freedom of expression. and that legacy continues after she left. so she certainly made her mark on the world. and certainly showed that she's unflappable in the face of criticism and unflappable in the face of an attempt to undo all of the work that that fine organization is doing. for me, she's a great role model of how we conduct ourselves as women, in the face of what can be a little bit of a backslide from time to time. >> it's nice to have people we can see who embody strength and thick skin and certainly you've talked to -- you wrote in your book about how much you have -- how far you've come in this regard in in not letting the turkeys get you down. your personal story makes the case for public policy that supports women, how do we get men to be allies in the fight -- to fight to further these policies when they don't experience these things personally? how do we make men care about feminism? >> is we share our stories. again not to be a broken record, but humanizing these issues just as i -- for example, as a state lawmaker, may not understand issues that are happening in the prison system. in my state. when people are coming and humanizing those experiences, it motivates me to want to be helpful. we have to make sure that we make men our allies in this fight. because we won't achieve true gender equality without it, as ann marie slaughter invites us to consider. true gender equality comes from making sure we're thinking about men as well. and the choices that they have in front of them. and making sure that they are free to choose as we currently are. men who have daughters tend to really be much more open to these issues of gender equality, because they see it through the lens of their own daughters who they want to be happy and successful. and so making sure that we're sharing those stories about each other's experiences with our male counterparts at work or in the political arena. or in our families, is very, very important. >> through sharing stories. it's about empathy and helping people, men and women alike to understand our perspectives. and we do that through story telling and sharing. and vulnerability really. and authenticity. you embody that very well. what is your political future? >> i have absolutely no idea. i'm working right now on creating an advocacy organization for women. i'm very passionate about this issue, and certainly it's the case that not being in political office doesn't mean that you have to go radio silent on things you care about. we can have just as big an impact outside of political office as we can inside it, and in had fact not being an office holder any more, or a candidate right now has been really freeing. i can say whatever i want to say and no one is message managing me. and i can really listen again to my heart and the things that matter deeply to me, and to spend my energies and efforts fighting for those. that's what i'm going to do. if that takes me back into the political candidate or office holder arena, great. if it doesn't, i'll still be fighting in a way that i hope will be effective and make an impact. >> wonderful. >> i look forward to seeing your continued impact grow, thank you so much for being here and sharing your story with us. >> thank you. and thank you all so much. [ applause ] the c-span cities tour visits cities across the country every other weekend. this month with congress on its summer recess, the cities tour is on c-span each day at 6:00 p.m. eastern. today lincoln nebraska, where we'll look at the design of the state capitol, the past and present of the first peoples of the plains and we'll talk with nebraska governor, that the is as at 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. american history tv looks back 50 years to president johnson signing the medicare bill. an idea president truman inspired a generation earlier. before signing the bill on july 30th, 1965, lbj said it was designed to ensure every citizen against the ravages of illness in his old age. linda johnson robb, lbj deputy special council and lbj presidential library director on the battle to pass medicare and medicaid, and why where president johnson succeeded when others failed. white house recordings of phone calls between lbj and his aids who talk about the politics and strategy behind the bill. then at 10:00 p.m., the medicare bill sign on july 30th, 1965, at the harry s. truman presidential library in independence, missouri. including remarks from president johnson and former president truman. all of this tonight on american history tv on c-span 3. tonight on the communicators, author and british technology pioneer kevin ashton on the creative process, and how that process takes work. >> why did the wright brothers fly first, and what was the process they used because they weren't the first people to have the idea of building a flying machine. and they weren't the first people to try. so why did they succeed where everybody else failed? and the answer is, they understood the problem they were trying to solve much better than anybody else. and at the end of the day, being creative is not about having ideas in in the shower or ah-ha moments or lightning bolts of inspiration. it's about solving problems one step at a time. so understanding the problem of the piece of paper, which is a problem of balance was the key for the wright brothers starting on their course that ultimate l led to them flying. >> kevin ashton on the communicators on c-span 2. with the senate in its august break, we'll feature book tv programming week nights in in prime time on c-span 2. and at the end of the summer, look for two book tv special programs. on saturday september 5th, we're live from our nation's capitol for the 15th annual national book festival. followed sunday with our former second lady, lynn cheney. book tv on c-span 2, television for serious readers. >> next, a look at changes for u.s. service women since the 2013 recision of the defense department's ground combat exclusion policy, and