Gutmann is author of the recently-released book
The Kinder, Gentler Military

NR: In your book, you describe a military in the throes of political correctness — engaged in a "huge social experiment" of gender integration. What are the outcomes of this experiment thus far?

Stephanie Gutmann: I wasn't referring to gender integration, because the forces have been integrated since World War II. What I was referring to was the extent of the use of women in the ’90s. In the ’90s, there was a big acceleration in the integration program. There was much more attention put on recruiting women. The percentage of women in the force jumped....And [the military] didn't just increase the numbers; there was a big push to open areas and jobs that had been closed before.

NR: What were the outcomes of that push to introduce women into all sorts of new areas and in much greater numbers?

Gutmann: The outcome has been bad, but only because it was attempted so badly....People got so desperate about having women for their number value — their statistical value — that quotas were set. Actually, quotas were used in the ’80s too, but [in the ’90s] we began chasing women around with butterfly nets, and standards were dropped or totally ignored. There was a big push in competition among the services to show who was more female friendly -- who had the least sexist, misogynist, woman-hating culture. For instance, the Navy and the Air Force got in a dead-heat competition over who would have the first woman jet pilot. There were women in the pipeline, but they were jumped ahead of men precisely because people were saying "we need women jet pilots to put on TV." And of course many people believe that that's why the pilot Kara Hultgreen died. The real villain was the U.S. Navy, which just wanted to use her as a symbol, and she was not trained enough. She needed more training, that's all.

NR: You traveled to quite a few bases around the country. Did you witness anything especially astonishing as you researched this book?

Gutmann: The thing that I was most astonished by was what basic training has become in the Army and the Navy — I hear it's that way in the Air Force as well, but I have seen that it has not changed so much in the Marines. I start my book with a chapter on a day I spent at Fort Jackson, which takes most of the female recruits. The drill sergeants there kind of snarl about being forced to do a tour at "Camp Jackson." The atmosphere was like a Sunday-school picnic. There was nothing terribly challenging physically, and even when there was something [somewhat] challenging, people were babied along. It was not a "weeding-out" atmosphere. It was not a test and a challenge. The approach was: "Gosh, would you please do this. We really need you to do this. It's fun, try it."

The Navy was the same. I watched a trainer briefing a company of kids — boys and girls — to do what is now called the "confidence course." It used to be called the obstacle course. So he was briefing these kids about the obstacle-course exercise and he was saying: "Don't worry if you can't do some of these exercises. What we're trying to do here is to get people to work as a team...so if you see one of your teammates struggling with an exercise, you stop what you're doing and go help him or her." The whole competition element was absolutely banished, and it was a very surreal sight. The teammates that ended up having trouble and needing help on exercises like the pull-up bars and the rope climb were overwhelming the women. So very quickly I'm looking at [what] looked like a modern dance performance. I'm looking at a bunch of guys partnering women — pushing them up and down on the chin-up bars and getting under them on the ropes, trying to give them a shove up the rope, things like that.

NR: How did the women recruits and soldiers with whom you spoke perceive the "New Military"? And did they welcome these changes?

Gutmann: These are pretty young people, and a lot of the women I talked to seemed to have very little conception of what the military was supposed to be like. I talked to a girl who was really shocked; she said: "Gosh, they just keep yelling at us." Of course, the yelling I heard was very mild. It was almost pro forma — drill sergeants are supposed to yell, so we're going to yell every once in a while.

NR: If this full-bore and rapid gender integration in the armed services has had a negative impact on readiness and morale, why don't we hear more about this from officers and top brass?

Gutmann: Because it is absolute career death to talk about it — to say anything that the brass will perceive as negative about women. Something as straightforward as that women recruits seem more prone to develop, say, shin splints on the longer unit marches. You're not even really saying anything negative about women because it's the brass that have created this situation. I don't blame any of the women for succumbing to a recruiter's pitch. Recruiters are very, very persistent and the military offers young people a really good deal. The people at fault here are Congress and the brass. [They] have made it completely politically incorrect to say: "I've got too many girls who've been assigned to jobs that they can't handle" or "I don't think boot camp should be this soft — I think we should start throwing out people who are really physically unfit." The brass have decided that this is their most important mandate, and they're going to achieve it.

Everybody's very afraid of being labeled anti-woman, misogynist, sexist. They're very afraid of headlines — any kind of headline that suggests that they're being mean to women. And the military's been covered so badly, I don't blame them for being very suspicious of the press.

NR: How can the armed forces resolve the problems you describe? What would be the first steps you would recommend?

Gutmann: The first step would be to have new leadership that would say: We're going to be gender-blind in recruitment, and promotion, and assignment. We're going to pick the best person for the job, and we are not going to have any more quotas. We're going to get over this conviction that we need to prove to anybody — like Congress — that we aren't a mean, sexist, woman-hating culture.

They are going to have to stop buying into their bad press. They're going to have to stop listening to groups like NOW, which have come up with these extravagant descriptions of this "woman-hating" culture.

Then they can end gender-integrated training, because it doesn't give the boys the kind of challenge they've been looking for, and because both sexes are way too distracted by the possibility of [sexual relations]." This is the time they should learn that a career with the military means discipline. As far as the guys who find it too easy, that's their welcome to the military. That's the first stage, and if they get that turned off in basic training, they won't follow through.

And we have to develop a new kind of national service to cover a lot of the stuff that we have infantry-trained troops doing in places like Kosovo. We shouldn't take people who've been trained to be killers and warriors — we can't expect them to put up with months and months of having to act like Red Cross workers and social workers. They're doing it, but we can't expect that without a real drop in morale.

NR: Do you think that there will be changes? What will spur honest reevaluation and change like you have prescribed? Is it something that is on the horizon now?

Gutmann: I think we have already started cycling back to a more traditional military in one sense: A lot of women tried the military in the early ’90s when there was such a huge push. A lot of women tried it and weren't so crazy about it. They are also not jumping into the sort of vaunted jobs that supposedly they were pining for — the jobs that are closer to combat.

The other thing that could happen is we could have a real military scare. We could have some incident where we suffered terrible casualties, and suddenly the public would realize that we've got to have a strong force. We want every one of those people out there to be the best. And the public will stop standing for "symbolic soldiers." They're going to demand high standards and enforcement of standards.

NR: Any last thoughts on women serving in combat situations? In your book, you came out for equal standards for all. So, if there are women who can cut it in those situations and can perform up to the level of men, you didn't have any opposition to that?

Gutmann: I tend to go back and forth on this question. After all, as I say in my introduction, I didn't aim to provide all the answers and all the data to support those answers. I intended merely to put some new information on the table.

I do think it's significant that about ten out of ten of the combat veterans I've spoken with believe mixed-sex ground units wouldn't work: An army unit is supposed to be, as much as possible, a unit, filled with interchangeable elements.