Development of Cohesion in Mixed-Gender Recruit Training

INTRODUCTION: With the removal in 2016 of restrictions on recruiting women to the combat arms in the all-volunteer Australian Army, a key question has been whether adding women to small combat teams will reduce the sense of cohesion among their members, which entails their subjective bonds with each other, their leader, and wider organization. Despite recent initiatives in Australia and the USA, there are too few women in combat units in any country to answer this question and how these subjective bonds affect a team's ability to stick together under pressure.Men and women recruits in the Australian Army have undertaken basic soldier training in mixed-gender teams since 1995. Recruit training provides the foundation of teamwork and cohesion in all types of units. The present study capitalized on this well-established practice as an avenue for illuminating the development of cohesion in the form of subjective bonds within mixed-gender teams. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The respondents were 89 females and 434 males, who were members of 46 teams denoted as "sections," each consisting of 9-12 recruits. The gender mix of the sections varied from 0% female (all males) up to 55.6% females. The recruits were surveyed on three occasions during the 81-day recruit training (Days 10, 46, 80). The questionnaire comprised 18 items asking the recruits' ratings of "vertical" bonding with their instructor/leaders, "horizontal" bonding within their sections, and "organizational" bonding with the wider Australian Army. This study was conducted under Defence ethics approval DPR-LREP 069-15. RESULTS: At the start of training, vertical bonding of the recruits with their instructor/leaders was significantly higher than horizontal and organizational bonding, which were similar. During training, all three types of bonding as rated by both female and male recruits increased and largely converged to a high level. Any apparent gender-related differences were not statistically significant.Bonding scores for females did decline slightly as the proportion of women increased, but only significantly for vertical bonding. Even these declines all occurred within a band of high scores. For male recruits, there was no discernible relationship of bonding scores with the percentage of females in a section; the lines of best fit appeared flat. CONCLUSIONS: Within the Australian Army, women and men have been trained in mixed-gender sections since 1995 with sustained success, at least anecdotally. The present findings provide the first independent confirmation that all three dimensions of cohesion increase in strength during recruit training much to the same degree in women and men alike. To the extent that felt cohesion translates into effective teamwork, mixed-gender training establishes a sound foundation for integrating women into combat units as well as support units, where they have traditionally served.