Bare facts about women in uniform

I suspect I'm going to be hung drawn and quartered this week or at the very least, I'm going to have a lot of bra-burning underarm hair growing feminists banging my door down baying for blood.

I'm generalising of course, not all feminists subscribe to werewolf fashion weekly and I'm sure there are more than a few of them who refuse to let gravity win the day but I'm sure my imagery isn't wasted on you.

The point is, I'm about to take a very un-feminist view and there are some among you who are bound to object but that's okay because the world is full of different views on life and I'm not going to rub it in your face just because you happen to be wrong.

Britain's Armed Forces minister, Bob Ainsworth announced earlier this week that they're considering lifting a ban on female soldiers taking part in face-to-face combat with enemy forces. Up until now females' front line military roles have been limited to flying attack helicopters but the idea is to reassess these rules and consider allowing women to fight right along with their male counterparts in hand-to-hand combat against their foe.

It's a terrible idea. Women don't belong on the front lines.

Let's forget for a moment the whole feminist movement and women's struggle to be thought of as equals to men in the workplace and look at it from a purely practical viewpoint. As much as we women claim that we can do anything a man can do, the fact of the matter is that we can't. We're simply not strong enough.

I suppose I should preface that by saying that I used to have a Russian friend who competed in the biathlon for her country and when I knew her she was more than capable of getting (and keeping) any man that dared challenge her in an unbreakable headlock but she's one of the exceptions to the rule.

While I have no doubt there are some women out there more than capable of matching any and all men in hand- to-hand combat, they are few and far between and it's time that we women started to accept our limitations. Whether we're prepared to accept it or not, women's physical capabilities are generally far lower than that of men. Like it lump it, it's a fact of life and we're called the fairer sex for a reason. According to The Centre for Combat Readiness: 'Modern body armour alone weighs 25 pounds.

'This weight is proportionately more difficult to carry by female soldiers who are, on average, shorter and smaller than men, with 45-50 per cent less upper body strength and 25-30 per cent less aerobic capacity, which is essential for endurance.

'Even in current non-combat training, women suffer debilitating bone stress fractures and other injuries at rates double those of men. To summarise an enormous body of well-documented evidence produced by physiologists in the US and Britain, in close combat women do not have an "equal opportunity" to survive, or to help fellow soldiers survive.'

Add to that the fact that men naturally feel protective of women and, no matter how well trained, the majority of them will always look out for a woman's safety, that in turn will impede their ability to concentrate on the task at hand and put them and others at higher risk than if women weren't right there fighting next to them.

There's also the other simple fact that as a general rule women are a lot more emotional than men and while most can and will kill in self defence, they're much more likely to think twice before taking a human life.

It's no coincidence that the vast majority of mass murderers and serial killers are male. It's just not naturally in a woman's genetic make up to take a life.

Yes, women can play a vital role in the armed forces and many are as capable as their male counterparts in many fields, but we have our limitations and it's about time we started to accept that as fact.