Combat Arms and the fairer sex is nothing new in Canada. The SD&G Highlanders (a reserve infantry regiment in 33 Brigade) was the first infantry unit in Canada to have a female "Infantry" commanading officer (she could do everything a male could do in the infantry world). As well, 41 Brigade in Calgary had a female brigade commander; armoured regiments in Canada have had female troop commanders, and finally, Captain Nichola Goddard was one of the best FOO's Canadian Artillery produced. May God rest her soul, as she was killed in combat operations in Afganistan.
So, when we say that women have no room in Combat Arms, my response, BALLS! I have served with some of the finest combat arms types of the fairer sex, and there have never been issues.

Thanks,

Ubique

Art

Poor thing, she looks cold....

I would let her to command for a while . I have to check if my tank helmet fits my wife...

[
Hmm, I know the German forces issue HAIRNETS to their MALE & female soldiers, so 'could be' a mis-identification still? (g)[/quote]

Those days are long gone, the Dutch never even bothered to issued hairnets to their troops in the 80-ties.
I have to agree with Art, being an ex-TC myself and company XO it‘s more down to doing the job and getting it done right.
Although I never had a female crew member onboard, I have worked with some very good female soldiers, NCO and Officers out preforming their male colleagues by far. This whole gender discussion it out the window once the shooting starts and bullets don‘t really care who they hit.

Christopher

Served with Men and Women in the US Army. Women were mostly in the combat support or medics. No combat arms service. (I was a Forward Observer).

I dealt with far more pissy men being upset to serve with a woman around than I ever had to deal with pissy women. Most women were high strung at having too many oversexed men around them constantly hitting on them, ESPECIALLY after drinking too much.

So I say whoever gets the job done, we can work around the rest.

hi all i thought i might chip in on this discussion, i dont have a problem with women soldiers
but as an ex 165 Queens Royal Lancer & Queens Royal Lancer i have done the MedimRecce & MBT roles until Oct 2000. the role of reconascence and mbt are physicly too demanding,i have even seen men struggle with lifting a challenger radiator louver. and track bashing a tank is bloody hard work. so the female soldier is for the pressent excluded from the RAC in the uk, as for how long in these politicaly enlightend times who knows....cheers Noel

I think the closest you could get for the U.S. Army is an M1117 ASV since we have female MP's. I'm an ASV crewman and for awhile I had a TC who was a female and a gunner who was also female. We named our truck Team Tampon. That said, in full battle rattle, there is really no way to tell male and female apart, especially in 1/35th scale, and you shouldn't have female Soldiers with their hair down in 99% of situations so really it's a moot point.

no female armoured crew members in serving in RAAC units in Australia however having said that when i was posted to a signals unit there were female crew members in the Sig squadron

Yes, the Spanish Armed Forces accept women in all units, including combat units and tank crews. The Spanish Armed Forces is one of the armed forces in the world with the highest % of women incorporated : in 2010, 11% of all Spanish soldiers were women. Cheers, Mark (Madrid)