research showing unit cohesion can take place in the company of both women and men. women in international security hosted this event. >> is thank you, everybody. and welcome back, we have a thrilling panel for you coming right up. i think this next discussion gets right at the heart of everything we're talking about to a great extent. i'm the executive director of the truman national security project. we are very, very proud to say that no exceptions is an initiative of truman and cnp and led by a remarkable group of women, including some combat leaders from our, o, and supported by an even larger number of men in the truman project, who also have combat service, i served in iraq and afghanistan. to me, you know, i don't know when this issue was settled for me. i'm probably supposed to be an objective moderator. i just put my cards on the table. my sister is currently serving with the station as a detective in the gang unit of the new york police department. she could kick my butt i'll tell you that for sure and over two years on the sharpened on the battlefield, i've seen more than enough examples of women distinguishing themselves, including in the close fight providing the kind of fire support, whether that's from a cockpit or another platform we desperately needed at various times, defending their convoys when they came under attack. for many of us, who have seen this movie out on the ground, this is a debate that was over a long time ago. those are my cards and they're on the table. any pretense i will abandon now. how many currently serving or former members of the military, any military u.s. or otherwise do we have in the audience today? >> okay. i should have asked how many civilians were in the audience. excellent. it is no exaggeration to say there's an absurd wealth of knowledge and experience in this room, that's why we're going to try to make this more of a conversation than a series of presentations. i know we'ring looing forward to that. this is about the central caution of unit cohesion in leadership. we have with us four people that i think provide a great perspective on that across the board. dr. megan mckinsey. she's a senior lecturer in the government international relations department. and the center for the ufrt at sydney, she crosses gender studies and international development. she's published in a number of top journals, including foreign affairs, parameters and studies. it includes interviews with over 50 female soldiers, mckinsey's fourth book, beyond the band of brothers, the u.s. military and the myth that women can't fight, debunks core arguments to keep women out of combat roles. it is one of my favorite miniseries, but i'm willing to see that. we also have dr. robert egnall. he's a visiting professor, and senior faculty provider. he's on leave from the swedish national defense college. he's also the founding director of the stock helm center for strategic studies. created in 2005 in response to accurate and nongovernmental policy advice. we're joined by my friend captain john rodriguez. he's a junior peace fellow who works with me. john served six years in in active duty, including a combat deployment. if that place and name doesn't mean anything to you, perhaps it will if you look it up, i also had the privilege of spending a year there myself at a different time. john provides an incredible experience, that's sort of infantry unit in a daily grind close fight. very high intensity in the number of cases, that's a perspective that's needed in this conversation, we're happy to have him. he's a member of the maryland national guard and has worked as a national security intern at human rights. we're also joined by mary beth brigeman. she everybody issed on active duty for eight years including a deployment to iraq during the 2003 invasion. mary beth worked for a robotics company for three years where she helped with ied robots for marines. she's a student of policy management at georgetown university. this is a great panel and i'm going to start it by turning to dr. mckinsey. and asking her to -- if you could tell us about the question that lends its name to the pa l panel. >> thank you. i am the outsider in the room, i'm a researcher and i spent the last several years looking at the topic of women in combat. because i started my research in sierra leone. there was a high percentage of women that participated in that conflict. i talked to a lot of the women who participated. i got a lot of feedback that said, well, they weren't really soldiers they were just following. some of the arguments were similar in the debates that were happening around the combat exclusion for women in the united states. that's how i made that shift i spent the last three years sifting through all the research i could find on women in combat. i'll talk about that, i wanted to say thank you to weiss for inviting me. it's a real honor to be here. focusing on cohesion, one of the most common arguments to justify the combat exclusion in the u.s. and elsewhere has been the position that women undermine the types of bonding for combat troops to operate efficiently. the cohesion presumes that all male combat units are cohesive and more effective than mixed ginder units. this became the dominant argument for excluding women from bad in the two decades leading up to the january 2013 decision to remove the combat exclusion and it remains the main argument used by other militaries across the world to retain the combat exclusion. >> today i'd like to talk about the role of myth, emotion and gender bias in many shaping the debates around combat cohesion. there's really two points i'd like to make. the first is that there is an extensive amount of research on women and cohesion. the question is addressed in actually a staggering amount of well funded studies in the u.s. and abroad. at present there's a greater need to reflect on the results of these findings which i'll get to in a minute. rather than call for another study on cohesion. >> second