Sexuality, Cohesion, Masculinity and Combat Motivation: Designing Personnel Policy to Sustain Capability
Abstract
How might mixing the sexes affect the capability of small combat teams?
As Australia integrates women into its combat arms, the policy challenges that sexuality presents may prove more enduring than those of gender. Objections to integration based on women’s capabilities are expected to quickly become redundant, although the masculine culture of combat units demands careful management. Hyper-masculinity can undoubtedly be hostile to women, but is a long-established way to meet the profoundly unnatural psychological demands of close combat. Effective integration therefore appears to require careful adjustment of Army’s methods of building team cohesion. Furthermore, even gender-neutral approaches to generating the cohesion that is so vital for combat arms will not change the potential for sexual interaction that mixing genders creates. The social dynamics involved represent some level of risk to the trust on which cohesion depends.
How real is this risk to capability from sexuality? That is the overarching enquiry of this article, which also explores key notions of motivation, cohesion and masculinity and their relationship with sexuality itself. Although possible approaches are described, as yet not enough is known to make policy recommendations. Policy- makers simply don’t know what levels of sexual interaction actually occur during training and operations, how disruptive they may or may not be, nor the extent to which existing prohibitions and policies modify behaviour. This article is, above all, a plea to investigate these questions and how sexuality, trust and cohesion interact.
Introduction
The Australian Army is integrating women into combat units. To realise the capability improvements this offers, leaders and policy-makers have a responsibility to identify and manage possible risks. Concerns based on individual female performance appear misplaced, but reduced cohesion is plausible given the damage to trust that can occur through both unwanted and consensual sexually motivated behaviour. Harassment has a clear disciplinary, administrative and capability impact and has prompted robust policy responses. Policy concerning consensual sexuality appears to have received little attention, although its parameters may have some impact on unacceptable behaviour. Furthermore, there is a need to resolve the tensions between a gender-neutral ideal and the value of exaggerated or ‘hyper’ masculinity for combat team cohesion.
Concerns about combat-arm gender integration may well prove unfounded and in retrospect may seem as spurious as the arguments long proposed against the integration of African-American soldiers in the US military or gay soldiers here. On the other hand, gender differences in sexual attitudes, response and behaviour appear to have a biological basis, evolving from women’s greater risks and costs of reproduction. These differences may be more resistant to cultural change than racism or homophobia and the costs and benefits of integration may be perceived very differently by men and women. Certainly, traditional, proven approaches to generating combat group cohesion have features that appear antagonistic to integration and team trust is vulnerable to likely sexual interactions. If Army ignores these complexities or simply issues behavioural directives, effective integration may be delayed or compromised.
This article seeks to prompt and inform debate and poses several fundamental questions: how might sexuality impact on cohesion and the motivation to fight? What levels of consensual sexual interaction, if any, can and should be accepted in the military combat team? What policy approaches might achieve these desired levels and what are the advantages and risks of coercive penalties? This discussion does not offer more than tentative answers, but it does explain why sexual behaviour is resistant to control and offers evidence of the power of such behaviour. To avoid sensationalising the discussion, specific Australian Defence Force (ADF) examples are not used, although both anecdotal and medical data are available.1 A discussion of hyper-masculinity has a central role because it is strongly linked to cohesion and motivation.
The non-problem of female performance
Many of the difficulties experienced by other militaries in their efforts to integrate women flow from gender differences in physical performance, use of different standards (such as the US ‘equality of effort’ metric) and consequent actual or perceived dilution of capability.2 The initial failure of Canada’s 1989 integration of women in the infantry had its roots in male resentment of females who fell short of established performance standards but were retained to meet politically mandated quotas.3 To avoid this, the government has directed that objective physical performance standards be applied in Australia.4
A British survey conducted in 20105 indicates that, in countries where the option exists, few women can or want to achieve6 combat-arm standards; thus females comprise only around 1% of integrated combat units for armies worldwide.7 Consequently, the likely outcome is a small cohort of highly motivated women, ‘distilled’ by physical tests to rank above the male average on many other measures including leadership potential. A disproportionate number will probably serve as officers or in the Special Forces without any positive discrimination.8 This distillation can be expected to compensate for gender-based differences9 in average psychological performance such as the greater physical aggressiveness of males from an early age that some critics of integration highlight.10 Women’s apparent lower risk preferences and subtly different cognition are a potential asset for the adaptive thinking that Army seeks,11 although a recent study showed that, when freed from social norms, their military decision-making may be as aggressive as that of their male counterparts.12 Meta-studies indicate that the psychological differences between the genders are not categorical but shifting distinctions of degree that selection criteria can address.13 Consequently, concerns over performance dilution from integration appear misplaced; however the effect on work group cohesion is less certain.
Integration and combat cohesion
Most, but not all, earlier studies of female integration in training and barracks settings suggested either a possible or actual negative impact on cohesion.14 The 2010 British review of female employment policy took a precautionary stance and recommended against further integration of women because of ‘potential risks associated with maintaining cohesion in small mixed-gender tactical teams engaged in highly-dangerous close-combat operations.’15 That decision was based on inconclusive results from a specially commissioned major study that included the combat troops integration experiences of other nations and the first analysis of the impact of mixed gender on small team cohesion in actual combat.16
This contemporary research is important in identifying potential issues, notwithstanding its small sample size, other (self-acknowledged) methodological limitations and the fact that the female British Army soldiers were not fighting within fully-integrated teams as will occur under Australian policy.17
Male and female combat veterans who were surveyed perceived risks to cohesion through damage to trust and confidence from factors including the disruptive impact of relationships, male competition for female attention and female flirting or ‘wiles’, especially in barracks.18 The British study also showed that soldiers anticipated that mixing genders would have disruptive effects during combat, including inducing male protective behaviour, although this perception was not necessarily supported by any analysis of combat incidents. Substantiated problems were confined to individual women’s performance in combat and social factors prior to combat. Objective standards will address the former, so the most plausible risks to capability arise from the intersection of social behaviours and cohesion.