"Unusual" is not an easy word to define. Let's put it this way, there were very few Russian women in combat roles relative to the size of forces. The famous pilots were a handful and flew mostly night recon. It's not easy getting any data about the fabled Soviet sniper: not even sure if it was a MOS or ad-hoc groups as was the case in WWI. (Research on the Eastern Front can move quickly depending upon the mood of an archivist or government policy, so I could stand correction here.) It is certainly true that the line between combat and non-combat was a lot more vague on the Eastern Front than in the West or the Pacific. One local counter-attack and you could have had some Red Army women truck drivers serving as snipers. (It does seem to be the case that in prewar Russia Stalin encouraged the development of hunting and shooting clubs in the USSR. Trotsky was a huge hunting fan - Stalin might have wanted to one-up him. Who knows. Obviously nobody was bringing their rifles home at night, but you did have an unusual number of trained marksmen. No idea if women were involved - I'd guess they were. It's hard to say how much good that did. They may still exist. Lee Harvey Oswald belonged to one when he lived in the USSR. We had thousands of men (and a few women - my mother among them) that belonged to the Civil Air Patrol which dispensed basic flight training. Few every became combat pilots. One thing's for sure: Soviet propaganda would have looked for any such stories for domestic consumption. The Soviets by necessity engaged the entire population into the war effort in a way unthinkable in the West.
I'd guess that the role played by women in the Red military reflected the very tortured policy toward women in Stalin's kingdom. Official ideology was complete equality of the sexes. And I dare say that in many fields there were areas open to women more so than in the West. (Medical profession comes to mind.) Stalin, however, was a proper patriarch. There were no women in his inner circle (his wife's suicide may have been the even that pushed him into loony-land); he was very distant from any kind of social utopian thought (stuff like free love) that accompanied the early Revolution; abortion was absolutely forbidden because Stalin wanted to build up the country's population after the horrible losses of the wars and famines that plagued the country between 1914-1930. (Plenty of women in the Gulag though.) So there was a big push on to have babies for the Motherland. The government used to give out medals. It might have helped too. The USSR had a much higher population growth rate than Germany in the 20s - the country was demographically very young in 1941. Saved the USSR. In was in the post Stalin era that Russia started to pave the way for the brave new world with legal abortion (actually used as birth control - not good), rapid increase in women in all professions, sky-rocketing divorce rate and astounding drop in birth rate. Now Putin and company are desperately finding ways to get people to have babies again. Solidarity forever.
Eric

I have had female crew members in my crew, and have had a female troop officer in the sandbox and had no problems at all.

Anthony

Italian Army has female crewmembers on board of Ariete and Centauro (not sure about the VCC Dardo). I've seen them mainly as drivers and loaders but I've heard about them as gunners too.

Ciao
Gaetano

NOT always, I am left handed and have never worn a watch on my left wrist since 1962 . I even had an Anal Drill CPL during Rookies that insisted it be worn on the left for uniformity so I stopped wearing it until he was out of the picture.
Cheers

Last I knew, no women are permitted to be assigned to "Combat Arms" MOS...at least as far as the U.S. Army is concerned. I don't think that has changed....yet.

Now I've never felt the need to serve in the military myself, but I do spend a lot of time with higher densities of the fairer sex; it's a given if you study Art History nowadays. In order to draw a parallel: Imagine being a male crewman on a tank, the others are female, they are the driver, radio op, commander, gunner and you are the loader. My personal opinion is that if you have half a braincell, it makes no difference. If you don't have the discipline to concentrate on your job if there is a woman in your team, you don't have the discipline to serve on the most destrucive force known in land warfare. Period.

As for physical strength...I don't think that is a problem: they invented PT for that. If something with a pituary gland can't get the job done, get something with an hydraulic arm and power traverse.

It was on either the history or military channels "ten greatest tanks of all time"There was a young lady from Israel that was very proud of her merkava!don't know if she was active duty or instructor.

Sweden and Denmark allows females in tanks.
I know of swedish female tankers of all categories (driver, gunner, loader and commander) and I know of danish female gunners, drivers and loaders that served in Bosnia.
I have served with females and have had female conscripts when I worked as an instructor and their gender was never an issue.
It all comes down to the person, if the person can't hack it it doesn't matter if their male or female.

in the US, you wont see any women in combat roles. IE: infantry/tanks. i can infantry. but, tanks doesnt really add up a whole lot. alot of mechanics, that are female, that repair tanks, HMMMV;s, and aircraft. so, not being able to repair tracks or deal with heavy equipment, doesnt seem to be the issue. within the tank, the most physical demanding position is a loader. but, alot of tanks are setup to practically load for you, these days. i know in the abrams, its a matter of unloading a shell from the magazine hold and pivoting to the breach. i dont even think there are women serving in amtraks or lav's?

Aurora Models (Japan) offers 3 or 4 female tanker gals that could very well be posed as IDF basic tank op instructors. Cast metal parts. I've some of his other figs and they are pretty nice.
I'd like to see both genders do mandatory 2 yr terms to earn right to vote and own property in U.S.
Cheers!

german female tankers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvtJFzwUjiQ&feature=related

In Singapore, we have a female captain commanding a LEOPARD 2A4...

Her pics is on google.