Posted on Apr 22, 2016
What is your advice for Females joining the ranks of the combat jobs in the Military?
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I am an Army Recruiter and it would be great to share.
As we gear up to ship out some of our first female Future Soldiers in combat jobs, I ask of the members of RP, what is your advice for these young soldiers?
Please keep it constructive and nothing along the lines of they shouldn't be able to serve in these positions because that ship has sailed and opinions about how they should not serve in these positions are not going to change anything.
Edit: The conversation among RP members about mentoring these service members is amazing. Honestly, I did not know what to expect when I started the thread, because this is a subject many feel strong about. Thank you so much for all of your advice thus far, I cannot wait to share it with our female and male recruits and hope you share it in your ranks/communities as well. Together we are molding the future of the military.
As we gear up to ship out some of our first female Future Soldiers in combat jobs, I ask of the members of RP, what is your advice for these young soldiers?
Please keep it constructive and nothing along the lines of they shouldn't be able to serve in these positions because that ship has sailed and opinions about how they should not serve in these positions are not going to change anything.
Edit: The conversation among RP members about mentoring these service members is amazing. Honestly, I did not know what to expect when I started the thread, because this is a subject many feel strong about. Thank you so much for all of your advice thus far, I cannot wait to share it with our female and male recruits and hope you share it in your ranks/communities as well. Together we are molding the future of the military.
Infantry
Combat
Training
Women in the Military
Combat Arms
Edited >1 y ago
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 398
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Work hard work your butts off nothing gets handed to anyone for many years woman have not been seen as equals to men in the military with is a cold hard truth. But keep working keep fighting to make change. I saw in a few post if you wanna hang with the boys expect to be treated like the boys I personally don't think standards should be made easier do to the plain fact that insurgents won't change or attack the military differently because your a female in a combat role cause they sure they hell didn't care while I was over there. But like I said before if y'all wanna do this be willing to put in work
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Cpl Chris Woodford
A woman's MOS ends when she gets out of bed in the morning... after she gets me a cup of coffee too... sorry I almost forgot the coffee.
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The same advice I'd give for any new Soldier, talk little and listen much. Unless specifically asked, no one wants to hear about how they were taught in AIT.
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None. It's something to be experienced. It's up to them whether it's worth it or not. Fortitude and brotherhood is what made us different. You either love it or hate it.
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I say start running the same PFT, get promoted based on the same standards/scores, etc. expect the exact same treatment and get it.
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My advice is to be a PT beast. PT is the first opportunity to show that you can carry your own weight but the goal should be to carry your battle buddy's weight. Be confident in yourself. Be physically strong but more importantly be mentally tough and resilient. "Embrace the suck." Have fun.
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I am an 19k nco. With that said myself and my crew spend countless hours stuck inside our tank. If you know anything about tankers you would know about the infamous tactical pee bottle. Somtimes we have to go in the worst times where we cannot get out of the tank and knowing so we always keep bottles,more spacifically Gatorade bottles and pee in them. What options would we have with a female inside with us. Battles wont stop for pee breaks. Maybe this wasn't thought out when it comes to atleast the armor community. Dont get me wrong, females have evey right for the same hobs if the meet the same standards but there are other things to consider specifically the close prolonged quarters in a tank, Bradley or stryker. This is also unfair to the male soldier that now cant relieve himself because of female presence.
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My first thought would be for them to understand the physical differences but the mentally is they are Soldiers. As a former 19D male training was hard even for me and I was a 300+ Soldier but I worked my butt off. My mentality was no one was going to stop me but me. If I had to stay up training late at night or doing extract physical fitness, I did it. We all reach a point of physical exhaustion but believing in yourself is a good self motivator.
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I can see you are already a woman who has a PH and CAB. I am sure you could pass on some wisdom just from your experience to females and your advice would be highly regarded.
SSG Bethany Viglietta
PO1 Dave Martin Thank you. It's always nice to have other opinions as well. I know what I did to ensure success as a female attached to a combat unit may not always work for others. I definitely have some lessons learned as well as some funny stories about breaking the ice when the infantry unit grumbled about having not only an intelligence team attached to them but also one with a female. I worked very hard to prove myself and eventually earned their trust and respect. Some days if I was sick and they needed a female/intelligence collector, I would just strive to be stronger than the weakest Infantryman on the foot patrols. When ever I would support the SF teams, I asked for additional training on tactics/weapons, etc.