Combat motivation, reputation and cohesion
For the typical soldier, combat motivation comes from maintaining reputation, rather than patriotism or ideology. The historian John Keegan19 argues that achieving the ‘admiration of others’ and avoiding their scorn is the psychological mechanism that overcomes exhaustion, terror and the inhibition to kill and keeps an individual fighting.20 The soldier seeks to maintain a self-image that is validated by the wider group. Sometimes the ‘desire of an individual to preserve status in the group is literally stronger than the fear of death.’21 Why would such concerns with reputation evolve? Predispositions should be explained by survival or reproductive advantage. Puny ancestral humans succeeded because they learned to hunt and fight collectively, so it is easy to see why failure to be a reliable coalition partner might be penalised. But why would an instinct to be highly selfless, risk tolerant, aggressive or courageous emerge, since it would reduce survival chances? The most plausible explanation is that such behaviour would offer status and thus reproductive opportunities.22 According to this view, reputation is ultimately a ‘sexual strategy that can be activated in domains (such as war fighting) that appear on the surface to have little to do with reproduction.’23
This phenomenon of individual concern for reputation appears universal in military cultures and it necessarily occurs in the context of well-bonded or cohesive ‘in-groups’. The strongest bonds exist within a ‘primary in-group’, a crew, section or squad that corresponds to an ancestral hunting band. Crucially, members do not simply provide mutual support; they also subconsciously monitor one another constantly for performance and conformity to ‘tribal’ norms. These come from the wider ‘secondary in-group’ or ‘tribe’ from which soldiers draw identity, for instance ‘3 RAR’ or the ‘US Marine Corps’. Cohesion seems to be an altruism-maintaining mechanism and, for the purposes of this article, is the psychological bond which enables an individual’s reputational and emotional motivation to place team and then task interests above personal ones.
Evidently, cohesion plays a vital role in combat units — but what is its relationship to gender? Why did a 1996 ADF study find a ‘pervasive belief in the importance of male bonding for group cohesion and operational effectiveness’ and why do many males believe that females threaten those bonds?24 Undoubtedly male chauvinism plays a part, but there also appear to be other factors at play. The greatest trigger for violence in tribal societies is sexual competition among young males.25 Hannagan and Arrow explain bonding mechanisms as ‘social engineering … to damp down intragroup fighting over women’ and ‘promote victory in war.’26 This accounts for the widespread exclusion of women from hunting and fighting and the ‘transfer of status competition to the intergroup level’. The introduction into a bonded group of ‘others’ who represent potential sexual partners, whether they are of opposite gender or homosexual, may disrupt the social dynamic. This is more than concern over the interloper’s power to provoke sexual desire, although that is a well-researched driver of misogyny.27 The work of feminist scholar Connell offers a different nuance: masculinity is a ‘performance’, usually intended to build and maintain a reputation among other men.28 A person who is dissimilar disrupts the ‘rules of the game’.
Biological differences may also play a role. Humans and chimpanzees share a unique capacity for systematic intra-species warfare that is enabled by a predisposition to form strong coalitions or ‘in-groups’ and adaptably define others as ‘out-groups’. Perceived threats dramatically accentuate these biases. A complex psychological mechanism modifies deep inhibitions against same-species killing, increases aggression and distorts risk perception across a range of decision-making.29 Concurrently, it increases bonding and the sense of group identity.30 Both genders share these inclinations, but not their translation into violence. A propensity for sustained out-group aggression and exaggerated in-group bonding is almost exclusively limited to ‘demonic males’.31 Some neuroscientists32 question the role of testosterone while evolutionary feminists dispute the mechanisms of violence.33 However, even scientists who deny a role for ‘nature’, recognise that male coalitional violence is hardwired by ‘nurture’ into the ‘connections of the brain’.34
None of these observations remotely constitutes an argument that women cannot fight or bond; indeed a reduced female predisposition to testosterone-driven irrational aggression or loss of fine motor skills may enable superior performance in modern war.35 However, it does suggest that both biology and sociology help explain why men may bond differently and more readily than women and why bonding is fundamentally linked to notions of masculinity and its exaggerated form, hyper-masculinity.
Hyper-masculinity
Across time and place, militaries have exploited ‘hyper-masculine’ behaviour36 as a mechanism to generate both cohesion37 and the aggression required to overcome inhibitions and reliably kill at close quarters.38 It is ‘abnormal conduct for abnormal’ effects. Hyper-masculinity is particularly associated with elite infantry units because it is a proven tool for sustaining the offensive culture required for conventional war. Rosen et al. have also shown such hyper-masculinity to be associated with ‘greater vertical and horizontal cohesion and readiness’ across many types of unit because it supports psychological readiness for combat.39 Exaggerated sexuality may play a role by altering hormone levels. Certainly, primitive tribal societies used sexual arousal to motivate their warriors40 and Roberts has controversially argued that the US Army deliberately exploited sexual hyper-masculinity and myth to motivate troops after D-day.41 Woods cites anthropologist Lionel Tiger as proposing that, in military groups, stereotypically sexually-referenced humour, posturing, language and name-calling combines with roughhousing to raise testosterone levels as a process of displaying and testing psychological fitness to fight and build a ‘tough aggressive self-image for the soldier’ and the group.42 As described earlier, the group is regulated not only by demanding exaggerated masculine traits but by seeking out and condemning those that the group conceptualises as non- masculine: currently this uses misogynistic labels such as ‘feminine’ as well as homophobic ones such as ‘gay’, but historically hyper-masculinity has also been conceived as homosexual, most famously by the Spartans.
