ommand a military unit during combat (Binken 16; Valceanu 23). Certainly this was a phenomenal achievement for women considering the continuing mindset of the military that female soldiers are inferior to males. Finally, Operation Desert Storm/Desert Shield saw the largest deployment of women in military history. They served in a variety of positions and they proved that they could stand up to the challenges of modern warfare. "American military women did just about everything on land, at sea and in the air except engage in actual fighting and even there the line was often blurred" (Holm 445). It is rather simple for a group of people to sit around a table and say that certain assignments are more likely to involve direct combat incident and should therefore be off-limits to women. However, reality often proves to be much different than hypothesis. In Operation Desert Storm, women were frequently exposed to enemy fire even though they were assigned to non-combat positions.One of the strongest arguments against allowing women to serve in and volunteer for direct combat missions is that women are physically inferior than men. However, there are two factors that weaken this argument. The first consideration is that there is little scientific evidence showing that size and strength contribute to ground combat performance. Physical strength may not be a necessity for certain positions and, certainly, not all men have great upper body strength.However, should physical strength be a requirement, a look at some well-known athletes will show what trained women can accomplish. Pitcher Kathy Arendsen can throw a softball at 96 m.p.h. underhand and Florence Griffith Joyner ran the 100 meter faster than O.J. Simpson ever did while competing for USC (Miller 37). Just as all men may not be able to bench-press a school bus, all women are not tiny and frail. Restrictions should not be made based on gender, but rather on the physical abilit...
