The author makes a good point and I'm tempted to agree with her, though I'd like to see some sources that support the claim that "female officers tend to be more interested in enhancing their strategic skills." If all we're using is personal experience, then I'd like to point out that I haven't seen a single female officer who plays Risk as much as I do.

"So why not do a stint as a speechwriter, get a PhD, or spend time in unconventional but challenging jobs?"

Maybe more female officers (in terms of percentage -- not raw numbers) choose to pursue these paths than men, but that does not imply -- as a "gender" -- they are better at it.

I know a lot of female officers whose choice to pursue the academic path was greatly influenced by the fact it allowed them lots of flexibility and time off to have children -- not because they didn't think they could be "commanders." Army lore is that the USMA hospital has the highest birth rate per capita of any Army facility -- and that is a feat.

You will find general agreement that the path for selecting general officers has a lot of flaws, regardless of gender. You may find a harder time getting people to agree that women in the Army are less prone to: being short-sighted, currying favor from their superiors, and being abusive/toxic to subordinates/peers (especially their female subordinates/peers.)

It is certainly debatable whether being an outstanding battalion or brigade commander qualifies you to be a general officer (strategic leader.) But there is plenty of experience that indicates that smart, energetic, thinking leaders will excel at anything. It is hard to imagine a brilliant, successful "strategic thinker" being a failure (or even mediocre) at commanding a BN or BCT.

And if they are, there are opportunities for strategic thinking -- even "defense" thinking -- outside the Army.

The bigger question is: is our system putting smart, energetic, thinking leaders into brigade command?

Or are too many risk averse, ticket punching, "yes" men (and "yes" women is CS/CSS brigades) making the cut? And why?

GEN Barbara Fast = Ruined MI by dropping standards so a generation of Bradley Manning's can get TS/SCI level jobs.

GEN Janis Karpinski = Abu Ghraib.

CSM Teresa King = Drinking Problem, Inappropriate Relationships, and her degrees that helped her get to her illustrious position came from diploma mills.

Not really helping females in the "we're ready to be strategic leaders department".

As an AF guy I cannot offer a lot of insight into the Army's issues. I would argue that female leaders at the high ecehlons in the AF are also relatively few and far between as well. There are very few career fields that ban women in the AF, with all pilot positions currently open to them. 8% of AF GOs are Women compared to roughly 6% in the Army. In reality you are only talking about a difference of about 6-7 positions. It is hard to believe that access to "combat arms" is the big discreminator here and not some sort of greater bias since women have full access to those fields in the AF. Of course it could also just be a numbers game........

http://www.militaryhomefront.dod.mil/12038/Project%20Documents/MilitaryHOMEFRONT/Reports/2010_Demographics_Report.pdf

Most of the students in the War Colleges (sadly myself included, although I used to be a NTJ type) are ISTJs which means they are highly suited to running tactical operations which calls for methodical thinking and judging. There is a suggestion - and at least one paper we all read - that the skills needed at the strategic level are ENFP leaning....which means all of us are screwed. Old dogs, new tricks, etc.

Women, IIRC, are more likely to be NFP types than men are. So maybe the initial post has merit...if you think M-B is any different than a Horoscope that is. Me, I'm a Taurus with a bad moon rising.

I don't doubt that there are many women who would be successful at the strategic level than men. Perhaps more so. (There is research indicating that women make better investment bankers (on the whole) then men due to being more risk-averse (which leads to better outcomes in the long run in investment banking.) Risk-aversion may well be a benefit at the strategic level and a detriment at the tactical.

But the larger issue is with the path to GO...and I think the OP hit that on the head (regardless of gender).

Why just insult the national strategists? Beating the Iraqi army was hardly a test of strategy or tactics: this was the body punished savagely for its earlier invasion of Kuwait. Nobody believes America handed back a fixed Iraq last month, although sundry public officials claim that.

From Afghanistan we read the fruit of an Iraqesque struggle to present facts from there as symptomatic of American success. Their varying nature suggests their unreliability. (Truthiness.)

