Women in Combat: Are the Risks to Combat Effectiveness Too Great?

Abstract

This monograph examines whether introducing women into combat units would negatively affect unit cohesion and subsequently combat effectiveness. It describes the physical, cybernetic, and moral domains of war and shows the relevance of the moral domain with cohesion as a subelement and its effect on combat effectiveness. The monograph describes a model for building cohesion and then cites conclusions from studies on cohesion and combat effectiveness. The cohesion model and the studies indicate that cohesion is too complex a phenomenon to be able to isolate one factor, i.e. gender of unit members, as the cause of any change unit cohesion. Women in combat, Moral domain, Cohesion, Combat effectiveness.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 1991
Accession Number
ADA258247

Entities

People

  • Vickie J. Saimons

Organizations

  • United States Army Command and General Staff College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Human Systems
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Army Personnel
  • Civil War
  • Combat Effectiveness
  • Command And Control
  • Doctrine
  • Fire Fighting
  • Group Dynamics
  • Minority Groups
  • National Security
  • New York
  • Operations Research
  • Schools
  • Second World War
  • Social Sciences
  • United States
  • War Colleges
  • Warfare

Fields of Study

  • Engineering

Readers

  • Military Leadership and Professional Education.
  • Theoretical Analysis.