Generally Speaking (26 page)
The Review Panel found examples of such discrimination throughout the Army. When we asked soldiers if they were treated differently because of their sex, 51 percent of the women said yes, and fewer than half that percentage of the men (22 percent) said gender played a role in their treatment. This perception that women were incapable of serving as “real” soldiers had a definite impact on the way they were treated within their units. A group of senior women NCOs heatedly told the Review Panel about having no voice in meetings with their male peers: “We speak, but it's as if we do not exist. They ignore us.” Participants in focus group discussions noted that while there was “zero tolerance” within the Army for racial discrimination, the same standard was not applied to sex discrimination. One woman soldier remarked, “You can't get away with saying blacks shouldn't be in the Army, but you can say women shouldn't be in the Army. How can men get away with that?”
Many of the women the Review Panel contacted said they felt devalued as soldiers just because they were women. A woman field-grade officer reported, “I always have to fight the male mind-set about what a woman can and cannot do.” When I read her bitter comment, I thought back twenty-five years to the Military Intelligence officer at Fort Huachuca who told me women had no future in the Army. Certainly there had been progress in the years since then; women now comprised 15 percent of the total Army force and higher percentages in critical MOSs. In short, the Army could not run without women, as the senior leadership had made abundantly clear. But down at the company level, where the rubber sole of the combat boot met the road, women soldiers were still fighting the battle to be accepted. One junior enlisted woman reported of her male peers when she joined a new unit, “The automatic perception they have of me is that I don't know my job. If you're a female, you're always tested.”
But women soldiers were not the only ones who perceived unfair treatment and inequality. There was a feeling among some of the men soldiers that the Army held women to less demanding standards. One of the most emotional issues was the Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT). In establishing the different standards that men and women soldiers had to achieve on the APFT, the Army considered gender as well as age. The test was designed to measure the fitness of the individual soldier, not to be a competitive exercise or race.
The different performance standards reflected physiological differences between men and women, and between younger and older soldiers. For example, a fit young man soldier could do more push-ups than his fit woman counterpart, and she could do more sit-ups. Equally, the average older man soldier would not be able to meet the Army standard set for a younger man. Some men soldiers, however, complained that the APFT standards for women were “too low,” and that the test was “biased in favor of female soldiers.” One soldier who apparently was firmly against serving with women commented that “The lower standards reflect a woman will never be in as good physical shape as a man.”
I knew this to be preposterous, having often done better than my men peers in cross-country runs and in performing sit-ups on the APFT. I also knew that a twenty-year-old corporal would probably never say that a command sergeant major—a man in his late forties who achieved a passing score on the APFT based on age-adjusted standards—should not be in the Army. But that was exactly the implication of different gender standards for many of the men soldiers the Review Panel interviewed.
Pregnancy was an even more contentious issue. Some Army men reported that serving with pregnant soldiers negatively and unfairly impacted the unit. This was because Department of Defense policy required a pregnant woman to modify her physical training and the type and duration of duty she performed. For example, men pilots in a focus group complained that one of their women peers had to be removed from flight status, rendering her nondeployable, when her pregnancy advanced. The remaining pilots, both men and women, had to fly her missions and “pick up the other slack” caused by her absence. These sentiments were echoed by fuel handlers in a battalion where a pregnant woman had to be temporarily excused from her duties because the hazardous chemicals in the fuel might harm her developing fetus.
There was pervasive indignation that pregnancy gave women an unfair advantage and allowed them to shirk their duty. This perception caused many women to risk their own and their developing fetus's health by continuing to work long hours and take part in unit physical training simply to avoid loss of professional status.
But no matter how hard women struggled to be treated fairly and equitably, almost one half of the men surveyed said the women in their units were treated more favorably. While 77 percent of the women said that they “pull their load” in the company, only 50 percent of the men agreed with this assessment. Again, however, some women soldiers complained that their units effectively precluded them from working within the MOS for which they were trained and assigned them instead to duties seen as “more appropriate work for a woman.”
In examining the effects of sexual harassment, the Review Panel found a troubling erosion of trust among the soldiers in units in which the problem was the most severe. None of the women soldiers wanted to come to work in one unit suffering significant levels of sexual harassment. A qualified woman junior NCO was leaving the Army after six years because men had “hit” on her throughout those six years. And even when she reported the incidents to her chain of command, no action was taken.
Some men said they were afraid of being falsely accused of sexual harassment so they avoided any interaction or contact with the women in their unit. Women soldiers confirmed this trend and said they were concerned about becoming isolated and shunned by men soldiers who would no longer even speak with them.
Despite these widespread and troubling revelations, however, both men and women soldiers assured the panel that “the mission is still being accomplished.” There were, however, clear signs that all-important cohesion—the bond of trust and loyalty—among soldiers was affected by problems in the Army's human relations environment. The panel concluded that sexual harassment and sex discrimination did have a negative impact on the Army's effectiveness. We found a degree of tension and uneasiness grounded in the perception of many soldiers that the Army's leaders had overreacted to the media fallout from the highly publicized incidents of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct at Aberdeen and in the McKinney case.
That view might have had some validity, but the fact remained that the Review Panel did unearth pervasive sexual harassment and sex discrimination, which erodes Army effectiveness.
I don't mean to imply, however, that there hasn't been considerable progress on the issue of Army men's behavior toward women soldiers since World War II. Most men soldiers never engage in improper behavior. But any degree of impropriety had less of an impact on Army readiness when women made up a much less significant percentage of the force. For example, when I entered the Army, less than 2 percent of the Army were women. Today the percentage is 15 percent and women fill a wide variety of jobs critical to operational success in combat. The readiness of the Army, therefore, will improve as the distraction of sexual harassment is eliminated from the lives of both men and women soldiers.