Group repression of the non-masculine inevitably decreases male acceptance of women: in practice it is often hostile, as illustrated by Wadham’s description of a 1980s Australian infantry culture, based on his service in 2/4 RAR, that denigrates the feminine and females.43 A zero-tolerance approach to harassment has curbed blatant misogyny, but overt sexuality remains part of the contemporary masculine military environment. Flood’s study of ADFA cadets found that ‘sexual activity is a key path to masculine status … other men are the audience … Heterosexual sex can be a medium for male bonding.’44 This is hardly different from any social grouping in which young men are a majority (an engineering faculty for example). The boundary between normal assertive male sexuality and unacceptable anti- female behaviour is difficult to define. Nevertheless, the Army has far more at stake, and simply prohibiting clearly unacceptable behaviour does not create a female- friendly environment. The Chief of Army has mandated a fundamental attitudinal shift and it is difficult to see how this can be achieved without addressing hyper- masculinity and modifying the established training and culture of combat units.
There may be other reasons to ‘de-masculinise’ military culture, particularly the need to avoid overreaction in contemporary complex conflict. For example, the macho culture of the Parachute Regiment has been implicated in the 1972 Bloody Sunday shootings in (London) Derry that massively shifted local Northern Irish Nationalist opinion towards armed resistance to the British Army.45 The dilemma for the senior Army leadership is that a hyper-masculine culture is probably both a barrier to gender integration and a risk in counterinsurgency, yet remains a proven cohesion tool in conventional war. For example, the ‘Para’ culture that was counterproductive in Northern Ireland won remarkable battles in the Falklands in 1982. Despite officer and non-commissioned officer casualties, sustained team- level aggression by junior Para soldiers overcame greatly superior forces and well-prepared defences. Given that conventional war is the primary task of the Army, before one cohesion-enabling culture is dismantled an alternative needs to be embedded.
There is fierce academic debate over how cohesion is built.46 Although hyper- masculinity is strongly associated with cohesion and combat effectiveness, few military sociologists regard it as essential. Many are critical of exclusive male bonding based on collective rituals of drinking, fighting and sex,47 arguing that cohesion is, or can be, built largely through ‘drills and training’ and in a ‘standard model’ based on ‘trust and teamwork’.48 The more demanding the performance standards achieved, the higher the self-image and mutual confidence and trust of members, but also the higher the standard the individual must attain in order to maintain reputation. This is the approach used by many Special Forces.49 There seems to be no reason cohesion cannot be built along non-gendered lines in mixed units with reputation primarily referenced against concepts of professionalism. However, if an effective non-gendered cohesion model exists, it has yet to be proven by a mixed combat unit in high-intensity, sustained conventional battle. Virtually all female participation in combat has been within masculine military cultures.50 In any event, hyper-masculinity appears to be deeply embedded in combat unit culture and plays an important if unmeasured role. Constructive change in combat units will involve more than ‘tweaking’ current training to strip proscribed ‘masculine’ manifestations and reproducing the mixed culture of support units which is unproven in sustaining close battle. Battles and wars are won by cohesion. The fact that cohesion in mixed support units has proven sufficient for supporting roles is not proof that the same culture will be adequate for those whose job is to kill and maim at close quarters. Analysis and new models are needed and change must be carefully and positively communicated and managed. If manifestations of hyper-masculinity are simply treated as misogyny and dogmatically prohibited without persuasive explanation and this is allowed to be understood by male soldiers as emasculation of their established combat identity, the consequence may be at odds with intent: resentment, demoralisation and clandestine ostracism of women.
Even if Army develops and proves an alternative or modified model for developing cohesion that is effective in combat units, it will remain threatened by human sexuality. It seems obvious that actual sexual relationships in the team will introduce jealousies that will erode trust and threaten the primary loyalty of the individual to the group. The challenge is that even innocent rapport or unacted desire can have a similar effect: possibility is destructive. The condition that will logically sustain trust in small teams is belief that intra-team sexual relationships will not occur. Before leaders can construct policy to support this belief they need to understand the mechanisms that make disruptive sexual interactions likely and thus make that belief so difficult to establish.
The regulatory challenge of consensual sex
Do observers who dismiss sexuality as a policy challenge misjudge the relentless force that maintains life itself? ‘Sex drive’ is not crude inclination striving against considered rational choices, but a subtle and complex distortion of decision- making processes. Human evolutionary success is a result of highly cooperative group behaviour. This became possible when violent male sexual competition was reduced by social order mechanisms, including notions of sexual morality. However, clandestine sex outside socially approved relationships is an effective genetic strategy,51 explaining the propensity for illicit sex demonstrated by non-paternity rates.52 Policy to manage sexuality should understand it as a sophisticated psychological mechanism that appears to modify the sense of right and wrong and allow the disregard of risk in order to rationalise and take opportunities for sex.53
Trust, cohesion and thus capability can also potentially be damaged by sexuality despite little or no sex occurring. The minority group in any mixed-gender community may have increased perceived value and power as social or sexual partners.54 A female US soldier’s account of her Iraq deployment describes abnormal and disconcerting levels of male attention, the psychological pressures to have sex and the ‘double-standard’ social penalties for doing so.55 US studies show that, once the environment becomes sexualised, jealousy and hostility arise not only among competing members of the majority gender, but also towards the minority, who are perceived to have advantages of sexual opportunity and influence. Apparent hostility may reflect suppressed attraction or signal an intention not to compete. Leaders (of either gender) may be harder on the minority sex in order to demonstrate that they do not favour them. Morale and readiness suffer.56 Paradoxically, a US study found that 27% of female veterans reported establishing relationships with a man as a defensive strategy.57 Conscientious effort to police problems can still create an environment sensitised to indications of attraction or favouritism, regardless of whether any relationships develop or not.