In my personal experiences, I dealt with a Warrant Officer inviting me back to their hotels after a training event while I was a private. I knew it was wrong, so I did not accept the invitation and told him never to contact me again. He was using his position within the special missions community to tempt me to come have some drinks in his hotel room. Until I got older/wiser I didn't realize that this tactic was likely used on other females as well. I learned my lesson from this experience, so when a MSG (cadre) pulled me out of training one day to talk to me about "being cute as a button" and how he wishes we would have met under difference circumstances, I knew he had definitely gotten away with that sort of activity before because he was ballsy to do it in the school house. More or less I told him it wasn't appropriate and then approached my instructor later about the incident. My instructor guessed who the individual was immediately, and said there were rumors of that sort of thing happening before. After talking to the females in the training, we realized he approached several of us in different ways. One he sent text messages to after getting her number from the call roster. We made complaints because he is a predator, then we wrote it onto our end of course critiques to ensure it went up since he obviously got away with it before.
Everyone worries about females coming into combat arms because of harassment, but I can say I experienced no harassment while attached to the combat arms units. We sassed each other of course and built rapport, but the line was never crossed. However these are just two of the examples of being approached inappropriately. Generally you can just take care of it at the lowest level, but in cases where the individual is a predator, you have to ensure the report truly goes up the chain of command. If everyone acts like professionals, these young women will just have to worry about their work ethic and motivation when it comes to serving in all positions in the military. Professionalism will level the playing field and allow the women to earn respect like their male peers.
Sorry this turned into a bit of a ramble.
In my personal experiences, I dealt with a Warrant Officer inviting me back to their hotels after a training event while I was a private. I knew it was wrong, so I did not accept the invitation and told him never to contact me again. He was using his position within the special missions community to tempt me to come have some drinks in his hotel room. Until I got older/wiser I didn't realize that this tactic was likely used on other females as well. I learned my lesson from this experience, so when a MSG (cadre) pulled me out of training one day to talk to me about "being cute as a button" and how he wishes we would have met under difference circumstances, I knew he had definitely gotten away with that sort of activity before because he was ballsy to do it in the school house. More or less I told him it wasn't appropriate and then approached my instructor later about the incident. My instructor guessed who the individual was immediately, and said there were rumors of that sort of thing happening before. After talking to the females in the training, we realized he approached several of us in different ways. One he sent text messages to after getting her number from the call roster. We made complaints because he is a predator, then we wrote it onto our end of course critiques to ensure it went up since he obviously got away with it before.
Everyone worries about females coming into combat arms because of harassment, but I can say I experienced no harassment while attached to the combat arms units. We sassed each other of course and built rapport, but the line was never crossed. However these are just two of the examples of being approached inappropriately. Generally you can just take care of it at the lowest level, but in cases where the individual is a predator, you have to ensure the report truly goes up the chain of command. If everyone acts like professionals, these young women will just have to worry about their work ethic and motivation when it comes to serving in all positions in the military. Professionalism will level the playing field and allow the women to earn respect like their male peers.
Sorry this turned into a bit of a ramble.
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Suspended Profile
We had numerous female FMF Corpsman on both my combat deployments as ETTs. All served on the front lines and at our FOBs and COPs. My personal experience from being in country was nobody cared so long as they got the job done.
Unfortunately there are leaders who try to take advantage of impressionable young people. Best way to deal with them is report them and not ignore them. We had a SFC on my last combat deployment who was a sleeze ball and way glad he finally was sent home for being a creep, but a male E-5 reported his behavior.
Its a NCOs job to ensure professionalism at all levels. Keep up the good work.
Unfortunately there are leaders who try to take advantage of impressionable young people. Best way to deal with them is report them and not ignore them. We had a SFC on my last combat deployment who was a sleeze ball and way glad he finally was sent home for being a creep, but a male E-5 reported his behavior.
Its a NCOs job to ensure professionalism at all levels. Keep up the good work.
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Sit them down and have a candid talk. Remind them that they're the first wave, that whether they like it or not, all eyes are going to be on them. People looking for any excuse to say they aren't good enough. Remind them that while they might be told they're on the same level as a man, they're going to have to earn people's respect, and hold themselves to a higher standard than anyone else will.
And besides that, I'd highly recommend you urge them towards exercising so that they exceed the physical standards set for them, and not just meet them. They won't really know whether or not the person in charge of them will treat them like any other soldier, push them harder, or coddle them. Better to be in shape and able to do any job asked of her than hope they go easy on her.
And besides that, I'd highly recommend you urge them towards exercising so that they exceed the physical standards set for them, and not just meet them. They won't really know whether or not the person in charge of them will treat them like any other soldier, push them harder, or coddle them. Better to be in shape and able to do any job asked of her than hope they go easy on her.
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