The Nuclear Weapons Sisterhood

Well, since we are excluding them from decisions about their own bodies it follows that we would naturally..

Because 'we' aka America has/have never had a Hatshepsut, Boudica, Nzinga, Elizabeth I, Isabella, Mary, Catherine, Victoria, Elizabeth II, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Benazir Bhutto , Angela Merkel or Theresa May.

From this and other articles, I get the impression that the NY Times feels that everything should be 50/50 men and women. Well, if that is the case, shouldn't the Times make itself 50/50 men and women? It seems every day the Times has at least 3 or 4 articles or columns by women, for women, about women. The few articles and columns about men are rare, and usually negative---e.g., men's parental "incompetence" or "cosmic greed." Plus, the Times has the "Voting While Female" discussion group, the weekly "Gender Letter," the "Times Gender Initiative," "In Her Words," Dr. Jen Gunter's column on women's health, and the category "Gender and Society," all of which focus on women. I look forward to the Times correcting its gender imbalance.

Wow: i found this article very interesting. Sheds a light on the problem of discrimination women of all job categories suffer in Washington.Only when women are 50% of all top senior officials, thereby mirroring the census for the country, will this kind of oppression end.

I am no expert in the field but it seems that expertise in nuclear engineering and/or physics would be a prerequisite to be an authority in this field. A modicum of research indicates that women earn 12.5% of the Doctorates in Nuclear Engineering and 16% of the Doctorates in Physics. Perhaps the reason that there are so few women in this field are that there are not that many women who choose to pursue those degrees. Not as outrageous (and tiresome) as claiming rampant racism and sexism to be the cause but far more likely. And if memory serves, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Madeline Albright, Condoleeza Rice, and Hillary Clinton all had great say if any of those weapons would ever be used.

If those individuals who determine whether or not to launch nuclear warheads are too delicate to even withstand the most cursory scrutiny into their rationale, then we have a much bigger problem than just the fact that nuclear weapons exist. The cold, calculated reasoning for having a diverse approach to problem solving is so that, if the need should arise, we are able to defend ourselves from any, and all, potentially hostile agent-actors. It’s just bad strategy to have a room full of people trying to solve a problem, when all of their lived experiences are practically identical.

Sexism and chauvinism in national security absolutely needs to be abolished (we would be a poorer, weaker nation without the voices of, say, Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton, Susan Powers, and Condoleeza Rice.) That said, I would gently remind the author that the rank-and-file of the military --- from those who voluntarily serve and fight, to those who decades ago were drafted to bleed and die overseas --- is overwhelmingly male. Perhaps this is a matter of psychological and social conditioning. Perhaps it's partly due to biological imperatives. Who knows. The point is, it makes sense that the gender ratio of the elite reflects that of the population on the front lines. We should be tearing down barriers to entry, making sure that capable women are promoted fairly, and eradicating sexism in the ranks. Only then would representation at the top end would be a meaningful data point. By focusing on it in isolation, however, we are doing a disservice to the men, and women, currently in uniform.

Two words; Condeleezza Rice. Now what was your argument again?

Yet another article following the meme, "Anything a man can do, a woman can do better." Odd to not even mention former NSA Condoleeza Rice, first woman in that position. A stunningly incompetent leader who allowed both the next to nothing defense against the 9-11 attacks, and then supported revenge against the "masterminds" in Iraq. Articles proclaiming an innate moral superiority by women over men are ridiculous and offensive.

Perhaps the reason the author is unable to find women and minority people with leadership positions in defense related departments is because she did not look. On the Republican side,Bush 2 had Colin Powell as Chsirman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, followed by Sec of State. And then there was Condi Rice. She was a National Security Advisor, followed by Sec of State. Two minorities, one of them female. From the Democrats, one finds both Albright and Clinton. Both female, and I believe they had pretty good positions. Susan Rice, minority and female, was also a National Security Advisor. She most likely would have become Sec of State had she mot repeatedly lied about the cause of Benghazi. I realize that this was an opinion piece, but even opinions in the NYT ought to have a factual basis.

the "study" was a biased report done by a group of feminists whose conlcusions were foregone. they hunted only for the comments that fit their "narrative". the report she cites was dressed up as objective and academic. it was neither. "Discussions by this “priesthood” conflate national security and manliness with sexualized jargon about vertical erector launchers and thrust-to-weight ratios. " lol-it appears to me that author sees sexually imagery and phallic symbols where most people, other than a few engineering undergraduates, would not. whats not funny is referring to people as the "priesthood". -using old quotes as evidence of current sexism is a popular method used by feminists to support their argument. Giacomo obliges by trotting out a 1987 reagan quote as evidence for sexism now. what nonsense. the article and the report it is based on is biased, uninformed, and poorly reasoned.