The most effective control of sexual behaviour occurs in societies which have strong moral rules and which value reputation and monitor compliance.58 Distinguishing the effects of moral conviction from severe penalties for infidelity adopted in some religious societies is difficult, but criminological theory suggests that certainty of consequence better predicts compliance than the severity of punishment.59 The Kurdish PKK guerrillas are unusual in comprising up to 30% female combatants and boasting a high level of compliance with their rule of total celibacy. Segregation and brutal punishment for sexual relations are bolstered by cultural, ideological and religious belief. However many members are secular, so religiously motivated self-regulation cannot be decisive.60 Cultural willingness to seek out, condemn and punish rule infraction appears to be the control mechanism.
Nevertheless, even severe punishment, unreinforced by strong group moral belief fails, as the execution of pregnant members of World War II communist guerrilla groups demonstrated. Indeed, any punishment for what peers perceive as a non- crime may deter its reporting or encourage its concealment. A British study of sex on deployment showed that few soldiers breached a ban on sex, but for most the prohibition did not influence their actions and, very revealingly, for a substantial minority it acted as a challenge.61
International data shows that soldiers follow or exceed societal norms for levels of sexual activity and defy military constraints intended to preserve capability. About 10% of US servicewomen have an unintended pregnancy62 in any year (twice their national average)63 and 5% of military women deployed during the Gulf War became pregnant despite an almost total ban on sexual behaviour.64 In US surveys over half of respondents reported that prohibited sexual activity occurred in their units,65 which is corroborated by sexual assault66 and STI figures.67 Respondents indicated both past68 and intended defiance of the often-applied ‘blanket rule’ prohibition on sexual relationships.69
One explanation of such defiance is that armies attract ‘high sensation seekers’; men or women who typically have above average levels of testosterone and cortisol,70 are effective soldiers and engage in risky behaviours, including sexual ones,71 especially during deployments.72 These characteristics are shared by many leaders. A persistent minority defy social disapproval, their own codes and military law to conduct affairs that exploit the attractiveness conferred by high status73 and their own capacity to create opportunity.74 This ‘Bathsheba’ effect, named after King David’s manipulation of his position for sexual advantage,75 is supported by the historical record of sexual risk-taking.76 Generals Petraeus and Sinclair are merely the most recent of a pantheon of exemplary commanders, including Eisenhower, MacArthur and Patton, who chose to take the career risks of illicit sex. The pattern extends downwards. A 2012 analysis of US Navy commanding officers dismissed for personal misconduct showed that 48% involved sexual behaviours, typically for ‘conducting an inappropriate relationship’.77
The regulation of sexual behaviour can also be approached as a problem of socialisation. In 1978 Margaret Mead proposed that harassment in the workplace might be controlled by a kind of ‘incest taboo’ in which the very notion of a sexual relationship at work would be abhorrent.78 True desensitisation to attraction depends on a shared early childhood (the ‘Westermarck’ effect), but a socialised taboo may be feasible.79 In the 1980s, the author observed mixed US Air Force logistic units in which a sexuality-controlling social norm had evolved independently of official prohibition. Sex within the working section was taboo (and would be reported if it occurred), sex within the flight was only acceptable within long-term relationships, but sex with a member of the wider squadron or elements beyond was accepted. Hannagan’s discussion of re-engineering gender relations notes the example of Soviet soldiers’ treatment of their female peers as ‘sisters’ (to be protected against the predations of other men) and suggests that this idea could be inculcated alongside a non-fraternisation policy at the section or platoon level, akin to that applied in the chain of command.80
Clearly, proscriptive policy alone will neither control anti-cohesive sexual behaviour nor deliver a truly female-friendly environment. If both those objectives must be met, then an enculturation program seems both needed and problematic. Certainly, much could be achieved without controversy. For instance, Defence media policy might seek to displace hyper-masculine norms by portraying women who display both attributes strongly linked with success in combat and ‘feminine’ traits. Yet social science warns us that this requires fine balance because hostility to ‘outsiders’ is reduced by removing perceptual cues of difference.81 To reduce the perceived ‘threat’ posed by females to the male group it is important to individuate women, for instance emphasising personal and not group achievements.
Deeper changes in culture will require leaders to confront issues of gender and sexuality that have until now been considered private. As other issues recede, sexuality may loom larger. Is Army ready to take the logical step of extending the established combat team value of loyalty to encompass ‘sexual fidelity’ to the team and organisation? Military hyper-masculinity and harassment is strongly linked to predatory, coercive or violent male conceptions of sex. The necessary zero-tolerance approach to unwanted sexual behaviour is unlikely to shift men’s problematic underlying beliefs. Real attitudinal change requires ‘beneficial’ levers such as promoting the advantages to men of more equal models of sex and sexual relationships.82 Are leaders equipped or willing to tackle such topics?
