'Flawed' study casts doubts on mixed-gender units in US marine corps

Joanna Walters in New York
Saturday 17 October 2015 17.28 BST

A US marine corps study on the fighting ability of women, conducted before a national decision about opening all combat roles to female soldiers, is “fundamentally flawed”, according to critics who received hundreds of pages of leaked data from the controversial trials.

The same critics said the corps’ decision to release only a four-page summary of its study, which focused on negative aspects of women as marines while keeping the bulk of the study under wraps, was “hugely problematic”.

One of the report’s released conclusions found that: “The integration of females … will add a level of risk in performance/effectiveness and cost … The bottom line is that the physiological differences between males and females will likely always be evident to some extent.”

But other pages from the report, seen by the Guardian, indicate that women were not expected to pose problems for ground-combat units, so long as clear standards, diligent screening of candidates and good training and leadership were in place.

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