Female Marines have already begun proving their combat ability with eighty-five women making it through the infantry training course last fall. But doubts still remain about their ability to meet the same standards a men—a question largely of physical strength.
As the military slowly integrates women into potentially all combat positions per Pentagon orders, reports about how its going have been mixed. If you ask the soldiers and commanders of the Army, it's going alright, as long as everyone is on their best behavior.
Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair was sentenced Thursday, receiving no jail time. He was reprimanded, whatever that means, and is required to give up his pay of $5,000 a month for four months, for a total of $20,000. He will keep his pension.
As testimony wraps up in the case of Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, a new story has been revealed: when General Sinclair left the 172nd Infantry Brigade in 2010, his men put on a "raunchy skit" that consisted of one soldier pretending to be Sinclair and the other pretending to be his now-accuser (then mistress) offering…
The U.S. Army has banned 588 soldiers from working as sexual assault counselors, recruiters and drill sergeants for a variety of transgressions, many of which are related to their ongoing issues with sexual assault in the military.
In November, the Marines announced that they'd pushed back a new requirement for women in the Marines to complete the same physical fitness test as men by January 2014. That standard has been pushed back yet again because more than half of female Marines cannot complete the three pull-ups demanded of men and women.
A male sergeant stationed at Fort Hood military base is currently on trial for using a prostitution ring allegedly started by a fellow officer. The women in this ring were apparently fellow female soldiers who were struggling with their finances, and were approached through an Army sexual assault and harassment…
Three women have passed the recently revised Marine Corps fitness tests and will graduate from Camp Geiger on Thursday amongst their 221 male peers. A fourth will likely pass in December, but a stress fracture has prevented her from taking her last physical test. As exciting as that news is, they won't join infantry…
It's currently very slim pickings when it comes to playable female characters in popular military video games, even though there are more female gamers playing them than ever before. Now that women will be fighting on the IRL front lines, will virtual female soldiers make history, too? Some gamers believe so.
It's happening: the Marine Corps officially announced — as expected — that it will allow women to start training at its intensive infantry officer school at Quantico, VA and join some ground combat battalions. The changes will provide the Marine Corps' 13,800 women (out of 197,800 men — the Marines are the most…
The military reported 471 rapes of servicemembers in 2011, but the real number is probably higher, since the Pentagon's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office estimates that only about 13.5 percent of all rapes and sexual assaults in the military are actually reported. Several hundred women in the military…
Two female soldiers are suing the U.S. military for banning them (and all women) from front-line combat positions, an act which they say violates their right to equal protection under the Fifth Amendment — and affects their salaries, promotion and advancement, and future retirement benefits.
The issue of women in combat has long been a thorny one for the military. While laws forbidding women from serving in combat were repealed 20 years ago, there have been Pentagon regulations that have essentially done the same thing since then, and women have been relegated to support roles rather than combat…
In most countries, women aren't allowed to serve in combat roles. However, that doesn't mean they don't end up on the front lines, and female soldiers in the U.S. have complained that the restriction just means they aren't getting enough training for when they do end up in combat. Today Australia's military took a big…
A new study finds that in the year after returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, male and female servicemembers had similar levels of combat-related stress.
Women aren't supposed to serve in military units whose primary focus is ground combat, but that doesn't mean they don't fight. And the prohibitions against combat may actually be bad for female soldiers.
Good news: Libya has released four detained journalists, including Clare Morgana Gillis, and Al Jazeera's Dorothy Parvaz, who disappeared in Syria, is on her way home.
Dorothy Parvaz, a reporter for Al Jazeera, hasn't been heard from since she arrived in Syria Friday. The Committee to Protect Journalists says there is "strong evidence" suggesting she was detained by authorities there.
Kabul was a fishbowl and not conducive to actual dating, even though the foreign women were vastly outnumbered by the foreign men. Our attractiveness rate skyrocketed accordingly. A ten in Kabul became a five as soon as she walked off the plane in Dubai. We were Kabul Cute, we were Mission Pretty. But still, the men…
In 2005, as violence raged in Iraq, Iran grew more defiant, and Lebanon rumbled with revolution, my friend Annia Ciezadlo and I were both foreign correspondents living in Beirut. After assignments in hostile and intimidating places, we would inevitably get together over a bottle of Lebanese wine, a table heaped with…