Sex and policy options
Given the above understandings and uncertainties, what policy settings are required to minimise the challenge to combat team cohesion that sexuality appears to represent? Is it desirable or even acceptable to have different approaches in the combat arms or is an Army-wide approach essential? Current regulations and instructions dealing with sexual interactions appear to give commanders considerable scope for interpretation of the proscription of relationships ‘on duty’. Given the importance of minimising sexual relationships within the small work team, and the limits of control, it may be useful to imagine different policy options in order to tease out issues. Policy-makers might consider three broad approaches: ‘strict regulation’, ‘European liberality’ and a compromise labelled ‘enculturation’.
Strict regulation
Strict regulation would apply the current framework more firmly to prohibit sexual relationships at any place on duty, broadly conceived. As a matter of policy, enforcement would be consistent right across the Army with significant penalties for breaches.
The advantage of this approach is that it is simple and scrupulously fair, and explicitly supports the objective of keeping the work environment desexualised and policing harassment. Unfortunately, it is inevitably a method of coercion and not of control, in that the evidence suggests that not all members will be deterred from sexual relationships. These infrequent and clandestine sexual behaviours and their associated scope for later blackmail will occasionally generate destructive unit crises. In the short term and in combat arms units with very small numbers of women the problems are likely to remain perceptual, but this may still undermine the full acceptance of women. In professional units with a high proportion of women it is unclear whether strict regulation would positively de-sexualise working relationships or generate artificial distortions, but one might anticipate a high level of disruptive transgressions in a future conscripted force or a force conducting a sustained and unpopular deployment.
European liberality
A liberal approach approximates that operating in countries such as Germany or Norway where rules reflect likely behaviour.83 Policy would carefully identify a minimum set of situations in which sexual relationships must be prohibited, including where members are on duty, in a small work team or in a direct chain of command and the exchange of sex for benefit. ‘On duty’ would be defined as times when members are actually performing work tasks, on call or directed to rest. In barracks or base areas when off duty, aside from the proscribed relationships, sexual interactions would be treated just as they are in a civilian workforce. Some consideration might be given to better defining the scope for senior members to have relationships with juniors, based on the notion of (chain of command) dependency rather than rank.
The advantage of this approach is that it best aligns with societal norms (indicated by a US survey of office workers in which 60% reported sexual intimacy with a colleague) and is likely to achieve a high degree of acceptance and compliance from generation Y soldiers.84 This approach could also be expected to reduce the potential burden on the disciplinary system. Furthermore, by minimising both the set of behaviours subject to regulation and the penalties prescribed, this policy would support social consensus for disciplinary action. This would in turn be expected to increase the probability of reporting of breaches and the consistency of command action, leading to compliance.
However, the social dynamic effects are unpredictable, particularly where gender imbalances are acute, and the continuing requirement for leaders to police the behaviour of subordinates might become excessive. The Dutch Army offers an example of a relatively liberal attitude to sexual relations on operations. The infantry and artillery units deployed to Kosovo and Bosnia had a small number of embedded women as well as support attachments. A unit commander commented that ‘it’s hard to choose between women’s contribution by softening the masculine atmosphere and the (mainly sexual) dramas that they create.’85
Interestingly, despite more liberal (application of) Dutch regulations, descriptions of the challenges of the sexualisation of the work environment and the level of relationships are very similar to those in US units where sexual interactions were actively repressed. However, in the Dutch account, serious harassment and sexual assault do not appear as prevalent as in US accounts. The notion that liberal policy is associated with reduced harassment is supported by research showing that Dutch servicewomen experience less harassment than British, although other cultural factors are also at play.86 Conversely, a strong link between a repressive attitude to sex and high interpersonal aggression has also been recognised since the 1970s.87 Given an ADF-wide direction to eliminate harassment, this linkage deserves further investigation.
Enculturation
An enculturation or social re-engineering approach would be based on the regulations of a liberal approach, perhaps expanded to exclude relationships between members of defined larger work groups such as platoons. However, the disciplinary tools would be regarded as secondary to a large-scale enculturation program that sought to build sexual taboos. This would be a major evidence-based effort to communicate the problems of sexual relationships within the chain of command and small work teams, presenting such behaviour in terms of letting the team down and articulating the desired behaviour. As is currently done with suicide awareness, all members would be told they have a role in counselling or advising their peers, such that discouraging relationships within a small team is seen as a group responsibility of the team itself.
To be effective, such a program should also quite explicitly indicate between whom, when and where sexual relationships are to be considered healthy and normal. It would be key to communicate the notion that those who happened to be in a position to pursue a sexual relationship would be in a position of privilege and that they have an obligation to act in a way that is considerate of others. A social re-engineering approach might also need mechanisms that allowed the transfer of members between work groups to deal with tensions arising from relationships. The advantage of this approach is that it would probably not only achieve acceptance and compliance, but would support the development of a new Army culture that manages the major challenges of sexual relationships while avoiding the pitfalls of a coercive approach.
Enculturation has attractive features but is not a simple alternative to a stricter or more liberal approach; indeed a policy solution might meld elements of all three as well as other approaches. In any event, policy-makers must define the challenges before determining the policy responses.
Conclusion
This article has argued that, when integrating women into combat teams, the policy challenges of sexuality are distinct from those of sex; the first arise from mixing genders and the second from characteristics of gender. The integration debate has centred on the latter, especially on ‘feminine weakness’ notions grounded in the superior physical performance of the average male and problems where this has been disregarded. However, in Australia, objective performance standards are expected to make such concerns redundant, shifting the focus to the former and confronting elements of ‘hyper-masculinity’. Such culture is a proven and traditional driver of combat motivation and team cohesion, yet its elements are problematic for integration. Building a gender-neutral combat culture requires better understanding of the psychology of reputation and a modified cohesion model.
