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[Ralith]

Eh, addressing several points from early on here.

In video games, you're virtually always in a combat role. Women have to pass oxymoronic tests in order to get into these roles, and it is VERY rare that one is interested AND passes the test. Therefore, there are few females.

The female pilot *I BELIEVE* is more common because *I BELIEVE* they make better pilots. Despite all the jokes about their driving abilities.  . Oh, and they have to stick females somewhere in a video game, lest they get screamed at by the bra-burners.

[DJ]

Is there any reason they would be better pilots? If anything, men should be better because men are slightly better at thinking in 3D (which is why they tend to be better at sports).

[Yanlin]

Is there any reason they would be better pilots? If anything, men should be better because men are slightly better at thinking in 3D (which is why they tend to be better at sports).

Women physically see better and our advantage in 3D thinking is EXTREMELY tiny.

Did I mention that their heart is closer to their brain? A man and woman of the same size don't have equal heart to brain distances.

This may sound useless, but it's useful when piloting a helicopter in high G maneuvers. Since more blood is in the brain. Meaning they can literally think better in high G maneuvers.

In fact, they are working on putting them in planes as well. Not just helicopters. But apparently there's some sort of roadblock. Female plane pilots EXIST. But very few and far in between.

[DJ]

Any source for that sight superiority claim? I think if that were true, women would consistently beat men at marksmanship.

As for high-G manoeuvres, I doubt it's such a great difference. Besides, aircraft with pilots are on their way to extinction anyway, so it won't matter at all soon enough.

[Shadowlord]

If someone wants superior sight, they could just play some first-person shooter games (if they don't already play them, I suppose ):

Quotes from each article (not the entire article, just a snippet) are in the spoiler tags below each URL.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=shoot-first-ace-geometry

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In a study of college students, men were better than women at rapidly switching their attention among stimuli displayed on a computer screen, a common test of spatial ability. But after both sexes played the role of a World War II soldier in a video game for 10 hours over several weeks, women caught up to men on the spatial-attention task, as well as on an object-rotation test of more advanced spatial ability. Women’s gains persisted when the volunteers were retested an average of five months later.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=video-games-good-for-visu

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Through a series of experiments, C. Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester determined that habitual video-game players were better able than nonplayers to focus on visually complex situations, to keep track of multiple items at once and to process fast-changing information. To rule out the possibility that their results simply reflected a tendency for gamers to be people with inherently superior visual skills, the team subjected nongamers to action-video-game training, in which they played Medal of Honor for an hour a day, 10 days in a row. Meanwhile a control group was trained on Tetris, which, unlike Medal of Honor, requires focusing on only a single object at a time. After that short training period, the Medal of Honor group exhibited improved visual skills.

"By forcing players to simultaneously juggle a number of varied tasks (detect new enemies, track existing enemies and avoid getting hurt, among others), action-video-game playing pushes the limits of three rather different aspects of visual attention," the authors conclude. "Although video-game playing may seem rather mindless," they add, "it is capable of radically altering visual attention processing."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=action-packed-video-games

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And now comes more good news for video game aficionados. A new study, set to be published in the journal Psychological Science, shows that playing fast-paced, action-filled video games significantly sharpens vision, enabling gamers to see tiny, tightly packed letters more clearly.

The reason? "Action video game play changes the way our brains process visual information," says study author Daphne Bavelier, noting that after just 30 hours, video gamers showed "a substantial increase in the spatial resolution of their vision." Translation: "They could see figures like those way down on an eye chart more clearly," she says, "even when other symbols crowded in."

...

"What is surprising here," she adds, "is that we see the effect of training extending beyond what the subjects were trained to do, which contradicts the current school of thought. ... These games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it. That learning carries over into other activities and, possibly, everyday life."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=six-ways-to-boost-brainpower&page=3

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Surgeons who spend at least a few hours a week playing video games make one-third fewer errors in the operating room than nongaming doctors do. Indeed, research has shown that video games can improve mental dexterity, while boosting hand-eye coordination, depth perception and pattern recognition. Gamers also have better attention spans and information-processing skills than the average Joe has. When nongamers agree to spend a week playing video games (in the name of science, of course), their ­visual-perception skills improve.

[Yanlin]

Any source for that sight superiority claim? I think if that were true, women would consistently beat men at marksmanship.

As for high-G manoeuvres, I doubt it's such a great difference. Besides, aircraft with pilots are on their way to extinction anyway, so it won't matter at all soon enough.

Superior sight != superior marksmanship.

Testing shows they see have 30% better eyesight than men on average. But marksmanship does not depend on that difference. Not a single bit. Men and women can both see and identify the target. Sniping involves being as motionless as possible. Something physically easier for men. Remember. At 15 feet, if you're aiming at someone's chest, 3 degrees to the side and you miss the target completely. Now remember that 15 feet is about 3 meters. Snipers operate on what? 80+ meters? Sniping isn't easy. You have to factor in not just pinpoint aim, but wind, recoil, parallax and more. On this part, men have a slight advantage.

If you were referring to red-dot scopes or ironsight ranges, then there is really no real difference. In fact, I'm pretty sure there's no consistent "male is better" at that.

Don't forget that not all women and men are the same. One woman may be superior to one man, but she is not superior to all men nor are all men inferior to her. Etcetera.

[DJ]

It's just that this is the first time I hear about this alleged superior female sight, and 30% is such an enormous difference that I would surely notice it in daily life. Now, women having superior sense of smell is something I've heard of, and my observations confirm it.

And yeah, that's a good point about judging fitness for military duty on individual basis.

