US Navy OKs female submariners!

[Carol]

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/navy...g-aboard-submarines-congress/story?id=9921378


....and the UK might be next!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7055141.ece


And one who never had her chance...

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/would-be-female-sub-pioneer-wonders-what-if/19374279

 

[MA-Caver]

Little by little, more and more that ceiling is coming down.

 

[d1jinx]

so its ok to go deep per the U.S. Gov !?!?!?????!!!!!!!!!

 

[seasoned]

Women are a very integral part of society, serving in many professions formally held by males. Of which submariners should be NO exception.

 

[MBuzzy]

A large part of the hold up there is sub reconfiguration. Putting women on the boats means that you need all new women's facilities - I wonder how they will tackle that issue.

 

[Satt]

My grandfather would roll over in his grave. He was a submariner. When I was in the Navy and mentioned this idea, he would start ranting about how it couldn't work, not because of the women, but because you couldn't trust horny men under water for that long. :hmm:
If you are on a top-secret mission and you HAVE to stay underwater for so many months and some idoit gets a woman pregnant underway, what do you do?

Also, you would have to re-engineer the whole sub to have seperate female facilities. If you have ever been on a sub (and I have), this is a daunting task. You would basically just have to build a whole new class of sub, which could be done of course.

My solution would be to designate certain subs to be "all female" subs. That would eliminate the need to seperate anyone, plus it would eliminate the possibility of sexual issues.

 

[Sukerkin]

Aye, I've seen this story bubbling under for a while now (Yeah! Marine based pun attack! ).

I can see both sides of the matter with regard to the practical and social issues but it has to be borne in mind that women have served on Royal Naval vessels for centuries ... it is just that it was never acknowledged. It is not a new thing really to have mixed crews, it is a new thing to have mixed crews in a post-Victorian era with levels of PC unlike anything imaginable by normal people of sound mind.

Yes, there will be social consequences and I have no doubt there will be sexual 'misconduct' to some extent but once the change is accomplished things will work themselves out.

 

[CoryKS]

A large part of the hold up there is sub reconfiguration. Putting women on the boats means that you need all new women's facilities - I wonder how they will tackle that issue.

Maybe they could make each sub male- or female-only. That way, you wouldn't need redundant equipment such as heads and berthing areas. It could also potentially open up more roles for female sub commanders.

 

[blink13]

Maybe they could make each sub male- or female-only. That way, you wouldn't need redundant equipment such as heads and berthing areas. It could also potentially open up more roles for female sub commanders.

So... "separate but equal?" Where have I heard that before? Oh, yeah....

Just kidding.

 

[Nomad]

I've always thought women should be encouraged to go down (underwater that is)

 

[Bruno@MT]

Also, you would have to re-engineer the whole sub to have seperate female facilities.

Why?

 

[Tez3]

Why?

Exactly! In Europe men and women use the same facilities without embarassment or bother. Women of all ages can sit topless on beaches without crude comments, showers on camp sites aren't separated into men and womens, in pubs and cafes there's rarely separate toilets, it's common to walk past a gentleman using an urinal to get to the cubicle and no one cares, it's really no big deal, just requires people to be grown up and not prudish to the point of neuroticism.

 

[Blade96]

where I ice skate the arena there are bathrooms that both men and women use. honestly. no one cares.

and we canadians have had female submariners for a while. No issues.

 

[Ken Morgan]

When I joined the army, I was one of the guys grouped in with the very first group of women going in for combat roles. In the barracks, one bathroom became male, the other female. As for the showers 6-630 was female time, 631-700 was male time. No issues, no problems.

 

[Tez3]

When I joined the army, I was one of the guys grouped in with the very first group of women going in for combat roles. In the barracks, one bathroom became male, the other female. As for the showers 6-630 was female time, 631-700 was male time. No issues, no problems.

My other half when he was in the RAF Regt had to guard a US base in the UK that was under siege from peace campaigners, he said that the US military there all used the same facilities regardless of sex at whatever time they wanted with no problems at all.
Our problem in the UK is that we probably won't have any subs left not who's going to man them.