we need defense. it would be ideal if we didnt so that our entire population could have full economic participation. still we know from reality that we cant get away without maintaining our army.

but i believe we are at a stage where conscripting both men and women has too high an opportunity cost for the benefits it brings to our army. for example many of the women might not meet the physical requirements and the administrative departments/other non combat vocations would be bloated. just think of how many males you already know who are serving in admin vocations and think how much greater that proportion would be among females. the benefit of enlisting females in this circumstance wouldnt outweigh the opportunity cost of withholding them from the workforce when we have a small enough population as it is. at the end of the day fighting fit soldiers are the whole point of an army.

on the other hand not having any conscripts at all is untenable. we just dont have the numbers for a voluntary force. sweden found this out the hard way and reintroduced conscription after abolishing it in 2010. yes they are doing it with both males and females but they have the benefits of a larger population and strong relations with neighbouring countries that are a lot more predictable and well off than singapores neighbours. thats why they can afford to select only a portion of the citizens who are of serving age instead of having the entire age group serve like singapore. those of serving age in sweden will go through rounds of selection before around 4000 a year will be chosen to enlist, so theres no saying that they wont end up with a largely male force anyway

yes we could in theory implement something similar to this where males largely make up the combat forces and females largely make up the administrative support and the rest just dont get selected to serve. but we are much tighter in terms of our population and even when all males are mandated to serve, we already see a noticeable amount of people trying to dodge service or get themselves into the less physically taxing vocations. if the government were to pick and choose from a select few from those of serving age to enlist, what is there to stop more people from trying to avoid enlistment? its hard enough to do so in our current state as it is.

all im saying is that this is not ideal and whisking off our population to serve will always be something unpleasant, but at the end of the day its necessary.