Combat Integration Handbook

Combat-Integration-Handbook: A Leader's Guide to Success

The Combat Integration Handbook is a reference guide for U.S. Army combat arms leaders on how to successfully lead gender integration in their units.

The Handbook exclusively addresses common challenges with gender integration in combat arms units and gives leaders and Soldiers best practices for successfully navigating the change process. This guide comes at an essential time as combat arms units await the assignment of the first combat arms women making their way through their training pipelines.

Following is an outline of the research that informed the handbook:

• More than 30 hours of exclusive interviews with Cultural Support Team members, women who were attached to Special Operations units in Afghanistan. More than a half dozen individual interviews with combat arms officers and NCOs.
• A Working Group of over 20 active-duty Army officers and NCOs from across the US Army, who provided experience, input and feedback to the handbook.
• Raw data from a Maneuver Center of Excellence survey of 816 officers from the Command and General Staff College Intermediate Level Education, which included the officer's views and concerns about women in combat.
• Historical U.S. Army Studies, current studies on gender integration, partner nation reports on their own gender integration of combat arms and various other military, civilian and academic reports analyzing gender integration in the U.S. military and worldwide.

Although the handbook was created for combat arms units, leaders of all mixed-gender units may find this guide helpful.

In addition to the handbook WIIS provides the following courses to military units:

Leading Change: Integrating Women into Combat Units (1-2 days)

This course provides a brief historical overview, followed by an examination of legal frameworks and policies. It introduces the student to the vast number of research studies that have already been conducted on this topic and it ends with practical methods for leading organizational change in military units. Read more here.

Unbiased Performance Evaluations (2 days)

This training session is designed to: 1) Increase evaluators’ awareness concerning bias, specifically regarding gender and 2) Provide tools to prevent it. Evaluators completing this session will contribute to more objective assessments thereby maintaining performance standards fairly and consistently. Read more here.

For more courses visit the Women, Peace and Security Leadership Program

For more information on WIIS Gender Integration Workshops please email WIIS at CII@wiisglobal.org.