98 CHAPTER THREE ■ InternatIonal relatIons theorIest he effectiveness of Female
Marines in Combat: a Fair test?
In September 2015, The Marine Corps Times
reported on the results of a critical experiment:
an attempt to objectively assess whether women
could perform as well as men in combat roles. In the
article, “Mixed- Gender Teams Come Up Short in
Marines’ Infantry Experiment,” a we learned that the
teams the marines assessed were in infantry, armor,
and artillery units, and they were a mix of men and
women. In all but the artillery units, all- male teams
outperformed the mixed teams. All five services—
army, navy, marines, air force, and coast guard— are
facing a defense department mandate to open all
jobs to women by January 1, 2016, or ask for a spe-
cific exception to the mandate by showing it would
harm combat effectiveness. But the experiment
the marines ran points to a conclusion that adding
women to the team hurts combat effectiveness.
What then should the U.S. Marine Corps comman-
dant do? And was the test fair in the first place?
In trying to address these impor tant ques-
tions, international relations theory can help.
Realist IR theory, for example, focuses our atten-
tion on state power—in par tic u lar, the power to
fight and win wars. A realist explanation would
note that the experience of the males who lead
all state militaries would predispose them to view
the inclusion of females in combat roles as a risk,
resulting in opposition to full inclusion of females
in combat roles and, in testing, deliberate bias.
Realists would not oppose women serving in
combat if it could be shown that the net effect of
full inclusion was either neutral or positive; in that
event, a state’s relative power would be enhanced.
Liberal IR theory would likely divide on the
question of women in combat roles. On the
one hand, liberal theorists would note that eco-
nomic development is enhanced dramatically in
states that have included women fully in politics,
economics, and social life (and hurt when women
are subjected to systematic discrimination). To the
extent that economic power is an impor tant aspect
of trade and cooperation, liberals would support
an unbiased examination of the net effect of allow-
ing women to serve in combat. On the other hand,
liberals might observe that both the frequency and
intensity of interstate war has dropped so low that
any modest decrease in military combat effective-
ness (or increase) resulting from full inclusion
of women does not matter that much. Conflict
between states has moved away from war, even in
the developing world, and so the consequences of
risking full inclusion are negligible either way.
Constructivist and feminist IR theories offer
much more direct insight. For constructivists,
who focus much on identity, bias must ultima tely
come down to the costs of males surrendering
their view of “maleness” as protective. That iden-
tity has served to fill the ranks of militaries since
ancient times. If women can demonstrate that,
as a class, they are not in need of protection, then
by extension, males would lose that impor tant
component of their identity as men.
Vari ous feminist international relations theo-
ries offer perhaps the most focused insights into
both questions— what the U.S. Marine Corps com-
mandant might do, and whether the test was fair.
First, if we are comparing women and men, are we
considering how socialization to effort and physi-
cal body types matter? If males have been essen-
tially “training” from a young age, through sports
and employment, for the physical tasks asked of
them and females haven’t, the test is biased. Sec-Behind The headlines