Marcia Kaye
Special to the Star
Now that the U.S. Senate has voted to do away with the ban on openly gay troops, the focus is suddenly swerving to another group that has long been the target of discrimination in the American military: Women.
The U.S. defence department bans women from serving in on-the-ground combat units, such as the infantry, armour and special forces. This may surprise those who thought the 1997 Hollywood movie G.I. Jane — remember the bald, foul-mouthed machine-gun-toting Demi Moore who liked to “blow s--- up”? — was based on a real story. (It wasn’t.)
It may also surprise some Canadians — and likely many Americans — that Canada has allowed women into all military trades, including combat arms, for 22 years. The only exception was submarine service, a final bastion that fell in 2001. About a dozen other countries also allow women into active ground combat roles, including Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, France, Germany, Serbia, New Zealand and Israel.
But the United States doesn’t. At least, that’s the official policy. The reality is that it’s happening anyway. In Iraq and Afghanistan, officers don’t formerly “assign” women to combat units; they “attach” them, which skirts the policy while exposing the women to the same dangers as the men.
American women can patrol perilous areas as military police, but not as infantry. Female officers can lead men into battle, but aren’t supposed to serve alongside them. The sad irony is that in modern-day wars, where battles take place on street corners and in marketplaces, the combat ban doesn’t shield women at all — except from job titles, personal satisfaction and future promotions that ensue directly from officially documented combat experience.
That’s why the Military Leadership Diversity Commission, which Congress set up in 2009, will be sending a report to President Barack Obama this spring recommending the ban be lifted “to create a level playing field for all qualified service members.”
“It’s about time, isn’t it?” says an exasperated Lt. Col. (retired) Shirley Robinson, who served 30 years in the Canadian military.
As cofounder of the Association for Women’s Equity in the Canadian Forces, Robinson was instrumental in helping to change the similar policy in Canada in 1989.
Robinson says she knows exactly what the critics are going to argue in the U.S. because she heard it all in Canada back in the 1980s, when she acted as a consultant to human-rights lawyers. “We heard all the stereotypes and all the myths they could dream up,” she says.
One of those staunch opponents is the Michigan-based Center for Military Readiness, the same independent advocacy organization (whose president is a woman, Elaine Donnelly) that fought to keep the ban on gays in the armed forces.
It’s now using similar reasoning regarding women, arguing the push toward diversity will undermine combat effectiveness. As its website says, “The armed forces should not be used for political purposes or social experiments that needlessly elevate risks, detract from readiness, or degrade American cultural values.”
But Mary Anne Baker, a retired U.S. colonel now living in Haymarket, Virginia, doesn’t buy it. “Your morale, good order and discipline are managed by your leaders,” she says. Baker was permitted to work as a field artillery officer during the Cold War because of the perceived safer distance involved in delivering nuclear weapons, compared to rockets or cannon fire. She believes all combat positions should be open to women.
Not that there is likely to be a flood of combat-seeking women, judging by the Canadian experience.
In Canada today, only about 250 women serve in the combat trades, out of a total 13,000 combat personnel. That puts female representation at less than 2 per cent. Women make up 10 per cent of personnel deployed on international operations, and 15 per cent of the combined Regular Force and Primary Reserve.
Robinson says during the Canadian policy debates, the generals at the top understood a ban on women in combat contravened both the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which prohibit gender discrimination. The biggest opponents, Robinson says, were the lower ranks — the regular male soldiers. “They were digging their heels in like mad. They weren’t going to have any women in their battalions,” she says.
Why not? One of the biggest arguments Robinson heard, and still hears today, is that we shouldn’t be exposing military women to danger by allowing them to serve in combat-related positions. But that’s an artificial distinction in a war situation where the traditional “front line” no longer exists.
“Today you’re not safe if you’re a cook, or working at the Tim Hortons (in Kandahar),” Robinson says. “If you’re driving along in a vehicle that gets blown up, that’s combat.”
Six of Canada’s 154 casualties in Afghanistan have been women. Of more than 1,400 American troops killed there, 24 were women.