The real policy challenges of mixing genders concern defining and managing the possible risks to cohesion posed by sexuality. Regardless of whether any sexual relationships actually occur, there is potential for them to affect the social dynamics of the mixed group. The reader has been introduced to the psychological mechanism of sex drive that distorts decision-making in favour of illicit sex. That theory has been supported by data showing a consistent defiance of prohibitions on sex in mixed units (with adverse effects on morale), especially where soldiers are unpersuaded of a moral need for such regulation.
A failure of even severe punishment to deter points to the value of enculturation approaches to regulate sexual behaviour. Such an approach has been contrasted with both strict enforcement and liberality in order to explore policy implications, however no policy recommendations are made: as yet there is insufficient knowledge to do so. Currently, policy-makers simply don’t know what levels of sexual interaction actually occur during training and operations, how disruptive they may, or may not be, nor the extent to which existing prohibitions and policies modify behaviour. There is no empirical basis on which to judge the ‘problem’, or indeed whether there is one.
As Army begins the process of integrating women into combat arms units, there are several questions it must be able to answer if it is to establish appropriate policy settings, especially those related to consensual sexuality:
- Do combat units require a higher level of cohesion than that currently demonstrated in mixed support units?
- What are the appropriate methods, measures and standards for building cohesion for mixed combat units?
- What is the proper role of masculinity in military culture and the building of cohesion?
- What are the factors that determine whether sexual dynamics will threaten trust and thus cohesion?
- What constitutes acceptable sexual behaviour in mixed combat units?
Army needs debate and measurement. Perhaps the concerns explored in this article are unfounded or wildly overstated. This should be demonstrated, not assumed. A confidential survey of sexual attitudes and self-reported behaviours among important sample groups including recruits, leaders of mixed units, combat unit soldiers and veterans would be straightforward, but has not been done: perhaps it is ‘too uncomfortable’? Even if the objective risks prove minimal, until these confronting topics are decisively engaged, clandestine objection to the presence of women anchored in issues of sexuality remains a wellspring for harassment and a roadblock to effective integration. Even, or perhaps especially, ill-founded concerns and incoherent arguments need to be brought out into the open and met with reasoned analysis and persuasion.
Endnotes
1 S. Peacock, J. Debattista and M. Mortlock, The silent epidemic: screening for chlamydia in a military population, ADF Health, 2006, p. 7; B.I. McPhedran, ‘Pregnant Australian troops sent home’, The Daily Telegraph , Sydney, 2010.
2 K. R. Browne, Co-Ed Combat: The New Evidence that Women should not fight the Nations Wars, Penguin, 2007, pp. 19–27.
3 A. N. Wojack, ‘Integrating women into the infantry’, Military Review, Vol. 82, 2002, pp. 67–73.
4 ‘Defence physical employment standards on show’, the Hon. Warren Snowdon MP, Minister for Defence Science and Personnel, 2012 at: http://www.warrensnowdon.com/ (accessed 7 June 2013).
5 P. Cawkill, A. Rogers, S. Knight and L. Spear, Women in Ground Close Combat Roles: The Experiences of other Nations and a Review of the Academic Literature, DSTL, Fareham, 2009.
6 Ibid. Current British infantry physical standards are met by only an estimated 0.1 % of all female recruits and 1.5% of trained female soldiers.
7 The Israelis have a much higher proportion of women in combat arms but these mostly serve in instructor and specialist roles, with only one fully integrated infantry unit.
8 The integration of women in the British Special Reconnaissance Regiment demonstrates both the feasibility of this and their value in unconventional roles.
9 R.H. Baillargeon et al., ‘Gender Differences in Physical Aggression: A Prospective Population- Based Survey of Children Before and After 2 Years of Age’, Developmental Psychology, Vol. 43, No. 1, 2007, p. 13.
10 For example, arguments that typical female lower risk preference and aggression reduces female suitability for close combat. K. R. Browne, ‘The relevance of sex differences in risktaking to the military and the workplace’, Behavioural and Brain Sciences, Vol. 22, 1999.
11 As articulated in Adaptive Campaigning - the Future Land Operating Concept.
12 J.R. Lightdale and D.A. Prentice, ‘Rethinking Sex Differences in Aggression: Aggressive Behavior in the Absence of Social Roles’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 20, No. 1, 1994, p. 34.
13 B.J. Carothers and H.T. Reis, ‘Men and women are from Earth: Examining the latent structure of gender’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 104, No. 2, 2013, p. 385.
14 L.N. Rosen, P.D. Bliese, K.A. Wright and R.K. Gifford, ‘Gender composition and group cohesion in U.S. Army units: A comparison across five studies’, Armed Forces and Society, Vol. 25, 1999.
15 Ministry of Defence, Report on the Review of the Exclusion of Women from Ground Close- Combat Roles, London, 2010.
16 Berkshire Consultancy Ltd, Study of Women In Combat – Investigation of Qualitative Data, Reading, 2009, pp. 30, 35, 63; Berkshire Consultancy Ltd, Study of Women In Combat – Investigation of Quantitative Data, 2010.
17 In the cases of combat analysed in the study, none of the women were permanent members of combat-arm, section-level mixed small teams selected against common physical standards. Group dynamics factors were therefore possibly conflated by performance issues.
18 Berkshire Consultancy Ltd, Study of Women In Combat, 2009. It is worth noting that the concerns about ‘stereotypical’ female behavior such as ‘flirting’ were raised by female soldiers as well as males.