in my book, i argue that all male units have been central to military identity in in the u.s. for a long time. there are deeply associated assumptions with the band of brothers. from my perspective, cohesion arguments rather than simply focusing on mission effectiveness, can be code for preeverybody issing the band of brothers. while cohesion is treated as a group dynamic. much of the debate is driven by emotion and stereotypes. let's start with the evidence related to combat cohesion. studies show the need to desegregate between social and task cohesion. it refers to the emotional bonds between members of the group. particularly the feelings of trust and camaraderie. task cohesion is defined as the commitment of a group toward a shared mission or objectives. put another way, it refers to whether group members like one another. task cohesion reer fers to whet they can work well together. researchers often ignore the difference and measure them together. there's some indicators that women slightly impact social cohesi cohesion. we tend to want to, would with people who are similar to us to learn that men tend to feel more socially bonded to male colleagues is no surprise but those studies that isolate have found that task cohesion is more strongly linked to mission effectiveness than cohesion. one major study concluded military performance depends on whether service members are committed to the same professional goals, not on whether they like one another. knowing the task cohesion is a greater indicator of effectiveness, when we focus on task cohesion, women are not a factor. leadership is, there's room to learn from other militaries that have integrated women into combat. research found that cohesion can be inspired through shared commitment irrespective of previous social or personal interactions. and a canadian report determined that the cohesion of a mixed gender combat unit was primarily a leadership challenge in turn, research that con natures cohesion, mistakenly under estimates the role of leadership and training. they lead to flawed conclusions about women and cohesion now, gets to the heart of the matter. there's quite a few studies that indicate -- that find little relationship between the integration of women and various understandings of cohesion. the military conducted a test. these conclusions were supported by a 1993 gao report that found that gender was not listed as participants and they've done a couple excellent studies on this. the real cohesion story was one of leadership. something that's often overlooked here is the fact that similar cohesion arguments were used and put to rest when it came to african-american troops and gay and lesbian service members. also we tend to ignore the potential negative effects of social cohesion. in had various workplace settings, overly cohesive groups have been associated with group think as well as enhanced problem solving and decision making skills. moving on to my broader point about gender and cohesion i think there's two main indicators that there may be gender bias in relation to discussions on cohesion. first is that cohesion is often referred to either implicitly or explicit i will as male bonding. second, evidence indicates that the main impediment may be men's attitudes, not women themselves. or their ability to perform. this first point. cohesion is male bonding. we're looking at the public debates, some descriptions tend to assume that unit cohesiveness requires segregation, it's actually the masculine nature of the bonding that's essential. anthony king acknowledges that soes yolgsists have preferred to look at the masculine roles. kingsley brown made the following observation men fight for many reasons, probably the most powerful one is the male bonding with their comrades. perhaps for fundment aal reasons, women do not invoke in men the same feelings of comradeship that men do. defining military cohesion and troop effectiveness by masculine rituals actually places women as outsiders and as a threat by their very nature. this perspective can't be countered with more research, it requires a change in perspective, this is why attitudes mat ter going to the second indicator i mentioned research earlier that shows little correlation between women and reduced cohesion. there are some studies that actually show, that find the contrary, if you dig deeper into these studies you can find interesting conclusions. let me explain one study found that units with higher numbers of women may report lower levels of cohesion. women report lower levels of cohesion. another study found that women negatively impact cohesion, men's sense of women impacted cohesion. the more accepting men were of women the higher rates of cohesion in a group. here you have a separate factor this has been reproduced on mixed gender units. this is really important, because it means that men's attitudes toward women and their acceptance of women not women themselves, might be the key factor in levels of cohesion. it's also important because it seems that irrespective of women's performance, negative attitudes persistent impact how a group describes its cohesion. just a couple weeks ago, the resultsive goodin to special operations forces were reported and this was a survey used to gauge apprehensions that troops may have to women in combat the results did show several misgivings and concerns, including concerns about sexual assault. we need to understand how these misgivings might impact group dynamics and reported levels of cohesion. we also need to acknowledge that sexual assault is not a agagend cohesion problem. it's a sexual assault problem. the main issue may be men's attitudes and perceptions, so we may want to spend our attention focusing on cultural change. debates on women in combat leave several questions unanswered. why does there seem to be more concern with women and cohesion with regard to combat units. do they only limit cohesion for combat troops. do they require different types of cohesion