Australian Army Journal

GENDER AND SEXUALITY
Sexuality, Cohesion, Masculinity and
Combat Motivation: Designing Personnel
Policy to Sustain Capability
Lieutenant Colonel Charles Knight
ABSTRACT
How might mixing the sexes affect the capability of small combat teams?
As Australia integrates women into its combat arms, the policy challenges that
sexuality presents may prove more enduring than those of gender. Objections
to integration based on women’s capabilities are expected to quickly become
redundant, although the masculine culture of combat units demands careful
management. Hyper-masculinity can undoubtedly be hostile to women, but is a
long-established way to meet the profoundly unnatural psychological demands of
close combat. Effective integration therefore appears to require careful adjustment
of Army’s methods of building team cohesion. Furthermore, even gender-neutral
approaches to generating the cohesion that is so vital for combat arms will not change
the potential for sexual interaction that mixing genders creates. The social dynamics
involved represent some level of risk to the trust on which cohesion depends.
Australian Army Journal
Culture edition 2013, Volume X, Number 3 Page 58