Blaming the generals for the mess is hardly fair. They were stuck with the demands of sundry ignorant but outspoken civilian employees of the Bush administration running amok at the wheels and levers of government, and the then-president's unthought through view of what declaring war means. The generals knew they didn't have enough time to plan the Iraq adventure appropriately, and it's disappointing that none resigned to make their clear, calm, professional views known. The war against Afghanistan seems to have been started by the US Navy and the CIA, and its sensible part ended -- in American victory -- a few weeks later with al Qaeda abandoning the field in desperation. Now there's a war against Pakistan, although undeclared -- but war is exactly what starts when foreigners attack an official post on any nation's border.

As Mr Ricks points out in another post today, those Bush civilian blabbermouths continue to think or hope their views about Iraq matter. None seem to include the profound apologies that would seem to be needed. Apology to America, as well as Iraq. Instead, they seem to want another Iraq invasion.

The article sounds like the "Study" done b the Diversity Committee, it's all about job opportunity, careers advancement, etc....
http://mldc.whs.mil/

RBB is pretty spot on I think and our system and the way it advances people to the top post is hardly indicative of who will be a good GO as Hunter and RBB both point out but the article comes out as "I want to be GO so I can make strategy!", no real points, citations or argued reasoning as to why women are advanced or not advanced or why they would somehow be better at it than men.

This is like the argument for not expelling so many CEOs... inavailability. I submit that those at the top simply do poorly sharing responsibility and limit their subordinates growth and impact - a failure to hand the reins downward stunts the growth of additional prospects. Great leaders are often not very good at sharing the things they truly covet. I have no trouble believing women would be as good as men and possibly better if they are getting different experiences. I also think that - Judgment comes from experience, which comes from bad judgment. Competence is forged.We may be producing a lot more great leaders - prove to me we are not holding them back :-) And certainly make sure women are considered also.

I think I understand the gist of this argument, but I want to be clear, who are the 90% eliminated from consideration?

I won't even go down the male/female road. It's not relevant to the core argument.

I disagree, however, that tactical leadership experience does not prepare one at all for leadership at the strategic levels. Rather, it provides the foundation upon which successful strategic leaders are built. The best leaders at all levels know their craft and remember what it is like to be down on the pointy end of the spear. Yes, one must broaden him or herself with further education and experience, but do we really want to have a bunch of general officers who have never commanded a company, battalion, or brigade? Pretty arrogant to think you can make it on your superior intellect alone, I think.

We in fact have started to go down that road and what I see bothers me. 1/3 of this year's Army war College class have not commanded a battalion. The class has more Acquisition officers than Armor officers. In the late 90's the Army started managing officers by specialized career fields, some of which were not part of the traditional command track. The idea was to give those in specialized fields an increased opportunity for promotion and flag rank without having come up through the traditional company/battalion/brigade command gates. We now have a significant number of senior officers and even some general officers who have achieved their current rank without having commanded anything larger than a company. They have been off doing esoteric, deep-thinking jobs ever since. They are smart folks, no doubt, and their skills are needed, but in my experience, these folks are not always very streetwise. They simply have been away from the nuts and bolts of the tactical Army for too long. I don't think this is a healthy trend for our Army.

The recent case of MG Fuller, the CSTC-A/NTM-A officer relieved for publically venting his frustrations about our Afghan allies, is a good case in point. He was an Acquisition officer, no doubt smart and well educated in that field. He had, however, not been in a tactical leadership position since commanding a tank company in 1987. He had also not deployed during the last 10 years of recent unpleasantness. The Army assigns him to a very sensitive, stressful, and frustrating job in a combat zone. He was probably very good at the technical aspects of that job but clearly could not handle the frustration of dealing with the Afghan culture and environment. Clearly, not a savvy strategic leader, yet he fit the mold of education and assignment advocated by "A J.O."

@ A. JO

You must have been in a unit that worshipped at the Ranger Tab temple. It is unfortunate to think that female officers or any non-manuever officer is eliminated from Senior Leadership just by their branch. Aviation, Artillery, Air Defense Artillery, Engineers, Military Police, and many others all have female officers and GO positions for which they could potentially qualify.