from other units? are we suggesting that the training and military leadership are unable to foster task cohesion among soldiers. combat cohesion is not a gender neutral concept. an essential element of the banned of brothers myth is unexplainable or indescribable bonds of the all male group. this representation can make it really a moving target that's impossible to pin down and measure. irrespective of the vast research, ideals associated with sake receipt or special bonding between all male units are all too often treated as fact rather than narrative. i think this sells both our male and female troops short. it implies that men cannot be professional and serve alongside service members irrespective of their gender and it assumes that women are not as trustworthy or dependable comrades as their male counterparts. these claims simply aren't true. we cannot let the myth override reality. the ideal of all male units on the front line and women staying behind in support roles is over stories like ashley's war are stories i'm hearing over and over again in can did and new zeal anned. speculation about cohesion can actually reinforce myth rather than make women's jobs easier. i think we need to move forward when it comes to combat cohesion, and we have the research we need to do so. now we need to address the attitudes about women and consider how military culture needs to catch up with the reality of women's participation in war thank you. >>. >> thank you for that terrific overview of the landscape and research behind it. can i turn to you and ask the straightforward question? based on your experience and research, do you feel that the evidence and the experience of international military supports the idea of introducing women into combat units will create greater p form answer? >> we'll see, i'll come to the onset at the end of this. effort first of all, thanks for a brilliant presentation there. i was desperately flicking through my notes wondering what i could add. i would like to go back to the quote by general dempsey that was up here in support of this earlier on. i'm an academic. i'm a foreigner, i don't have to be nice to anyone in here. he said, we will extend opportunities to women in had a way that maintains readiness, moral and unit cohesion. we'll preserve our war fighting capability to defend the nation. that sounds good, when i unpack that, there's a lot of really problematic assumptions and negativity baked into that one. it's about maintenance, about preservation of the existing order. that to me is an assumption that the existing organization is perfect. and whatever we do to change it can only have negative or no impact if it's done really well. that to me is the wrong starting point when it am coulds to the inclusion of women in combat. i just wanted to put that out there. it's horrible to join an organization and feel that the only way i can impact it is negatively or not at all. so let's think of this more in terms of an increase combat effectiveness or maximized combat effectiveness. i also think on the other hand that military effectiveness unit performance are the right measures, those are the right topics to you can ta about. we have military operations for specific purposes. the army calls it fighting and winning the nation's war in order to defend the nation. i should probably add that military units do more than fight the nation's wars or fighting the nation's wars these days entails a whole host of very complex tasks beyond tactical level engagement with the enemy. physical fitness and unit cohesion, those are two traditionally very important aspects of military effectiveness, it's absolutely right that we are focusing on those things. that's where you hear most of the complaints or the fears about integration of women, we have to tackle them on irthis home -- their home court if you will. i would say get over with it, just do it, let women compete with the existing standards and work with those standards to make sure they're not only gender neutral, it hides gender blindness. we assume just because it's the same for everyone, they're neutral highly masculine view of what it is and what it means, how it's conducted and tradition we have to be aware that -- and create gender aware standards for all mos's rather than gender neutral i think we should be aware about this argument about effectiveness since we have not exactly come out of 15 years of almost continuous war with great success and glory. there's been tremendous mistakes, also at the tactical level. so there's all reasons to try to improve the way we fight. the way we organize, the way we train, et cetera. and i think we should view this issue as part of that ambition to always try to improve and maximize the effectiveness of the armed forces. something interesting that came out of iraq and afghanistan, are a number of organizational innovations. we have the lion esteems, i think the early versions, the female engagement teams, gender field advisers, gender focal points, et cetera, et cetera. lots of interesting innovations going on. those were not ordered from the political level and imposed on the organization. they were attempts at dealing with tactical level challenges, our units were facing in the field. let's not just look at this in terms of maintaining effectiveness. let's look at it as a way of improving it. these were necessary measures. i'm going to come back to them in terms of what are the most appropriate ways of integrated women or creating female engagement teams. remember that they were responses to tactical challenges not imposed on units. there's a number of fields of research. and megan did a great job of covering them. you often here, we need more evidence. there's quite a lot of evidence out there, the challenge is that we are up against what is considered common sense within the armed forces, a feeling that what we have really works. and we know how to train a good infantry unit, we've done it for centuries in the same