19 J. Keegan, A History of Warfare, Alfred Knopf, 1993, p. 226.
20 Browne, ‘The relevance of sex differences in risktaking to the military and the workplace’, p.139.
21 R. Holmes, Acts of war: The behavior of men in battle, Free Press, 1985, pp. 142–43.
22 D.L. Smith, The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War, St Martin’s Griffin, New York, 2007, pp. 68–81.
23 R.J. Hannagan and H. Arrow, ‘Reengineering Gender Relations in Modern Militaries: An Evolutionary Perspective’, Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2011, p. 308.
24 C. Burton, Women In The Australian Defence Force: Two Studies, Defence Publishing and Visual Communications, Canberra, 1996, Section 4.4.
25 R.K. Dentan, ‘Nonkilling Social Arrangements’ in Nonkilling Societies, J.E. Pim (ed), Center for Global Nonkilling, Honolulu, 2010, p. 150.
26 Hannagan and Arrow, ‘Reengineering Gender Relations in Modern Militaries’, pp. 309, 311.
27 M.J. Landau, et al., ‘The siren’s call: Terror management and the threat of men’s sexual attraction to women’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 90, No. 1, 2006, p. 130.
28 R.W. Connell, Masculinities (2nd edn), University of California Press, Los Angeles, 2005.
29 M. Potts and T. Hayden, Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World, Benbella Books, US, 2010, pp. 39–67.
30 As demonstrated by over 250 experiments worldwide. See T. Pyszczynski et al., ‘Mortality Salience, Martyrdom, and Military Might: The Great Satan Versus the Axis of Evil’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 32, No. 4, April 2006, p. 526.
31 R. Wrangham and D. Peterson, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, Mariner, New York, 1996.
32 D. Albert, M. Walsh and R. Jonik, ‘Aggression in humans: what is its biological foundation?’,
Neuroscience Biobehaviour Review, Vol. 17, No. 4, 1993.
33 L. Liesen, ‘Feminists Need to Look Beyond Evolutionary Psychology for Insights into Human Reproductive Strategies: A Commentary’, Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, Vol. 6, No. 12, 2012, pp. 1–7.
34 P.P. Giorgi, ‘Not Killing Other People’ in Nonkilling Societies, Pim (ed), p. 91.
35 Johnson, D.D.P., et al., Overconfidence in wargames: experimental evidence on expectations, aggression, gender and testosterone. Proceedings of the Royal Society, 2006. 273: p. 2515- 2520.
36 Traditional constructions of hegemonic masculinities include risk-taking, self-discipline, physical toughness and/or muscular development, aggression, violence, emotional control and overt heterosexual desire. R. Hinojosa, ‘Doing Hegemony: Military, Men, and Constructing a Hegemonic Masculinity’, The Journal of Men’s Studies, Vol. 18, 2010, pp. 179–94.
37 Browne, ‘The relevance of sex differences in risktaking to the military and the workplace’, p. 122.
38 The central thesis of David Grossman in his book On Killing: the Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Little Brown and Company, Boston, 1996.
39 L.N. Rosen, K.H. Knudson and P. Fancher, ‘Cohesion and the Culture of Hypermasculinity in
U.S. Army Units’, Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 29, 2003, pp. 325–51.
40 Across different cultures, warrior tribes have been observed to become sexually aroused before going into battle. I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, The Biology of Peace & War Men, Animals & Aggression, Viking, New York, 1979.
41 M.L. Roberts, What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II in France, University of Chicago Press, 2013.
42 G.T. Woods III, Women in the Infantry - The Effect on the Moral Domain, United States Army Command and General Staff College, 1992, p. 17.
43 B. Wadham, Mogan Hunts and Pig Nights: Military Masculinities and the Making of the Arms- Corps Soldier, Australian Sociological Association, Melbourne, 2004.
44 M. Flood, ‘Men, Sex, and Homosociality: How Bonds between Men Shape Their Sexual Relations with Women’, Men and Masculinities, Vol. 10, 2008, p. 339.
45 N. O’Dochartaigh, ‘Bloody Sunday: Error or Design?’, Contemporary British History, Vol. 24, No. 89, 2010, p. 89.
46 A. King, ‘The Existence of Group Cohesion in the Armed Forces: A Response to Guy Siebold’,
Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 33, No. 4, 2007, pp. 638–45.
47 G.L. Siebold, ‘The Essence of Military Group Cohesion’, Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 33, 2007, p. 291.
48 A. King, ‘The Word of Command: Communication and Cohesion in the Military’, Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 32, 2006, p. 493.
49 Noting that this does not exclude hyper-masculine culture in some Special Forces.
50 Smith, The Most Dangerous Animal, p. 82.
51 Dentan, ‘Nonkilling Social Arrangements’, p.134.
52 Worldwide, a small proportion of children’s genetic fathers are not the purported father. M. Gilding, ‘Rampant Misattributed Non-paternity’, People and Place, Vol. 13, 2005.
53 M.D. Baker Jr and J.K. Maner, ‘Risk-taking as a situationally sensitive male mating strategy’,
Evolution and Human Behavior, Vol. 29, 2008, pp. 391–95.
54 M. deYoung in Women in the military, Rita James Simon (ed), Transaction Publishers, 2001, pp. 155–60.
55 K. Williams, Love my Rifle more than you: Young and Female in the US Army, WW Norton & Co, 2005.
56 Browne, ‘The relevance of sex differences in risktaking to the military and the workplace’, p. 195.
57 Sadler et al. cited in Hannagan and Arrow, Reengineering Gender Relations in Modern Militaries, p. 316.
58 B.I. Strassmann et al., ‘Religion as a means to assure paternity’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 109, 2012, p. 9781.
