexual conduct.”

I don't see an issue brought up about standards being changed, that sounds like logistics and behavior issues.

This sentence to me is absurd and smacks of old-fashioned excuses for why women should be refused equal opportunity:

If there’s one thing that’s primal and unchanging, it’s that men and women are distracted by each other.

Sorry, but I call BS. When there's a job to be done, it gets done if the people working together are professionals and our military training is the best in the world. Granted this woman served and I don't discount her experience, but I think it's her opinion that men and women can't work together professionally; I've read plenty of other contradictory opinions. Similarly, I'd like to see evidence backing up this claim she made:

The repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has worked to sexualize areas that were once neutral, worsening these negative impacts.

From what I've understood when combat jobs were initially opened up, it was to provide equality for those women who met the standards that weren't going to change. There will always be women who excel and perform better than the average male; they should not be held back or denied the opportunity. Yes, standards should not be lowered just to allow women in, as that would make our forces less effective. I just don't see this woman's cited claims as backing up her assertion that standards will be lowered or results whitewashed as she's made too many dubious claims without evidence.

The study that was originally published was criticized for "the validity of its findings and whether it was engineered to keep women out of combat units" ( New Details Question Validity of Marine Corps Gender-Integration Study ).

Controversial Marine Corps Study On Gender Integration Published In Full
Tom Bowman and Laura Wagner
Updated November 5, 2015

In September, the U.S. Marine Corps released a four-page summary of a yearlong study that found that all-male units were faster, more lethal and able to evacuate casualties in less time than mixed-gender units. The study, which can be viewed in full below, was bashed by critics for being biased.

NPR was able to independently obtain the full 978-page Marine Corps study. Several key findings are below.