way. and our drill sergeants know exactly how to push our recruits very hard. and they know that they should encourage the weekend activities that men do as well quite often hard drinking and wouoing the ladies at the local pub. those are ways we know work. we are comfort ab will with it. if it worked for centuries why should we change it? there's a lot of research highlighting that these types of masculine social cohesion units or sort of constructions if you will, can quite often also lead to some extreme and very problematic cases of hypermasculine it i it, abuse, now, i don't know in it's directly related to sexual violence within the armed forces, but it seems to me a good connection. there's a link to toxic leadership that we consider quite acceptable. they are usually quite effective. they create the kind of units that perform according to the standards athe the end of the day. why should we fire them if they're effective as officers. they are producing unit cultures that in the end may become really problematic it in all kinds of ways, and there's some -- again, some experiences from iraq and afghanistan with the worst cases of units misbehavior, leading to crimes. we have the business literature. the civilian literature out there, supporting us more and more, that doesn't mean so much, though, we're looking at combat and that's considered unique. if the business community is improved that doesn't apply, because warfare is it something completely different. you can always dismisthat. that's very clear, though. we're seeing the same thing within humanitarian affairs. if you conduct gender analysis you'll do it more effectively. one might assume it applies to the military affairs and intelligence gathering as well. unless it's so unique that it does it again, right? we can look at the impact of noncombat units. there's no serious indicators that it ruins it. we all know that it doesn't work, you can't mix men and women, we all know what happens, sex and love and what have you. ruins unit cohesion effectiveness we've had decades of integrated units. if they've performed so poorly, that would be shouldn't they be on trial for misleading the country in an important way? we're talking about direct combat support units who are absolutely crucial to those fighting on the front lines. by the way, that is pretty ridiculous, anyway. we have plenty of experience of integration of combat units internationally as well so far, and megan would know more about this than me. what i'm seeing is what would be referred to or dismissed as anecdotal these days. we're seeing very little negativity in those stud idys what you hear first of all is usually it's a nonissue. it doesn't matter at all. she performed the job great, became one of the guys, i don't see why sex or gender has anything to do with it when you probe them a little bit, they will acknowledge it is an issue. they had to resolve certain issues. love, sex again, it happened. those are not the worst things that can happen to a unit, and a good leader can tackle all those issues just as any other challenge of these units come up with. it is an issue, i think we should again be aware. rather than being gender blind. let's be gender aware. we can tackle those issues that might arise. you also hear really interesting stories of improved effectiveness from inclusivity or gender integration. one being that men overperform when there's women around. so they get better when there's women around, they don't want to lose to women, for example. i don't know about that, i think you hear lots of stories of a matured culture within the unit. and again we have the diversity dimension, that with more backgrounds, more experiences, you become a more effective problem solving unit you become a more effective problem-solving unit avoiding the group think. so there's -- it's a bit of a mixed bag. but it's looking very positive. and as i always highlight, you very seldomly hear from this anecdotal evidence the opposite, that i served with women and it really didn't work, it ruined the unit, et cetera. you hear that from the people who have first of all never served in a military unit but are very vocal about how military units should function because they've seen it in movies. but also the people within the organization who have never actually served with women, or with women in combat. and again, of course, that's pretty rare. but there's a staggering amount of people who have served with women. and you would think that those stories would seep out more than in the angry commentator fields and in the professional journals, that some of them would step up for the sake of the country, for the sake of the organization if it's such an important issue to defend the existing effective organization. but we don't have that. and that to me is very encouraging. men's attitudes towards women as a key factor. i thought that was absolutely astonishing and in so many ways provocative and also, i would say, accurate. it was a way of saying what i've been trying to get for a long time. and that also raises issues about bigger consequences, perhaps, of integration, as well. it's not just a nonissue. it's not just about preserving the existing culture and order. it might be something more fundamental, that it has an impact when you mix men and women. but it can be an incredibly positive and rewarding process for our armed forces. and let's study that as well. let's try and study the improved impact as carefully as we try and find the negative impact these days. and i'll stop there. there's so much i'm sure john and mary will cover as well. >> thank you, robert. that advances the discussion pretty beautifully. because i think it does indicate that too often we ask the wrong question. frequently we ask, how do we avoid hurting the force by doing this. and that's implied sometimes as much as it is explicit. and i think the real question we ought to be asking ourselves is how do we improve the force. i think it's fair to say there's