Cpl. Katie Hodges, who saw combat missions in Afghanistan, before becoming a military photographer, says: “The fact that you have to kill in the infantry is a fact. But it’s not murder. It’s a job. It’s just business.”
Then there’s the argument that women don’t have the physical strength of men. It’s a fact; most don’t. But some do. The Canadian Forces testing standards are different for men and women: for example, a 25-year-old man needs to do a minimum of 19 sit-ups, a 25-year-old woman, only 15. “We never asked for standards to be lowered. Not once,” says Robinson. “Put standards on the job, not the person, and then it doesn’t matter a damn if it’s a man or a woman.”
In Canada, it’s still a sore point among some men that gender plays a role in the differing standards. But so does age, with lower requirements for ages 35 and up.
Still, some military women choose to meet the higher standards, to prove their fitness to themselves or their male colleagues. “I just looked at the men’s standard and that’s what I did,” says Kimberly Ashton, a Canadian Forces combat engineer for 14 years who served in Afghanistan in 2008.
There’s also been a growing realization, as in police forces, that the job often requires something more than brute strength, such as quick reflexes, agility, flexibility or deadly accurate shooting.
Now what of the delicate “feminine hygiene” issues? When Vancouver filmmaker Beth Freeman was filming at CFB Petawawa for her 2010 documentary Sisters in Arms, which profiles three Canadian women in combat positions who deploy to Afghanistan, a young woman of about 18 came up to her during artillery exercises, crying. “She said she had her period and there were no Porta-Potties,” Freeman says.
Awkward, but hardly a reason to bar women from combat, Freeman says.Many deployed women choose to take the birth-control pill daily for several months at a time to stop their cycle until they’re home again.
As for instances of sexual harassment or sexual relationships, these can — and often do — happen in workplaces everywhere, not just in the Armed Forces. Or they may not happen at all, even when men and women share the same living quarters.
During his deployment in Afghanistan, Cpl. Evan Moses of Canadian Forces Military Police lived and worked in a number of places with women. Sometimes there were separate, gender-based bedrooms and bathrooms, but “other times we shared a large modular tent, sometimes just cots out in the open,” says Moses, 28. “Everyone was respectful of each other.”
Supporters of the ban have also argued that women in combat would damage the cohesive esprit de corps of the unit. It’s the same argument that in previous generations was used to keep women out of politics, police forces, jury boxes and boardrooms. Moses doesn’t agree with it. “A female can hold her own and get the job done just like any guy can,” he says.
Still, deployed women may well be at greater risk of sexual abuse and assault than men. Capt. Nichola Goddard, who in 2006 became Canada’s first female combat death, wrote a revealing letter three months earlier to her husband, now documented in the book Sunray: The Death and Life of Captain Nichola Goddard by Valerie Fortney.
“There were six rapes in the camp last week, so we have to work out an escort at night,” Goddard wrote. She didn’t say whether the alleged perpetrators were fellow soldiers, who she said spread rumours about her sleeping with men on the base, or Afghan soldiers or civilians, who she said constantly leered at her.
Kimberly Ashton says she had no such problems, and saw only advantages to the presence of women on the base. In her experience, female soldiers are more patient, more detail-oriented, and better listeners than many of their male colleagues. “I listened to a lot of guys’ problems,” she says of her seven-month deployment in Afghanistan.
Finally, there’s the motherhood issue. The charge is that mothers have no place in combat units. Maj. (retired) Judith Webb, who in 1982 became the British Army’s first woman to command an all-male field force squadron, raised some eyebrows and a few hackles when in 2007 she wrote about her change of heart in an article for Britain’s Daily Mail entitled, “Why women should not be on the front line.”
“Yes, we may be capable of incredible mental and physical toughness, but there is no getting away from the fact that we are the more compassionate sex; instinctively nurturing,” she wrote. “The strong emotional ties of motherhood cannot be underestimated. All this makes women less effective than the men with whom they stand on the battlefield.”
Ashton agrees most women are more compassionate than most men. “Every time I’d see a young child in Afghanistan, I’d go, ‘Aww,’” she says. “But I don’t think that should stop us from going in the front line.”
