War Effects on Women

Thesis Statement

When America achieved victory in August of 1945 millions of people celebrated. The war was finally over and millions of men would finally be able to return to their homes. However, when the fighting stopped, the war machine, which had mobilized millions of women to work, ceased.

Introduction

War, combat, conflict, warfare, battle, fights, these words bring nothing but a sense of terror, horror and very clear and vivid images of destruction, obliteration, annihilation, devastation and demolition in the minds of people (Cosner and Victoria 58-96). As the world witnessed the barbaric acts of the human beings, killing each other and spreading terror and destruction, it also witnessed millions of people who stood up against this barbarism and hence the world experienced some hope of saving itself from the destructions of people.

Discussion

During this struggle it was not only men who came forward for this noble cause but the history of the world is full of stories of heroism by women as well. In this paper we will be relating the stories of a few such women. The only time I saw Iraqi men entirely intimidated by the American-British forces was in Basra, when a cluster of men gaped, awestruck, around an example of the most astoundingly modern weapon in the Western arsenal.

In the aftermath of the Iraq war it's time to re-examine the ban on women in American front-line forces. Women are barred from about 30 percent of active-duty positions, and there's still a deep emotional resistance to exposing American women to deadly violence (Snyder 86- 31). Based on the performance of women in Iraq and Afghanistan, I see three advantages to allowing women even on the front.

First, particularly in the Muslim world, notions of chivalry make even the most bloodthirsty fighters squeamish about shooting female soldiers or blowing them up at checkpoints. Let's let foreign chauvinism work for us.

Third, military units need women to search female civilians for weapons. American leathernecks simply can't pat down Afghan or Iraqi women. ("Now, ma'am, if you'll just removes your burka.")

Critics of having women in the Army say that sending moms to war disrupts families (more than sending dads) and those female captives are particularly likely to be raped. Both arguments have some truth to them. But by similar logic one could prohibit women from working in risky neighbourhoods or late at night.

"There's this whole mommy-at-war feeling, which tells me that the critics have given up on the women-can't-do-it argument," said Lory Manning, who spent 25 years in the Navy and runs the Women in the Military project in Washington (Harter 67-97). The book "Men, Women and War" suggests that 10 percent of women soldiers are pregnant at any one time, although that number strikes me as high. Women tend to be physically weaker and can have trouble lugging heavy gear, or heavy comrades.

Moreover, most discussions are too delicate to mention it, but anyone who has spent time in a war zone knows about the Privy ...