endeav endeavor, a sphere of human endeavor that has not benefited from extending the opportunity to join in that endeavor to all those who are qualified regardless of gender or any other characteristic. this feels to me like a case like that. and you're suggesting that it is. but you raise a couple of important questions, both of you do. and i want to turn to john and mary beth about those questions. and john, i think, you can speak to this with great credibility. is combat, as robert asked, so different from every other sphere of human endeavor that these rules don't apply? john, you had the experience of -- you're a ranger qualified infantry officer. you had the experience of leading, really training and leading an almost new combat formation into some of the heaviest and most sustained combat the army's experienced since the vietnam war. so of all of the folks who can talk about this, you know, i think you're certainly one of them. from your perspective, given that experience, do you feel that having access to a talent pool of women for your unit would have improved your performance? would you have some concerns as a line leader about that? how do you think it might have improved your performance in the close fight? >> yeah. so first off, i just want to say that my views here today are my own, don't represent the department of defense or the maryland national guard. but to answer your question -- >> thanks, john. i should have said that up front. >> you know, no shit. there i was fall of 2008 deploying to afghanistan with my rifle platoon to the korengal valley, the most kinetic company sector in the war on terror. and my platoon was at 75% strength. so when you ask would my platoon have benefitted if we had opened up a greater pool of talent to draw from? i think the answer is yes. so why was my platoon under strength? so we trained up for a year before deploying and we lost people. we lost people because of injuries. we lost people because of, you know, drugs, discipline issues. and as many recruits as we would get into our unit as we were building up strength, we'd continue to lose folks. and so we never got to 100% strength and then we were sent into this crucible. so while we kind of kicked out some folks and didn't bring them with us, there were folks we took overseas that maybe i kind of regret taking them with us. they weren't necessarily physically fit enough to do the job. to be an infantry man in the army, you need to be a male and pass, you know, the bare minimum of the pt test. so that is a standard that applies across the board. and it's not differentiated whether you're a light infantry man in the mountains of afghanistan or a cyber guy or gal here at ft. meade. and so when i think about the, you know, the women that are competing or going through, you know, ranger school right now. you know, made it through wrap week. you know, i don't think that 42% of my platoon could've made it through rap week that i deployed with that. that's a pretty tough challenge. and so to open up the field to have like the best people possible i think would have been a value added. because going to the point that, robert, you were making about, you know, we idealize the band of brothers and we idealize unit cohesion, certainly i served with a lot of just outstanding human beings. and i thought that our unit overall performed at a very high level. but, you know, not every infantryman is, you know, audie murphy or john rambo, right? you have folks like that out there. and i served with some individuals who were heroes. but there's other folks that, you know, are just kind of barely skating by. and so when we think about, you know, bringing in, you know, women into an infantry unit like that, i think in the popular debate it's always we're thinking, oh, you're going to replace, you know, john rambo with jill rambo or whatever. and she could never, you know, keep up. but that's simply not the case. right? i think that a lot of women would be able to perform at that same level. at least certainly well enough to have been a value add overseas. getting to some of that discussion about cohesion and what did it take to build cohesion. we did focus in my unit on kind of task-driven cohesion as much as possible. you're leading a bunch of 18, 19-year-old kids. and you know, you try to make being squared away, you know, doing your job, make that what it is to be cool, right? so these young soldiers emulating their squad leaders, looking up to them, they're role models for them. and you make being physically fit, being competent at your job, you know, what it means to be a good soldier. and those young soldiers want to emulate their elders and follow in their path. and i think we worked at a really high level. now, going to the idea that is combat different than working in a business environment. i do think that at least the stress that my unit was put under in afghanistan was much higher than the stress you'd find in, you know, a civilian occupation. and so we were really tested. and, you know, there are times when individuals weren't able to kind of keep up. we had a number of soldiers that would go home on r & r and they wouldn't come back because they were, you know, scared. they were suffering from ptsd. there was, you know, a lot of issues. and you had other soldiers who were suffering but, you know, were toughing it out and kind of did not seek care because they knew that their friends were out there. that if they left, you know, we'd all be a soldier down. so that level of stress and the level of cohesion you need to maintain kind of -- just maintain in the face of that level of adversity is much greater than what i've found now. but most of my experience in the military was not, you know, the korengal valley. right? and there were times in afghanistan that, you know, weren't necessarily hell. so, yeah, you want the most cohesive unit possible when you're going into high-intensity combat like that. but i think that most of the techniques and