What has stopped Ashton is the strain on her family life. The 36-year-old mother of three girls under 12 — with a fourth baby due this fall — says her long absences from her family have recently forced her to resign from her position as combat engineer to seek a noncombat trade within the military, thereby giving up her exciting career and her rank as master corporal. Her husband will remain a combat engineer.
“I just loved my job as a sapper,” Ashton says. “But it was starting to affect my family, and my kids need me here. I’ve done all that stuff. Now I just want a normal life.”
Shirley Robinson, the retired lieutenant colonel, agrees that motherhood probably doesn’t mix well with combat work (she has no children), adding it should be up to individual women to make those decisions. But she insists anyone in the Armed Forces — combat or noncombat — who expects to have a “normal life” while still in the military is dreaming.
“If you’re in the Armed Forces your first priority is to your country, not your family,” she says. “And that’s true for men, as well as women.”
Marcia Kaye is an award-winning writer whose nephew was recently deployed to Afghanistan
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/930155--u-s-to-allow-women-into-combat-a-move-canada-made-decades-ago
Your feedback is always welcome.
Thank you!
http://www.winncad.com/
http://www.docstoc.com/profile/corona7
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/paul-corona/10/63a/200
http://www.scribd.com/crown%20007
http://www.facebook.com/people/WinnCad-Elements/100001525374479
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Special to the Star
Now that the U.S. Senate has voted to do away with the ban on openly gay troops, the focus is suddenly swerving to another group that has long been the target of discrimination in the American military: Women.
The U.S. defence department bans women from serving in on-the-ground combat units, such as the infantry, armour and special forces. This may surprise those who thought the 1997 Hollywood movie G.I. Jane — remember the bald, foul-mouthed machine-gun-toting Demi Moore who liked to “blow s--- up”? — was based on a real story. (It wasn’t.)
It may also surprise some Canadians — and likely many Americans — that Canada has allowed women into all military trades, including combat arms, for 22 years. The only exception was submarine service, a final bastion that fell in 2001. About a dozen other countries also allow women into active ground combat roles, including Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, France, Germany, Serbia, New Zealand and Israel.
But the United States doesn’t. At least, that’s the official policy. The reality is that it’s happening anyway. In Iraq and Afghanistan, officers don’t formerly “assign” women to combat units; they “attach” them, which skirts the policy while exposing the women to the same dangers as the men.
American women can patrol perilous areas as military police, but not as infantry. Female officers can lead men into battle, but aren’t supposed to serve alongside them. The sad irony is that in modern-day wars, where battles take place on street corners and in marketplaces, the combat ban doesn’t shield women at all — except from job titles, personal satisfaction and future promotions that ensue directly from officially documented combat experience.
That’s why the Military Leadership Diversity Commission, which Congress set up in 2009, will be sending a report to President Barack Obama this spring recommending the ban be lifted “to create a level playing field for all qualified service members.”
“It’s about time, isn’t it?” says an exasperated Lt. Col. (retired) Shirley Robinson, who served 30 years in the Canadian military.
As cofounder of the Association for Women’s Equity in the Canadian Forces, Robinson was instrumental in helping to change the similar policy in Canada in 1989.
Robinson says she knows exactly what the critics are going to argue in the U.S. because she heard it all in Canada back in the 1980s, when she acted as a consultant to human-rights lawyers. “We heard all the stereotypes and all the myths they could dream up,” she says.
One of those staunch opponents is the Michigan-based Center for Military Readiness, the same independent advocacy organization (whose president is a woman, Elaine Donnelly) that fought to keep the ban on gays in the armed forces.
It’s now using similar reasoning regarding women, arguing the push toward diversity will undermine combat effectiveness. As its website says, “The armed forces should not be used for political purposes or social experiments that needlessly elevate risks, detract from readiness, or degrade American cultural values.”
