3 January 2002

Women injured because of equality law

When female army recruits are trained in the same way male recruits, the percentage of women injured more than doubles, according to new research in the January Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. Lt Col. Ian Gemmell, an army occupational physician, studied medical data from before and after the army's 'gender free' policy change in 1998, and found that female army recruits face a "substantially greater risk" to their health than men after the changes. Lt Col Gemmell suggests that his findings point to a serious conflict between equal opportunity law and health and safety legislation.

The change to a 'gender free' policy
Until recently, although female army recruits were trained alongside the men, they were not expected to reach the same level of physical fitness. This 'gender fair' policy was rejected when it was found that many women subsequently lacked sufficient strength for the work they were expected to do on completion of their training. Since 1998, soldiers have been selected on a 'gender free' principle, where the same physical tests are applied to male and female army applicants, both sexes undergo identical training, and the women are expected to reach the same fitness levels as the men.

Why are more women being injured in training?
The study looked at medical discharges among recruits trained under the old policy (1997-98), and then compared them with the data for 'gender free' recruits (1998-99). For the men, the proportion of medical discharges due to overuse injury - for example, stress fractures, tendonitis and back pain - remained below 1.5%, while for women, it rose from 4.6% to 11.1% under the new training regime. This means that women are now 8 times more likely than the male recruits to be discharged with an overuse injury. Lt Col Gemmell suggests several possible reasons for the rise, including:

• Skeletal differences - differences in women's bone size and muscle mass mean training causes 33-39% more stress on the female skeleton than the male.
• Matching the men - in a mixed platoon of recruits, the women tend to march at the men's longer stride, putting their bones and muscles under even more stress.
• Short training - research suggests that women's muscles can 'mimic' male muscle, but over a longer training period: 6 months rather than the standard 12 weeks.

Equal Opportunity or Health and Safety?
Lt Col Gemmell argues that "health and safety guidance...has been overlooked in the interests of meeting equal opportunity legislation". He points out that while the army has a duty to train female recruits properly for the jobs they will be required to do, current methods are putting women at "excess risk", and calls for a review of selection tests and training methods in the light of his findings.

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