leadership skills that you would use in the civilian sector and the way you can kind of have a broad base of support and reach out to a broad community of people works in the military, as well. >> thank, john. and to that question, i think, too, mary beth, you led a company of marines on certainly not an office retreat. the invasion of iraq in 2003. can you speak to what that experience was like for you and some of the leadership challenges you may or may not have had? and i think also possibly speak to this larger question of -- i'm continuously fascinated by the way we look at this as if we're diving into an unknown world that we have not in any way experienced in terms of having women in direct fire combat. does that strike you as accurate? or maybe something's been going on for the last 15 years? >> yeah. for sure. it is interesting that we approach this as though this is the first time we're dealing with this issue. when i see so many faces in this audience, some of them familiar to me. we've been doing this for an awfully long time. the difference, i hope, between my experience on active duty and the experience of the young women i see in the audience is i hope you won't have to fight so hard to get there. when i was on active duty and i served from '99 to 2007 as a combat engineer officer, i was in a field that was open to women, but there were a number of units within the combat engineer field that were not open to women. so i could only do 2/3 of my job. i was barred from training in a whole third of my occupational specialty. i wasn't allowed into that part. so we fought everywhere we went. we fought to train. and i'll actually say i may say "i" while i'm talking here, i was, actually, the only woman in my combat engineer platoon. so it was very much me fighting as a woman to get these training opportunities. but everywhere i went, i had things closed to me because i was a woman and closed to my platoon because i was a woman and i wasn't allowed to lead them to certain places. so, you know, one example, i had an opportunity to take my platoon to bridgeport, the mountain warfare training center with a company of combat -- a combat engineer company which was closed to women. so there were no women there. i had an opportunity to train with them with my platoon for a month and do their mountain warfare training package. i was told no by a number of people. fortunately, my commanding officer was not one of them. so i'll come back to that common theme as i go through. i had some pretty amazing leaders. so despite being told no by several people, i did it anyways. and everybody survived, we did great. and the nice thing was, you know, being able to compete with the men up there -- and i wasn't in competition with them. but being able to keep up with them and excel on that mountain, it said something. and those 200 men that walked away from the experience, having seen a woman complete those tasks, left having a different idea about women. and i'll admit that for the first couple of days i was a distraction to them. i can't deny that. they were fascinated by me. like i was some weird alien creature. what is she going to do next? how is she going to do this? and i'll have to watch the whole time to find out. they were really, really fascinated by me. but they got over it. but they got over it really fast and the rest of the month went extremely smoothly. and i built some incredible bonds, amazing relationships through that experience. fast forward a little while to a combined arms exercise in 29 palms where i was an engineer platoon commander. and we were organized at that time. they were trying a wonderful experiment where they organized all the engineers into a pool, male, female, no matter what part of the engineer field we were in, they put us in a common pool and farmed us out to the units that needed them. i was essentially detached from my parent unit and put into an engineer pool to be used wherever engineers were needed. well, when they tasked out my platoon, they forgot i was the platoon commander and tasked me to a light armored reconnaissance company that was headed out to the field for a week into, you know, to practice to train for combat. so i showed up all bright-eyed and cheery with my platoon of all men. and immediately, the platoon sergeant for the l.a.r. company said, you can't come with us. i mean, there's -- i wouldn't want you to get in trouble. you know, there's this combat exclusion rule that says that women can't train with combat units. and i said, wow, no kidding. [ laughter ] what time do we go? because i'm what you've got and i'm here and this is my platoon and guess what. i'm coming with you. and again, for the first couple of days i was out there with them, i will admit, i think i was a distraction to those guys. but they got over it so quickly. and we went on to have an amazing week in the field, built lifelong relationships with those guys, and boy, we had some great laughs about it over a few beers at the club afterwards. just them getting over that process. so fast forward a little bit more to kind of the culmination of my career, i think, which was the invasion of iraq. i was a company commander. we were in kuwait ready to cross the border. i crossed the border with the 3rd infantry division, actually, with the first units that went across. and the days before, all of a sudden a colonel who will remain unnamed realized that i was a woman and thought this is going to be a problem. and he told me i would not be able to take my company across the border and that i would be replaced after being a company commander for nine months and training my company and doing all the prep work that needed to be done and being extremely well bonded with them and my platoon commanders. two days before the invasion of iraq i was told i couldn't go. that i was being pulled out of my unit and i'd be replaced by someone these marines had never seen. so again, fortunately, i was surrounded by amazing leaders and one of