Currently the CSA and G-8 are both non-manuever senior leaders. The CSA and VCSA are both non-tabbed. While Combat Arms officers do typically make up the majority of senior leaderships, I think the current generation of combat proven officers (our peers) could give a crap less what school leaders attended. Your frustration is evident, and clearly a representation of your experiences. However, is it the career niche (branch) trend availability that is limiting your or other non-tabbed, non-manuever officers ascension to higher ranks or is there a fundamental lack in capability and competence limiting you from reaching to the higher ranks?

I think you may want to consider doing some research and analysis of current and former trends tied to real data, before you rant on about being denied Command and or GO level experience. A diversity of backgrounds is critical to creating a functioning and forward thinking officer population. Strategic importance in thought and assignment is not always reached by having the “hot maneuver job” at the tactical level. There are a large number of General Officers who served as general-aide’s early in their career typically open to a wide variety of individuals. There are many capable women officers out there, and it’d be a shame if this was the sentiment, but I can see how many units at the tactical level foster that kind of climate.

The Army is always changing as are the roles for women. Women now serve in CSTs supporting SOCOM, who would have predicted that in 2001?

In the last couple months I've been in numerous discussions about the future of the military.

Overall, I think we're going to see some bad stuff happen regarding women in the military. The wars likely won't last long enough for any significant action to be taken by women in combat roles. We will not have an answer to their roles and capabilities in austere fighting environments.

My history is not perfect but I think that last substantial changes/movement for females in the military was during a "time of peace" when a garrison military ruled, etc. I believe the same will happen again as we transition to peace.

I believe we are about to see absolute devastation of our military if we stay on our current azimuth.

Some say we ruined things that last time we had major cuts because some of our best left. Now they say they won't replicate that because they are going to get rid of the "deadwood". I see some problems here that will affect women in the military and perhaps set back women for generations, though I hope not. But to be sure, women will not be the only losers here. We will all pay.

I believe that if we usher in the burning of the deadwood, that we are going to scare service members into sheer paranoia about their evaluations, where they stand with their commander that can perhaps throw them to the wolves, repeatedly counsel them for trivial things and then discharge for 'patterns'; that people will get labeled if they have a bad day at PT, so on and so on. It's going to create an environment where we eat our own to a far greater extent than we currently see. In the short term we are going to hurt morale, readiness and competency. In the long run we will ruin faith in the military institution and jeopardize winning a "real war".

Additionally, the 'deadwood' we get rid of is not going to be of any different percentage than it was before. Good people left for early retirement and they will do the same again. A young SGT that pisses off the CSM and gets thrown to the bottom of the OML, or fails a PT test or body fat because he got depressed for two months following the deaths of his comrades in combat or perhaps his father from a sudden illness, he'll get tossed in the burn pile. He's not deadwood, he's a guy that stumbled. He may have served five years, that's 60 months, and for 2 bad months...that's 1/30th of his time in the service, he'll get burned. Are we losing a good one or a bad one? Will he learn from his struggles and his pains and emerge a better person, a tougher person, and a better leader? Well, probably. That is the norm. People tend to grow when they endure a crisis. So, when this guys grows and emerges from this stumble, to find he's back on the block, what good have we done for him, his family, or the military? He goes to war for his country and his country won't even go to bat for him. We all know these stories are going to be out there. The true deadwood, the lowest of the low, is scarcely 1% of the military, and that's probably over estimating it. But we will likely start purging 5-10%, especially within the ground forces. There are going to be damn good people that get booted and some damn turds that get to stay. It will not be avoided by a rush to purge. Slow, meaningful, well thought out changes are the only answer.

The politicians, GO/FO and top enlisted echelons are to blame, as they were last time. They will announce cuts to everyone, everywhere, except among their own population.

So, how does this tie into women in the military? As we layer another coat of gold upon our gilded force, it will be the "perfumed princes and princesses" that get selected, promoted, and prosper. New "initiatives" will be brought forth to advance women in the service. We will say we are "growing" as a military and that our peace time footing is the perfect opportunity to begin this process. New experimentations will be done. More square pegs will be forced into round holes. There will be more "Fasts" and "Karpinskis". Beyond the male jackasses that will be despised, the females will be viewed in a darker way. People expect the good ole boys to be bad. They won't expect that with the females, not at first.

