Women in Combat
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
20 Sep 2009
There's a push at the moment to allow women in the Australian Defence Force to serve in front-line combat positions. It is one of the silliest ideas of the year so far, but silly ideas can have serious consequences.
It is not clear how strong this push is. Perhaps someone is just flying a kite or looking for a research grant. But like the suggestion that polygamy should be legalised, women in combat is an idea that needs to be refuted strongly and concisely. Like polygamy, it would change women's lives - and Australia - immeasurably for the worse.
Women's strength and ingenuity, their courage and capacity for self-sacrifice, are not in question. Women often display all these in greater quantities than men. But do we really want to expose those who are the source of life and love in human communities to the horror of the battlefield, just so the defence bureaucracy can meet recruitment targets and feminists can tick another item off their equality agenda?
It's bad enough that men have to take on the burden of combat, often at the cost of a terrible death or shocking disability. Many who return from battle physically untouched often suffer from post-traumatic stress for years with devastating consequences. The effects on children whose mothers have been crippled by PTS after combat does not bear considering.
Western soldiers taken prisoner or hostage on the battlefield can expect little mercy in today's wars. Women combat soldiers could expect even less, especially if they fell into the hands of misogynistic enemies like the Taliban or the militias in Somalia and Sudan.
What happens if Australia reintroduces conscription in the future? Obviously all draftees, men and women, could be sent to the front-line. What a great victory for women's rights that would be.
Men have no monopoly on violence, aggression, and insensitivity, but young men particularly are streets ahead of women on this score. It's nothing praiseworthy, but it does mean that men are generally better equipped for fighting when the need arises than women.
Likewise, women don't have the franchise on peacemaking, negotiating and nurturing, but they clearly have more than a competitive advantage in these areas compared to men. Do we really have to spell these things out?
We have spent almost half a century pretending the differences between men and women don't matter. We would do well to remember that while God always forgives, and people sometimes forgive, nature never forgives.
