{"id":1914,"date":"2013-01-25T14:42:03","date_gmt":"2013-01-25T21:42:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/?p=1914"},"modified":"2013-01-25T14:42:03","modified_gmt":"2013-01-25T21:42:03","slug":"women-in-combat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/2013\/01\/25\/women-in-combat\/","title":{"rendered":"Women In Combat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>William M. Briggs claims that <a href='http:\/\/wmbriggs.com\/blog\/?p=7151'>Women In Combat Results In A Suboptimal Military<\/a> but his argument belies his supposed expertise in statistics.<\/p>\n<p>I am taller and stronger than the average woman, but only around the 80th percentile. So 20% of women are physically stronger than me. I could probably dominate half of those by virtue of a more highly testosterone-fuelled aggressive nature, but that leaves about one woman in ten who could probably have whupped my ass in my prime if properly trained to. If I had been in the right age cohort and location I could easily have passed muster to enter combat-ready military service, but one of those &#8220;nasty&#8221; women would have been a better protector for my country. It only makes sense to pre-select on the basis of population averages when the variable(s) of interest are hard to assess directly.<br \/>\nPerhaps Mr Briggs needs to (re?)learn some statistics.<\/p>\n<p>Of course this is not to say that there is a case for demanding &#8220;equity&#8221; in the form of equal representation of genders or for any lesser reduction in the qualities required of a female as opposed to a male soldier, but the fact is that when much of modern combat is enacted from what is essentially the console of a video game it is less physical strength than various mental capacities which should control the selection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>William M. Briggs claims that Women In Combat Results In A Suboptimal Military but his argument belies his supposed expertise in statistics. I am taller and stronger than the average woman, but only around the 80th percentile. So 20% of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/2013\/01\/25\/women-in-combat\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1914"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1915,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914\/revisions\/1915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}