Secretary Togo West had ordered all of us on the Review Panel to examine “how Army leaders throughout the chain of command view and exercise their responsibility to address sexual harassment.” We had all held positions of leadership. We knew that an organization's leader was responsible for every aspect of its mission performance and human environment. But in carrying out the Secretary's mandate, we discovered some aspects of leadership and human relations we had not anticipated.
First, we found strong confirmation for the basic tenet that good leadership is crucial to the creation and maintenance of positive human relations in an organization. The data we collected revealed a direct correlation between strong, concerned leadership (NCOs, junior officers, and commanders) and a reduction in inappropriate sexual behaviors. This was just common sense. An effective Army leader knew his or her soldiers and the conditions in which they lived and worked. The leader knew what was on their minds, what they felt good about, and what was bothering them. These powers of perception were not innate mystical abilities; they came with experience and with making the conscious effort to know soldiers on a human level. We found that mutual respect among soldiers and their leaders, as well as increased acceptance of soldiers of diverse backgrounds—different races, ethnicity, and gender—as equally valuable team members was also connected with successful leadership.
The worst thing a leader could do was to ignore subordinates, to consider them just so many human cogs in the machine. Soldiers immediately detected their leaders' indifference and the lines of communication necessary for a healthy human environment broke down.
Second, we observed that the Army was not just a nine-to-five job, but a demanding profession that required shared values, beliefs, and assumptions that the Army held true—all based on the core values of honor, integrity, selfless service, courage, loyalty, duty, and respect. It was Army leaders who defined and reinforced those values for their soldiers. When they did so effectively, the units had relatively few sexual harassment or sex discrimination problems. However, when leaders were less directly connected to their soldiers and not committed to fostering a successful human relations environment every day of the year, the situation often deteriorated.
Yet we found good leaders could build positive human relations among their soldiers even in the most challenging situations. In one unit deployed in Kuwait, the chain of command refused to allow the harsh pace of operations and the unpleasant physical environment to detract from either the mission or from its commitment to take care of soldiers and ensure that the soldiers took care of each other. The leaders repeatedly emphasized that each soldier, man and woman, was important, both as a member of the unit team and as an individual. The leaders also encouraged soldiers to voice complaints and suggest solutions, without fear of retaliation. Although the unit was performing a difficult mission under great physical stress and isolation, the soldiers showed both personal discipline and a positive attitude.
From this and other effective units the panel visited, four characteristics necessary for the exercise of good leadership emerged:
• Good leaders set standards for the members of their organizations.
• Good leaders exemplified through their personal conduct adherence to those standards.
• Good leaders enforced and maintained those standards for the other members of the organization.
• Good leaders demonstrated genuine care and concern for their soldiers, no matter their rank, race, or gender.
Although these leadership characteristics could be applied beyond the human relations environment to building and sustaining military skills, we became convinced that, should a leader lack any one of these characteristics, both the unit's military readiness and human relations environment would be adversely affected.
For example, when asked whether their units' leaders set and enforced standards, significantly fewer women than men agreed. The proportion of women reporting this paralleled the perceived levels of sexual harassment and sex discrimination.
When it came to exemplifying standards, the adage that “actions speak louder than words” obviously applied. Official policies, Army regulations, or decrees alone did not create or enforce a positive human relations environment. One soldier in a focus group stated, “The more you hear leaders speak it, and then watch them maintain standards, you know that it is important.” As with all the Army values, when it came to respect and consideration among soldiers, the chain of command had to lead by example, maintaining high standards of personal conduct.
But the Review Panel found that soldiers sometimes felt their leaders did not hold themselves to the same standards they set for soldiers. When asked if the leaders in their company set good examples for soldiers by behaving the way they expect soldiers to behave, 54 percent of the men surveyed agreed, while only 41 percent of the women agreed. Focus groups of most units found that leaders tried to set a good example. But there were a number of cases where commanders exemplified a “do as I say and not what I do” attitude. This applied to leaders who saw Temporary Duty assignments abroad as an opportunity for adulterous relationships.
In units where this situation prevailed, soldiers distrusted their leaders, perceiving them as not interested in soldiers' welfare.
When the Review Panel asked officers and NCOs what they found most satisfying about their Army experience, most cited the opportunity to work with and develop young soldiers. But the survey data revealed that most of these young soldiers did not feel their leaders' care and concern. For example, fewer than half of the Army men and women surveyed answered affirmatively to the question “My officers are interested in what I think and how I feel about things.” This response was similar for the question “My officers are interested in my personal welfare.” But the positive responses increased significantly when those questions were applied to the units' NCOs, who were in much closer contact with the soldiers surveyed. Overall, however, fewer than 40 percent of the soldiers responded affirmatively to the statement, “I am impressed with the quality of leadership in this company.” And that level of negative response was almost as bad among both men and women to the statement, “I would go for help with a personal problem to people in the company chain of command.”
This perceived lack of interest on the part of leadership no doubt contributed to weakening the critical bond of trust between leaders and their soldiers. One soldier in a focus group summarized this widespread feeling with the statement, “I would never trust my chain of command to deal with sexual harassment.” And many leaders also recognized this breakdown in trust. One senior officer conceded, “I don't think we know what goes on with the junior enlisted,” the soldiers who formed the vast majority of the Army.