10/26/2005: All-woman C-130 crew

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by sktzofrenic

Times are changing? In a world where there were no firearms a woman would be laughed to scorn if she joined the military. But just because you can shoot a gun doesn't mean you have the mental toughness to handle combat situations. Women are a liability on the field...

What are you basing this on? From USA Today:

Army women in support units exposed to combat don't have higher post-traumatic stress or depression rates than their male counterparts a few months after leaving Iraq, according to a pilot study due Thursday.
It's believed to be the first research comparing the mental health of men and women doing violence-prone support jobs — medics, mechanics, drivers — in Iraq, says Army Lt. Col. Carl Castro, chief of military psychiatry at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

"If the argument is, women can't handle the stresses of combat as well as men, we see no evidence of a sex difference in these units," Castro says. Women can't serve in frontline combat, "but truck drivers in Iraq have the dangerous jobs," he says, and Army women fill about 10% of such support jobs.

Castro gave mental disorder screening tests to a random sample of men and women in these posts — 50 women and 300 men — three months after ending deployment. He says there wasn't a statistical difference between the two sexes: about 6% of men had depression, 8% of women; 11% of the men and 12% of women had PTSD symptoms.

"It's possible that sex differences could develop later on," says Castro, "but right now we don't think women need any more mental health help than men."

Edited for length - full article here http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/...s-stress_x.htm