Is it more risky to be an unarmed woman battling different forms of injustices and inequalities or to be a warrior woman? An official one at the front lines who not only has to fight the enemies of her country but also the sexism within the command?
Women are not completely protected from violence in households or workplaces either. They become even more vulnerable to abuse in humanitarian settings including conflicts. Verifiable data and anecdotes testify that in such times there is a prevalence of trafficking, rape, sexual slavery and forced marriage associated with certain terrorist groups.
At times army men are implicated in rape and there is no deficit of such instances that are often camouflaged as psychological warfare. In 2015 German journalist and historian Dr Miriam Gebhardt Asserted in her book, Als die Sodaten kamen (When the Soldiers Came), that members of the US military alone raped as many as 190,000 and German women were raped by all four victorious powers at the end of World War-II. That was an ultimate tale of the treatment meted out to the defeated women of Nazi Germany, upon which they remained mute about for decades out of shame and humiliation. “Rape was used as an instrument of war in Kosovo,” reported Human Rights Watch in 2007 and qualified that those were not occasional incidents committed by a few crazy men.
In the nonexistence of a utopian world where people do not abhor and slay each other over different ideologies and piece of land; the world has come to terms with the idea of peace keeping forces and official armies of the state. Women who have been seen and accepted as nurturers and part of care economy are now persuaded to be a part of military by international frameworks and UN resolutions. Women have been recruited not only as nurses, medical doctors, engineers and allied services providers but also as pilots, marines, and combat soldiers. Women have graduated from Cantinieres, the women who were responsible for preparing meals in the French army in the 1800s and the comfort women(mostly Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese and Filipino), who were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied territories before and during World War-II to women with formal ranks in the army.
Women have been recruited not only as nurses, medical doctors, engineers and allied services providers but also as pilots, marines, and combat soldiers
More than 150 people provided stories from their deployment for the Times that compiled in 2014, an informative and thought provoking piece based on those responses. Ms. Diana Kramer’s response, “My male counterparts were deemed competent and capable until they proved otherwise, where on the other hand it was often assumed that I was incompetent until I proved I was not” was closest to my own observations and I can confidently state that women in all professions especially the non-traditional ones irrespective of their other identities, can instantly connect with the reply.
What is the situation in our homeland? Pakistan is the only Islamic country to have women appointed in high ranking assignments and the general officer ranks. It would be interesting and informative if employment policies for women and identification of any challenging cultural issues for the army may be public and discussed with diverse stakeholders for the sake of further improvement. In 1949 prominent states woman and former First Lady of Pakistan, Begum Ra’ana Liaqat established her own Pakistan Army Women National Guard with combat courses. She was the unit’s first GOC and controller with the rank of an honorary Brigadier. In 2006, the first women fighter pilots batch joined the combat aerial mission command of the Pakistan Air Force. Women are yet to be part of combat missions and the submarine force command of Pakistan Navy but they are serving in operations. Gender issues in our military, in the context of its true history and structure needs to be understood. Sexing the Soldier, The Politics of Gender and the Contemporary British Army, by Rachel Woodward and Trish Winter could be a good inspiration.
The strength and stamina of women in armies has also been questioned with a special reference to Infantry. The Infantry finally got its first woman graduated from the infantry officer course of the Marine Corps in the US in 2017 and whose name was not made public on her own request. In a continuously changing world, the only constant, it seems remains the position of women if not their condition. Soldier women, undeniably, have to correspond to the military readiness and effectiveness. Unlike many women parliamentarians who are male surrogates, in countries like ours, Armies cannot back such women. Without compromising on professional standards women in armies have the right to survive and thrive in a system that is well equipped with their strategic and practical gender needs.
Equal opportunity for women in uniform with equal ability is no longer a fairy tale but a challenging target. In spite of structural and symptomatic resistance, women are being allowed to serve in different military services and are being upgraded as well. Worldwide, militaries are still, hyper masculine institutions. The equality stance is erroneously used very frequently instead with semblance among sexes and beating merit. Rights based activists have to remain vigilant regarding creating enabling environments for inclusiveness and advancement of women under brass ceilings and in barracks.
The writer is a gender expert, researcher, author, activist and a free thinker. Twitter handle@survivorwins
Published in Daily Times, November 19th 2017.