59 D.S. Nagin and G. Pogarsky, ‘Integrating Celerity, Impulsivity, and Extralegal Sanction Threats into a Model of General Deterrence: Theory and Evidence’, Criminology, Vol. 39, 2001, p. 865.
60 M.E. McCullough and B.L.B. Willoughby, ‘Religion, Self-Regulation, and Self-Control: Associations, Explanations, and Implications’, Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 135, 2009, p. 69.
61 I. Palmer, ‘Sexuality and Soldiery, Combat & Condoms, Continence & Cornflakes’, Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps, Vol. 149, 2003, p. 45.
62 Pregnancy policy is beyond the scope of this article except to note the potentially anti-cohesive effects of flawed policy settings. A constant and tangible complaint among those opposing integration in the US is that under the Congressionally–mandated conditions, pregnancy
offers women a choice to avoid or return from a deployment that is not available to men. Controversially, Private Cristie Oliver openly used this to avoid a further tour of Iraq. See Browne, ‘The relevance of sex differences in risktaking to the military and the workplace’.
63 L.D. Lindberg, ‘Unintended pregnancy among women in the US military’, Contraception, Vol. 84, 2011, p. 251.
64 K.R. Browne, The Report of the Military Leadership Diversity Commission: An Inadequate Basis for Lifting the Exclusion of Women from Direct Ground Combat, Wayne State University Law School, Detroit, 2012, p. 25.
65 Browne, ‘The relevance of sex differences in risktaking to the military and the workplace’, p. 195.
66 T.S. Jenson, Soldier rape, our own worst enemy: the effects of deployment, sex ratios, and military branch on the sexual assault of active duty women in the us military, University of Oklahoma, 2011.
67 V. von Sadovszky et al., ‘Army Women’s Reasons for Condom Use and Nonuse’, Women’s Health Issues, Vol. 18, No, 3, 2008. pp. 174–80.
68 Z. A. Kramer, ‘Heterosexuality and Military Service’, Northwestern University Law Review, Vol. 104, 2010, p. 353.
69 V. Goyal, S. Borrero and E.B. Schwarz, ‘Unintended pregnancy and contraception among active-duty servicewomen and veterans’, American journal of obstetrics and gynecology, Vol. 206, 2012, p. 464.
70 S.P. Rosen, War and Human Nature, Princeton University Press, 2007, pp. 71–80.
71 C.J. Thomsen, V.A. Stander, S.K. McWhorter, M.M. Rabenhorst and J.S. Milner, ‘Effects of combat deployment on risky and self-destructive behavior among active duty military personnel’, Journal of Psychiatric Research, Vol. 45, 2011, p. 1330.
72 ‘War effect’, the sexually disinhibiting effect of the prospect of death, separation from family and uncertainty, is the central theme in J. Costello, Love, Sex and War: Changing Values 1939-45, Pan Books, 1985.
73 Rosen, War and Human Nature, pp. 71–80.
74 L.E. Sekerka, J.D. McCarthy and R.P. Bagozzi in Moral Courage in Organizations: Doing the Right Thing at Work, Debra R. Comer and Gina Vega (eds), ME Sharpe, 2011, pp. 137–39.
75 D. Ludwig and C. Longenecker, ‘The Bathsheba Syndrome: The ethical failure of successful leaders’, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 12, No. 4, 1993, pp. 265–73.
76 F. Farley, ‘Great Leaders Have Affairs, Don’t They? General Petraeus—leader, risk-taker, adulterer’, The People’s Professor, Psychology Today, November 2012.
77 M.F. Light, ‘The Navy’s Moral Compass: Commanding Officers and Personal Misconduct’, Naval War College Review, Vol. 65, 2012, p. 145. Note that this includes officers of both genders and that the authour claims that mixed sex crews per se are not the cause.
78 M.A. Case, A few words in favor of cultivating an incest taboo in the workplace, The University of Chicago, 2009.
79 Browne, ‘The relevance of sex differences in risktaking to the military and the workplace’, p. 197.
80 Hannagan and Arrow, Reengineering Gender Relations in Modern Militaries, p. 317.
81 M.V. Vugt, ‘Tribal Instincts, Male Warriors, and The Evolutionary Psychology of Intergroup Relations’ in Values and Empathy across Social Barriers, New York Annals of Academy of Sciences, 2008, p. 17.
82 R. Libby and M. Straus, ‘Make love not war? Sex, sexual meanings, and violence in a sample of university students’, Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1980, pp. 133–48.
83 L. Fjord and G. Ames, ‘Reproductive Health in Eight Navies: A Comparative Report on Education, Prevention Services, and Policies on Pregnancy, Maternity/Paternity Leaves, and Childcare’, Military Medicine, Vol. 174, No. 3, 2009, pp. 278–89.
84 A. Kakabadse and N.K. Kakabadse, Intimacy: An International Survey of the Sex Lives of People at Work, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
85 L. Sion in The Challenging Continuity of Change and the Military: Female Soldiers – Conflict Resolution – South America, proceedings of the Interim ISA RC 01Conference, 2000, Gerhard Kümmel (ed), Sozialwissenschaftliches Institut der Bundeswehr, p. 239.
86 M. Meijer and R.D. Vries, Sexual Harassment in Netherlands Naval Operations, NATO RT Organisation, The Hague, 2008, para 4.
87 J.W. Prescott, ‘Body Pleasure and The Origins Of Violence’, The Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists, November 1975, pp. 10–20.
