Quote:
Originally Posted by afchic
With all this talk of gender issues, I wonder what you all think about women being at the service academies.
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Ooh-ooh, pick me, pick me!
Glad you brought up the point. I absolutely believe that women deserve to be at the federal service academies, as those schools provide as much as 25% of the officers in a year group that fill vacancies across all billets. Thus, if you want to sustain the officer corps in, using Army examples, the Transportation Corps, Corps of Engineers, Aviation, Ordnance or Quartermaster Corps, then you need to produce able young officers to take those positions.
However, speaking from (dated) experience, fraternization issues were rampant at USMA. There's a reason that members of the opposite sex aren't allowed to be in the same room with the door closed. Not that that stopped enterprising young cadets with creativity and will, as evidenced by the 2 females from my class that left for a year due to pregnancy, and one that joined my class in our senior year after a year's 'leave' for the same reason. Fortunately, most 'couples' were smarter or more careful, and used protection to avoid that hiccup. Then there's my classmate that had an affair with an LTC instructor, who left his wife and family for her after she graduated. There were other male instructor/female student affairs as well, but most were kept very quiet. Sadly, there were a number of sexual assault charges filed each year; some resulted in the male being disciplined, others in the female being countercharged and disciplined for filing false charges. All this is to say that there was plenty of gender-based problems to go around at USMA back then, and that was over a decade after the first class including women graduated. None of this should be used to say women don't belong at the academies, but to use the schools as an example of how gender doesn't play an influential role in such an enviroment isn't accurate.
Anecdotally, I can reply to the question about men playing on women's sports team and vice-versa. When I was in high school, one sport option for women in the fall was field hockey. My junior year, we had a male Spanish exchange student. Apparently, field hockey is a popular men's sport in Europe (go figure). So, being very talented in a sport he played for years growing up, the student convinced another US male from my class to go out for the team with him. There were no rules against it, so both were accepted onto the team. Our team dominated other all-girl teams that season, and won the state title. Soon after, amid a great deal of controversy, the state high school sports governing body proscribed boys from playing on girls sports teams. My sophmore year, a girl decided to play tackle football for another team in our league. She had to stop playing halfway through the season after taking some punishing hits in the first few games that caused some painful (but fortunately not serious or long-term) injuries. Seems guys on opposing teams had no issues with treating her like any other male player.
As for women playing on men's teams at the collegiate level, this example certainly doesn't stand as the only example of what will happen, but it obviously is a possibility that can adversely affect the effectiveness of the entire team, and even the entire program:
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=1737416