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"You have to laugh, or else you'd cry," says a recruit named Elizabeth on the first day of training. The women are issued boots cut so badly that many get stress fractures and muscle spasms. One week they are ordered to tuck in their blouses to look like the males. The next week they are ordered not to, to avoid attracting male attention. Blamed as a group for the failure of any one of them, most still show a stubborn patriotic pride.
Women often do better at riflery than men because they listen to instruction while men tend to think they know it all. A veteran male drill sergeant, proud of his work with female recruits, tells Rogan:
"Today's women won't find anything that hard to adjust to in the military. It's the males—you're talking about reconditioning the human male to accept a woman as a wife and mother and at the same time as a fighting partner."
Most of the current arguments, says Rogan, center on physical strength and its importance in soldiering. But, she points out, women are growing up stronger because of school sports programs under Title IX. Even if most women cannot do as many chin-ups or run as far as fast as most men, can they still make capable modern soldiers? Regan's answer, which the book mainly bears out, is yes.
Mixed Company suggests that much of the harassment women get in the Army, especially the women cadets at West Point, is due to the Army's own confusion about changing ideas of male identity. Women officer candidates are poor at pushups, but they prove outstanding on human flexibility, concern for the well-being of their troops and the team work essential to an all-volunteer Army.
"In the Army, atti tudes are fact," Rogan writes. If the attitude is that women are a hindrance to standards, then they tend to be treated accordingly. But one female officer snaps: "Discrimination is unprofessional." Whether or not women are discriminated against, she adds, depends on the caliber of leadership at any particular base. In integrating the sexes militarily, the crucial factor seems to be numbers. Rogan concludes, "Wherever there are women, there must be enough women."
Keeping the women the Army already has is a problem. Many leave because of pregnancy (about 8% a year get pregnant). The solutions, Rogan believes, are child care and better provisions for pregnancy leave. Furthermore, Rogan says, the high attrition rate for all women could be sharply reduced if they were taken seriously, properly used and not harassed so much.
As she notes of female West Point cadets: