January 18, 1995: Gingrich Mocked for Saying Women Unfit for Combat because ‘They Get Infections’ Every 30 Days

Patricia Schroeder. [Source: Politico]Patricia Schroeder (D-CO) mocks statements by House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) about why women should not serve in combat. While teaching a history class at Reinhardt College in Georgia in early January, Gingrich explained why women are unfit for combat duty, saying: “If combat means being in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for 30 days because they get infections, and they don’t have upper body strength.” Men, on the other hand, “are basically little piglets; you drop them in the ditch, they roll around in it.” Instead, Gingrich told his students, females might be well suited for manning the fire control computers on Navy ships. If being in combat, he said, “means being on an Aegis class cruiser managing the computer controls for 12 ships and their rockets, a female again may be dramatically better than a male who gets very, very frustrated sitting in a chair all the time because males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes.” Schroeder, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, reads Gingrich’s statements aloud on the floor of the House and says she is “very, very troubled by the new factual data that seems to be coming out of our new leader.” Schroeder says she never knew that women get infections every 30 days. She says she has seen male relatives in ditches, “but they don’t roll around like little piggies.” If men have trouble sitting in chairs, she adds, it might be hard for Gingrich to be speaker, “because you got to sit in a chair a lot.” She says she has been “working in a male culture for a very long time, and I haven’t met the first one who wants to go out and hunt a giraffe.” [New York Times, 1/18/1995]