Maybe women just aren't up to making war.

Women would never advocate for the torture or "enhanced interrogation" of enemy combatants...oh wait, there's Gina Haspel. Women, being mothers and caretakers, would never advocate for the genocide of anyone...oh wait, there's Aung San Suu Kyi. I'm for gender parity in security services because I'm for gender parity in other sectors of the government and the economy. But to assume that the world's problems will be fixed simply by putting a women in charge is utopian.

True, Hillary Clinton doesn’t understand nuclear weapons real well, she’s been urging Trump to confront Russia with more military force in Syria. Oh, wait that wasn’t the point. Women were supposed to more “responsible” in Ms Giacomo construction. Submitted May 16th 1:00 PM Eastern

This article brings to mind the May 1996 interview where Leslie Stahl asks Madeleine Albright if the death of half a million children in Irak ( due to the economic sanctions) was worth it. The SecState replied “I think this is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.” It was not her brightest moment. The numbers later were challengued, but that’s not the point. Ms. Albright’s callous response is. Of course those were not her children. The article slso brings to mind the beginning of “Regarding the Pain of Others” by Susan Sontag. The writer recalls Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas, “her brave, unwelcomed reflections on the roots of war.” And how Woolf, a woman, could not see war as men would. How much how we women have changed?

Most of the US nuclear arsenal falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Air Force. Thus, the author of this column may wish to solicit an opinion from the departing Secretary of the Air Force, Heather Wilson. (She is in the process of leaving to become head of the University of Texas at El Paso)

Yep, women are both same and different, and in the arena of ultimate weapons, we need the different. Collaboration, communication, community - all things that the mystery of gender has endowed women with disproportionately, at least for now. John Bolton is not a woman. 'Nuff said.

The segregation of women in decision making positions happens in all other sectors. The issue is the pyramid system (patriarchy) its fine to place a few women as window dressing in positions of influence and power( what ever that powers means), in my view , to have significant change one needs to turn-over the structure. Thank you . Nancy

Why? Because women are thoughtful human beings who bring life into the world and care for their progeny. Men on the other hand do not carry and nurture life through gestation or ever feel the first movements within their bodies. While I love and respect my children there is no way I will ever have the same sense of care and attachment for tem as their mother. If not all, most mothers would never willingly send their children on a mission to kill the children of other women while men will justify by any means, often selfish, a reason no matter how absurd to explain the need for engagement which involves wholesale death and destruction. The only way to stop the twisted logic by which we are governed is to put women in positions of governance, not as puppets rather as leaders, but that thought will continue to be denigrated and denied by the men who appear to only know how to spill other's blood as dispute resolution. We men will change, accept women's thought and approach to solving our disputes or we will destroy what remains of our planet. This is apparently of no concern to the majority of testosterone driven men who seek to lead not only our nation, but also many throughout the world. It does not escape me that women such as Aung San Suu Kyi are criticized and while understandable, she, like many women in positions of leadership, lives with the threat and fear and violence against her and her family. May be pie in the sky, but I trust women in a leadership role.

The current head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, is a woman. Why must the NYT try to make every position a patronage appointment? There are many qualities that make a person a good choice. Sex, ethnicity and race are never among them.

Maybe women should stop providing the main fodder for our endless wars for a while.

You don't need to be Sigmund Freud to raise an eyebrow at men's obsession with long pointy weapons.

Can a woman jerk a wounded pilot out of a cockpit on fire? Can she tote a fellow warrior to an armored personnel carrier? Can women take three bullets and keep moving and shooting? Sorry folks, but women aren't men.

Hey, you do babies. We'll handle the killing.

Hate to say it, but men created this awful world of laws designed to control and gain power. The rules have been in place for thousands of years. A world created by women would be much better, but we’ll need to destroy our current world first.