Anyway, I still maintain that chief and foremost reason that such a large percentage of women soldiers are pilots is because women on average tend to be poor foot soldiers. They can carry less supplies, and more importantly an average woman can't carry a wounded comrade very far.

[Yanlin]

True. Women are not built to be infantry or marines. They CAN be, but it's just easier to build a male marine than a female one.

However, when it comes to piloting, the difference is marginal. Tipped to the female side's favor.

It's not really a flat 30% better sight. They just perceive colors 30% better. Think of it as 30% extra sharpness and contrast. Helps to see camouflage and such. Also meaning that when pulling high G maneuvers, they don't get the "Red eye" effect quite as fast. (Mostly observed while pulling negative G as the eyes are flooded with blood. The effect is lessened in women.)

I've never heard of a superior sense of smell though...

[Granite26]

I've never heard of a superior sense of smell though...

When you live in an apartment and your mom comes to visit, you'll get all the proof you need

[dreiche2]

True. Women are not built to be infantry or marines. They CAN be, but it's just easier to build a male marine than a female one.

However, when it comes to piloting, the difference is marginal. Tipped to the female side's favor.

It's not really a flat 30% better sight. They just perceive colors 30% better. Think of it as 30% extra sharpness and contrast. Helps to see camouflage and such. Also meaning that when pulling high G maneuvers, they don't get the "Red eye" effect quite as fast. (Mostly observed while pulling negative G as the eyes are flooded with blood. The effect is lessened in women.)

[citation needed]

[DJ]

Oh, I can believe that women can see more colours. But I wouldn't exactly say it means better sight, period. I think it's got to do with how women were gatherers, so they needed good colour perception to gauge ripeness of fruit and stuff. Men, on the other hand, should be better at spotting shapes and movement, because that's what's important for hunting.

[mainiac]

Women are like 15% of the forces in Iraq.  That's a lot.  While they're in supposedly non combat roles, the distinction between a non-combat role and an MP is pretty minor when you are talking about a five year long peacekeeping operation.  Women apparently make good MP's in arab cultures as well, they are less likely to create new insurgents and more likely to get useful intel.  Because of this they started forming woman exclusive "lioness" brigades for policing actions.

I think that the number of women in the military is going to continue to grow because armies are more professional these days then in WWII or the like.  If a soldier is made in boot camp, not childhood, old cultural biases become less important.

[Shadowlord]

Oh, I can believe that women can see more colours.

If they're tetrachromats, at least. If not, I wouldn't say so... *copies a citation from wikipedia: ^ a b c Jameson, K. A., Highnote, S. M., & Wasserman, L. M. (2001). "Richer color experience in observers with multiple photopigment opsin genes" (PDF). Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 8 (2): 244–261. PMID 11495112. http://www.klab.caltech.edu/cns186/papers/Jameson01.pdf.*

They did a study in which they basically had people in a dark area look at something like a rainbow and mark lines between colors to delineate them.

1. Four-pigment females marked an average of 10 bands with a standard deviation of 2.96 and there were 23 of them.
2. Trichromat females marked an average of 7.6 bands with a standard deviation of 1.80 and there were 15 of them.
3. Trichromats (females and males) marked an average of 7.3 with a standard deviation of 1.93 and there were 37 of them.
4. Dichromat males (protanopes) marked an average of 5.3 with a standard deviation of 1.53 and there were 4 of them.

It says that the tetrachromats (group 1) were identified by "genotype analyses identifying heterozygote subjects." Also, the female trichromats (group 2) are a subpartition of group 3, and the results of the comparison between them and the male trichromats were: "Interestingly, male trichromats (n=22) and female trichromats (n=15) were not significantly different regarding the number of chromatic bands each group on average delineates (p= .44)."

They end with this:
"At present, four-photopigment female individuals are reported to be rather common, by some estimates occuring in up to 50% of the female population (M. Neitz, Kraft, & J. Neitz, 1998). It is also the case that an estimated 8% of males presumed to be color "normal" likely represent a four-photopigment retinal phenotype (expressing multiple L-pigment opsin gene variants that could significantly contribute to color vision; Sjoberg, M. Neitz, Balding & J. Neitz, 1998). All else being equal, our results suggest that if such males were tested in the present study, they would perhaps exhibit an extended percept relative to "normal" trichromats, similar to our findings for heterozygote females."

In other words, it sounds to me like they THINK they should have been able to detect any tetrachromat males that were in their study, and since they didn't, they probably think that they just happened to not have any in the study (it only had 64 people in it; 8% of 64 is 5.12 but with random chance being what it is there's still a chance of getting none).

[Muz]

I dunno.. maybe it's just a genetic thing. Women I know just aren't interested in being in combat. I mean, my girlfriend has entered archery and paintball competitions and she can even handle explosives, but she says that it's just not feminine to shoot people for reals. Also, my girl says that a pregnant lady is unsuited to running into combat.

Physical advantage or not doesn't really matter. I have a genetic disadvantage in writing (dyslexia) and poor hand-eye coordination, that doesn't keep me from writing novels or playing FPSes. If they have no interest in it, they just won't be soldiers.

As for why games portray them as such, remember that games (and movies and books) usually try to portray lead roles that are like their audience. James Bond Jr, Hardy Boys, Tom & Jerry Kids, Mighty Max, and the sitcoms on TV (fat guys with hot wives) imitate what their audience imagine themselves as. In games, you have JRPGs with lead characters who are emo 14-year-olds and you have male soldiers. If more women played shooters, there'd be more female lead characters in shooters.. simple as that.

[Duke 2.0]

 One could say cultural conditioning could cause women to be uninterested in being in the military because their whole lives have been teaching them to be uninterested in war.

 That would be grand on a global scale to everybody, but not terribly good with one gender.