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The RUSI Journal

Volume 158, Issue 1, 2013

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Women on the Front Line

Women in Combat

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DOI:: 10.1080/03071847.2013.774634

Anthony King

pages 4-11

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Published online: 08 Mar 2013

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Abstract

The US secretary of defense announced in January 2013 that, from 2016, women will be allowed to serve in ground-combat roles in the US armed forces. The UK is likely to soon be faced with the need to make a similarly historic decision, having answered key questions such as what is actually known so far about the integration of women into combat units, and its potential impact on cohesion. Anthony King provides a fascinating comparison of the experiences of several Western armed forces, and concludes that in today's world of professional armies, it is not gender that determines cohesion, but training and competence.

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Published online: 08 Mar 2013

Author notes

Anthony King -
Anthony King is a professor of sociology at the University of Exeter and currently a visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. His most recent books are The Transformation of Europe's Armed Forces (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and The Combat Soldier: Infantry Tactics and Cohesion in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries (Oxford University Press, 2013), on which this article is based. He has acted as a mentor and adviser to the armed forces for a number of years and was a member of the ISAF RC (S)'s Prism Cell in 2009–10