Fortunately many women have major roles in the peace and social justice movements. And their numbers keep growing and growing.

Has everyone forgotten Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser to George W. Bush? I sympathize, as I wish I could as well. While I deplore the boorish behavior cited by Ms. Giacomo, and discrimination in any workplace on the basis of sex, I think Ms. Rice's sorry performance should dissuade anyone who thinks that adding more women to the national security establishment would be a panacea.

why is it hard for women to be hired, promoted or taken seriously in the national security establishment? “I was so startled, I wasn’t really in a position to push back at that moment” is a good place to start looking for an answer.

Two stereotypes- women better at peaceful, nonproliferation endeavors, or women more aggressive to counter perceived softness. Add a third; intelligent women who have learned you don’t put up with bullies in the beginning- and know lies, come-ones, subtle compliments for what they are.

Women can assist the process by stepping up. Advocate for an end to our weapons culture, be seen as supporters of the UN and World Federalism - it's not all about being inside the Pentagon. Identify the USA as the world's No. 1 rogue state and defend that notion from the highest intellectual, and not necessarily military, levels. Stay seated when every baseball or football game has to begin with a military march-past and jingoist recitation. Teach the kids about the traditions of pacifism. Don't wait for men to do it. They love their deadly game and war stocks too much.

Perhaps leadership DOD and related positions are inordinately gained by graduates from the four service academies. Probably the graduates of the service academies are disproportionately male in comparison to the student population at other leading universities. With disproportionate service academy representation from a pool of service entrants who are disproportionately male and alike in many other traits, "tunnel vision" produced by such a similar set of DOD personnel may lead to a problem of asymmetry in information gathering and analysis between the soldiering and civilian populations. In Sunday's NY Times Book Review (5/12/2019), Andrew J. Bacevich's review of "Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and America's Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy," by Michael J. Mazarr, Bacevich states that: "At echelons below the top level... 'loyalty-enforcing groupthink' abounded. Military officers given to asking annoying questions 'were particularly muzzled.'" Basewich continues: "With the exception of a single four-star general ... members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff learned to keep their mouths shut." Limiting the leadership pool of qualified individuals via arbitrary and subjective selection criteria may aid in creating a calcified and inflexible decision-making process, as happened and was noted above during the Iraq war. [05/16/2019 Th 10:50 am Greenville NC]

Nice of her to throw end minorities to buttress her case. But she doesn’t really delve into the minority stats, which we have every resin to suspect are much worse than the woman stats.

“It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

Well if women were in power we'd have peace and prosperity. Mustn't have that!

Women are being excluded from everything; why should national security be any different?

This of course sounds rude and snarky, but what does the editorial writer know about national security issues? She's a lifelong reporter who never worked in a national security job for the government. I know reporters think they know it all because they have "reported extensively" on a particular subject but even they don't know everything because they are out of the loop when real events and decisions are taking place. If the Russian official made a demeaning remark to an American woman because she lacked an understanding of the Russians explanation of the issue being discussed maybe she really did lack a fundamental understanding of the issue. Russians, and a lot of other nationalities, don't cotton to the American's views on women's liberation. During WW2 the Russians put women on the front line fighting right along side men in active combat. They were successful fighter pilots and snipers. Russian women snipers killed many more enemy than their American counterparts.

I have often thought, that an almost instinctive bias towards thinking of women as "more reliably decent", less inclined to see violence as a solution... makes it wonderfully usefully to have women leading/supporting military solutions, as it lends military violence an aura of being a decent solution... As for the State Department it carefully selects like minded people to join the "club". There is no chance that anyone sensing that the State Department's mission statement is simply promotion of capitalism, and regime change in support of capitalism, with no respect for real democracy, would be allowed to join. Of course, having women makes their mission seem more palatable. The younger generation of women going into national politics may be strong enough on their own and not feel it necessary to accept military solutions to show their strength. And together with a president with a strong and firm orientation towards using the slog of diplomacy and not the military, that would make a difference... not just more instinctively hawkish women, formed in a world that saw the willingness to use force as a sign of strength...and leadership. A younger generation of women going into

Nuclear arms control should be done by people who understand the basic physics and engineering of nuclear weapons, rocketry, submarines, command and control issues, and some aspects of space and atmospheric physics and physical oceanography. It may be that women are under-represented in fields that lend themselves to understanding these issues.