those leaders was my commanding officer. and he kind of did the "shh, it's okay," you know. and this time the fog of war worked for me. and they forgot. and i did it anyways. and it was great. and obviously me being a female did not hold me back from that mission at all. and so, you know, crossing the border was by far one of my proudest moments. second only to bringing everybody home and crossing the border back into kuwait safely afterwards. so yes, absolutely. i mean, this was -- this was 12 years ago now. this is not a new argument. women have been doing this for a long time and doing it extremely successfully, extremely proudly. i am so proud to be counted among them and among you in the audience here. the ones who have gone before me. and juliette snuck out, but i owe a special thanks to her. as a combat engineer female and one of the first. she busted through that glass ceiling and made a nice neat hole for me to climb through with my compatriots. so i appreciate that. the key was great leadership all along the way. the key was not whether or not i was strong enough to do it. i was. that helped me. but the key was always that i had terrific leaders who trusted in me and trusted in my ability to lead my marines and that was all that mattered. i love what john said earlier, just kind of listening, he didn't say this explicitly, but just kind of listening, we've broken this down now over the course of the day to being so much about the physical standard. and truthfully, and not to discredit the research here, but -- or draw attention away from it, but i'd like to keep the focus on that. because i honestly think that's the only thing holding us back anymore. and it's not going to hold us back very much longer for women. women have figured it out for an awfully long time. and once the standards are thoughtfully made -- maybe they're there now. i'm not an expert on that. once they're thoughtfully made, women are going to figure out a way to do that. and that needs to be the last barrier. because the talk about any other surrounding issues is gone. we've proved that. my generation proved that many years ago, and the generation, i mean, i've got two rangers sitting in the audience. female rangers. women who went through the ranger course sitting with me. and it's amazing. sorry. i don't know the exact term there. but we've done amazing things. women have done amazing things. and i think that the focus should be on what the true barriers are left. which aren't very many. >> thank you. that's a really, really inspiring story. and you talk about decisions made on the basis of what's good for an organization. as you were telling your story, john and i were sort of sharing a look like, i can't think of anything dumber than switching out a high-performing line combat leader two days before the invasion of iraq because of gender. >> right. >> i mean, my god. so i think your company's very, very lucky that didn't happen. at this point, i think we want to open it up to a conversation with the room. i'm sure there's plenty to discuss. would anyone like to jump in? we have microphones orbiting positions. >> major head. army national guard. i had a question that mary just actually touched on. as we were -- as i was talking to mari here and the researchers too, do you see it more as a generational gap, that as we continue on in generations those things will kind of go -- not go away but kind of allow it? like she said, when she was in the class with the lieutenants, they wasn't worried about oh, you're female. maybe it's more of a generation, as you said, generations before. i think i graduated the same year as you. i saw different things and probably the lieutenants coming out today. that's my question. and is there research being done with maybe a generational gap as far as cultural as we change our culture? i definitely believe it is leadership's ability to change that and make a difference. >> that's a great question. anybody want to take a crack at it? anything you researched about the generational question? >> i think there is research that indicates there is sort of a cultural gap and certainly with don't ask don't tell there's the same kind of indications. the problem is often that leadership is part of the generation that may be stuck in the old culture we're talking about. so it may take some time for cultural change. so yeah. i certainly think that attitudes among new recruits, there is indication that -- especially around issues of gender and don't ask don't tell were very different. >> i think just to add quickly, the military historically is not great at quick culture change. it takes some time to come along. and while i do see huge differences between the generations of my parents and myself and the young men and women here in the audience, i think that's not good enough. and i think for us to be able to push it gently in the right way, in a thoughtful fashion, is extremely important. that's why these panels and these discussions are important. it will happen on its own but not in enough time. >> i'd just like to echo that. i've been in so many conversations with different levels of command as well. where the younger generation will say with all due respect, sir, to generals and then explain the fact that they're already everywhere, they're performing excellent, my wife's flying the helicopters, we go in with, et cetera, et cetera. there's something tremendous happening in terms of generational shifts. >> so my name is jessica trisco darden. i'm associate professor at the east school of international service at american university here in d.c. big shout out to my georgetown colleagues. i would just like to speak to this point a little bit about generational shifts and cultural shifts. dr. mackenzie brought up the israeli defense forces, and they have historically had women integrated into their operations. but even in pushing through some of their removals of gender-based combat exclusions they're having an extremely difficult time.