PUBLICATION: The Chronicle-Herald
DATE: 2005.03.14
SECTION: Opinion
PAGE: A7
SOURCE: On Target
BYLINE: Scott Taylor
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Female soldier drive just futile
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE MILITARY recently released a couple of internal studies that indicate that women continue to feel marginalized by their male counterparts within the <Canadian> Forces - particularly in front-line combat units. Apparently, a large number of those Forces members polled also had difficulty accepting gays, lesbians and ethnic minorities among their ranks, while general officers were viewed with mistrust. In response to the negative feedback, the Defence Department spin doctors immediately trotted out their usual list of confusing statistics, pie charts and hollow promises that the <Canadian> Forces remain committed to the policy of gender integration. What these public affairs officers count on is that nobody remembers the Defence Department's previously stated goals.
A review of the 27-year-long <Canadian> Forces project to integrate women into combat units reveals an exercise in abject futility.
The initial studies on redefining gender restrictions within the military were sparked by the <Canadian> Human Rights Act in 1978. Two years later, these studies had evolved into a program called Service Women in Non-traditional Environments and Roles which involved limited, supervised trials of female recruits in various front-line occupations. The results were less than encouraging and in some cases outright failures. But by 1989, federal human rights watchdogs were losing patience with the military, and the Forces were ordered to implement "full integration . . . with all due speed."
The federal officials, however, allowed the Defence Department a full decade to remove "all discriminating employment barriers" with the exception of service aboard submarines.
Fast-forward 10 years to 1999. The report card on the military's integration came back stamped with a giant F. Despite the removal of restrictions, and the much-publicized "success stories" of those female pioneers who had completed battle school and fighter-pilot training, there had been no followup wave of women wishing to join the Forces.
In fact, although the percentage of women in the military had increased slightly - from 9.9 per cent to 10.8 per cent over that same decade, the total troop strength had been reduced from 90,000 to 60,000. If one crunches the numbers, the lifting of barriers actually resulted in 2,430 fewer women in uniform, and most of the proportional increases had occurred in the "traditional" roles such as support trades and medical staff, not within the combat arms.
Instead of pointing out to the human rights officials that <Canadian> women were obviously not attracted to careers in combat trades, the brass vowed to redouble their efforts.
Former <army> commander and later chief of defence staff Maurice Baril led the charge personally, vowing to increase female representation by 2009 to a full 25 per cent of combat units and a whopping 28 per cent of the <Canadian> Forces overall. To achieve this, Baril pulled out all the stops; fitness standards were "adjusted" (read, lowered) to compensate for the natural disparity in men's and women's upper-body strength; the ban on women serving in submarines was lifted; and as proof of the army's sincerity in welcoming women into the fold, $2.8 million and a panel of male officers were assigned to the development of a "combat bra!"
When the dust settled on Baril's initiatives, the <Canadian> Forces could boast that they now have the lowest set of physical fitness standards of any military in the world (ever!). The media blitz generated zero interest; not one woman opted to sail on subs and the combat bra was declared a bust and cancelled on the drawing board.
In February's federal budget, it was announced that the <Canadian> Forces will recruit and train an additional 5,000 troops to flesh out the ranks of our badly under-strength military. Most of these soldiers will be earmarked for the <army> in general and combat arms regiments in particular.
Despite the fact that over the past several years our military recruiters have been unable to even keep pace with normal attrition, DND public affairs types are once again heralding this surge of 5,000 new troops as an opportunity to address the gender imbalance. My suggestion is to quit whipping a dead horse. Instead of trying to achieve a politically driven agenda, recruiters must simply seek out the best qualified candidates - regardless of gender, sexual persuasion or ethnic background.
It is interesting to note that <Canada> ranks second in the world with regards to the ratio of female to male soldiers. The only country with a higher representation is the United States with 14 per cent, and they still do not allow women to serve in combat units. Go figure.
. I, for one, am in the middle of writing to the Chronicle Herald as we speak (wirte). I am really so tired of him and his unsubstantiated and unfactual stories and the unfortunate part is that there are Canadians out there who view him to be a "military expert".