Women "hold only 20 percent of senior civilian jobs at the Pentagon." Under current US law, all American men are required to register with the Selective Service when they turn 18. Women do not have this obligation. This is not very important today, since there is no military conscription at present, but it does set the tone. Note that it was very much a matter of life and death during the 1960's and 1970's, the time of the Vietnam War. Recently, a Federal judge ruled gender discrimination in the Selective Service was in fact unconstitutional, but he did not accompany his ruling with an enforcement order, so nothing changed. So here's a suggestion for you. Extend gender equality to the Selective Service mandate, either by including women, or better yet, by ending the requirement altogether.

Do people in the Pentagon come to the civilian jobs from the military? Might that account for much? Are there as many female as male qualified applicants? Citing a mere disparity is not enough to imply, as this article does, that sexism is at work here. Are our public schools places of rampant misandry because men are so greatly ‘underrepresented’ in the school system, especially in the early grades?

Just a month or two ago the corporate-media was rejoicing that several defense firms had female CEOs, lauding the "feminism" thus displayed. The question on my mind is WHY a woman would want to be a CEO of a war-profiteering corporation or part of the "defense establishment"? Obviously, I have not deleted the strong connection between authentic feminism and pacifism from my mind - despite media attempts to extinguish any association. If you saw HRC as a feminist despite her enthusiasm for military action, you need to review the literature on feminist thought.

I believe that the primary reason is that, generally speaking, women are not as good and as efficient to destroy other humans on the large scale as men are. For this very same reason, I wouldn’t mind if men were prohibited to occupy leadership positions in politics.

We have had 2 women serve as secretary of state, Albright and Clinton, both of whom were hawks. Identity politics are a distraction from issues with little effect.

Thanks Carol for writing about women in the nuclear arms discussions. The woman running for president with the best voice for peace is Tulsi Gabbard. She is not heard in the New York Times. I wonder if it is because she points out the absurdity of our forever wars? Please give her some ink! Thanks

Excluding women from participating in world affairs is a blunt instrument of insecure and arrogant men trying to secure their untenable position of constant conflict in this upside-down world. To everbody's loss. Have we, men, forgotten, that in the domestic front, it's women who have a handle of just about everything you can think of, and usually a sound solution to many problems presented to them...while some of us diddle around 'a la Trump'? We need, urgently, a paradigm, folks responsible in raising a family and recognizing the need of solidarity for our community's social well-being. We men had our chance and blew it (with exceptions, like everything else); it's high time we consult with women about best practices to restore our humanity; and elect women to the highest seats of power...to make a difference. And if other countries have done it, we could too.

We are in the midst of the single greatest advance of humanity in our history. Since the beginning of our existence the Male has dominated our society and culture mostly through the threat of physical violence. But now, slowly, and I'm talking over the last 100 or so years, the Female is rising to her proper place as an equal to the male. This transition is far from complete but we are moving in the right direction. When its done, the world will be a much better place. This is a good article and well timed. Now is the time to get more Women involved in the process to balance the Men. The conservatives, especially the fundamentalist type that do not want things to change, are on the wrong side of history... Masculine/Feminine balance is our next great evolutionary leap. We are hopefully past the midpoint. Keep pushing Girls!!

Glad to see this issue raised in the National Press. Although the bit near the end falls into the "will women be more gentle or more aggressive with national security" the point is more they were never given the opportunity to get certain positions because of sexism and discrimination. That's the key point.

Remembering that Hillary Clinton actually received about 3m more votes than her male adversary, it would not seem so unthinkable for many people to accept a woman having control over the USA's ultimate deterrent (or, in the hands of Trump, the ultimate form of aggression). There must in fact be a stock of potential support for women in positions of power. Nevertheless the problem of male prejudice in all kinds of workplaces, not just in the area of nuclear weapons, definitely exists: my wife is a computer scientist and has eventually reached a point where no male colleague would dare ask her to make coffee (she doesn't even drink the stuff and has only a vague idea how to make it). On the other hand, she is apparently better at empathising with students when they have problems, a fact which is probably a part of femininity which men would do well to imitate.