I'm all for females getting their shot just like the guys. I've met more than a couple females in the military that I deeply respect and value. But the standard is combat: fighting in it, leading others in it, training for it, preparing for it, and winning at it. Wars are won by people, people do the fighting, the fighting is done tactically, it is commanded at the tactical and operational levels and orchestrated at the strategic level. If we decide our strategists don't need to be competent in the tactical and operational levels, then so be it. But I don't see that happening. Our warriors must be thinkers and our thinkers must be warriors. Therefore competence all the way up must be attained. Any compromise will likely just create the noise before defeat.

So, when the damage is being done, when the scandals break, or subordinates' careers ruined, or when the next war breaks out - the gilding will get blown off like fine powder. The more a peace time, garrison-minded, deadwood burning mindset takes hold, the more superficial our military will become. Form will triumph over function. When we finally wake up and witness the disaster, people are going to get blamed. I think that if we artificially bolster women in the coming years during this next transition, that women will end up bearing an unfair and disproportionate amount of blame. It will set them back and it will then set the men back as well as there will be a backlash. I don't see that turning out well for anyone. And, it won't turn out well for our nation.

I believe this is going to come to fruition but I hope I'm wrong. I am not optimistic about where we are headed right now. I dearly love the military but I think we're headed in the wrong direction.

@Eric Stratton...rush chairmen...Damn glad to meet ya

Thanks for the comments. I am not synergizing anything, or getting after it, or taking a knee and facing out. but Dude...yes really.. There is a reason why any planning staff is not made up of the same group of individuals. It's why the MEDO and Chemo participate in MDMP even though they may participate very little.

@Charles- "The more a peace time, garrison-minded, deadwood burning mindset takes hold, the more superficial our military will become. Form will triumph over function. When we finally wake up and witness the disaster, people are going to get blamed."

Great Quote...one day soldiers will pay the price

I think the Army has recently given a lot of lip-service to the idea that for this "new kind of war" officers need to be well-rounded, have broadening assignments, think in more strategic terms, and not follow the traditional combat arms mold of company/battery command--->Staff---->S3---->XO--->BN CMD. But actually getting people to do that without fearing that they will no longer be competitive for BN CMD, and moving people (to include women) who don't fit the standard mold into strategic leadership positions is probably an entirely different thing altogether. Although, as others have noted, there are numerous men in very senior positions in the Army who are not infantryman, which signals something.

I would like to note that although I don't think being an expert on small unit infantry tactics makes or breaks anyone as a higher level leader, it is nonetheless important to have a good grasp on what is happening at the smallest level and why. I am an air defender, and gender issues are virtually nonexistent in my branch. Women have been doing everything (to exclude some SHORAD stuff) very well for a very long time. Ironically some might say, I had a female battalion commander with an extensive tactical background in air defense, who was replaced by a male who hadn't primarily served in ADA units until he was a senior captain/major. This indirectly led to a ton of pain regarding gunnery and the calendar, and numerous instances where things asked of the batteries made absolutely no sense. If we had been attacked, I would have felt much more comfortable with her experience--which is not to say that the other guy wasn't thoughtful and strategically minded and couldn't have made sound decisions--he just didn't seem to understand that he was more than a "manager" of all the tactically-minded people.

I am not holding that someone needs to be a maneuver guy to lead at a strategic level--I don't believe that. And I think there are plenty of female officers out there today with enough experience on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan to understand the tactical level of war. But I do think that a good grasp on the lowest-level tactical reality of those under you is important, or at the very least, the ability to know what the weaknesses in your experience are and to work to combat them.

And seriously J.O., I know that some women love running around doing battle drills and crawling through the mud as MPs or engineers, but you would be a very happy air defender.

Traditional "maneuver" branches (IN, AR, AV, SF, FA): 15

Other branches: 19

Of note, 6 of those 19 were in Acquisition, 40, 59, and other non-traditional branches. There were two Engineers, including one female.

Only 11 of 34 were in the "male only" branches of IN, AR, and SF (there were no FA selectees.)

So the idea that women are being "shut out" of strategic level positions due to combat exclusion or lack of "brigade command" opportunities is a little overwrought.