But Mary Anne Baker, a retired U.S. colonel now living in Haymarket, Virginia, doesn’t buy it. “Your morale, good order and discipline are managed by your leaders,” she says. Baker was permitted to work as a field artillery officer during the Cold War because of the perceived safer distance involved in delivering nuclear weapons, compared to rockets or cannon fire. She believes all combat positions should be open to women.
Not that there is likely to be a flood of combat-seeking women, judging by the Canadian experience.
In Canada today, only about 250 women serve in the combat trades, out of a total 13,000 combat personnel. That puts female representation at less than 2 per cent. Women make up 10 per cent of personnel deployed on international operations, and 15 per cent of the combined Regular Force and Primary Reserve.
Robinson says during the Canadian policy debates, the generals at the top understood a ban on women in combat contravened both the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which prohibit gender discrimination. The biggest opponents, Robinson says, were the lower ranks — the regular male soldiers. “They were digging their heels in like mad. They weren’t going to have any women in their battalions,” she says.
Why not? One of the biggest arguments Robinson heard, and still hears today, is that we shouldn’t be exposing military women to danger by allowing them to serve in combat-related positions. But that’s an artificial distinction in a war situation where the traditional “front line” no longer exists.
“Today you’re not safe if you’re a cook, or working at the Tim Hortons (in Kandahar),” Robinson says. “If you’re driving along in a vehicle that gets blown up, that’s combat.”
Six of Canada’s 154 casualties in Afghanistan have been women. Of more than 1,400 American troops killed there, 24 were women.
Cpl. Katie Hodges, who saw combat missions in Afghanistan, before becoming a military photographer, says: “The fact that you have to kill in the infantry is a fact. But it’s not murder. It’s a job. It’s just business.”
Then there’s the argument that women don’t have the physical strength of men. It’s a fact; most don’t. But some do. The Canadian Forces testing standards are different for men and women: for example, a 25-year-old man needs to do a minimum of 19 sit-ups, a 25-year-old woman, only 15. “We never asked for standards to be lowered. Not once,” says Robinson. “Put standards on the job, not the person, and then it doesn’t matter a damn if it’s a man or a woman.”
In Canada, it’s still a sore point among some men that gender plays a role in the differing standards. But so does age, with lower requirements for ages 35 and up.
Still, some military women choose to meet the higher standards, to prove their fitness to themselves or their male colleagues. “I just looked at the men’s standard and that’s what I did,” says Kimberly Ashton, a Canadian Forces combat engineer for 14 years who served in Afghanistan in 2008.
There’s also been a growing realization, as in police forces, that the job often requires something more than brute strength, such as quick reflexes, agility, flexibility or deadly accurate shooting.
Now what of the delicate “feminine hygiene” issues? When Vancouver filmmaker Beth Freeman was filming at CFB Petawawa for her 2010 documentary Sisters in Arms, which profiles three Canadian women in combat positions who deploy to Afghanistan, a young woman of about 18 came up to her during artillery exercises, crying. “She said she had her period and there were no Porta-Potties,” Freeman says.
Awkward, but hardly a reason to bar women from combat, Freeman says.Many deployed women choose to take the birth-control pill daily for several months at a time to stop their cycle until they’re home again.
As for instances of sexual harassment or sexual relationships, these can — and often do — happen in workplaces everywhere, not just in the Armed Forces. Or they may not happen at all, even when men and women share the same living quarters.
During his deployment in Afghanistan, Cpl. Evan Moses of Canadian Forces Military Police lived and worked in a number of places with women. Sometimes there were separate, gender-based bedrooms and bathrooms, but “other times we shared a large modular tent, sometimes just cots out in the open,” says Moses, 28. “Everyone was respectful of each other.”
Supporters of the ban have also argued that women in combat would damage the cohesive esprit de corps of the unit. It’s the same argument that in previous generations was used to keep women out of politics, police forces, jury boxes and boardrooms. Moses doesn’t agree with it. “A female can hold her own and get the job done just like any guy can,” he says.
Still, deployed women may well be at greater risk of sexual abuse and assault than men. Capt. Nichola Goddard, who in 2006 became Canada’s first female combat death, wrote a revealing letter three months earlier to her husband, now documented in the book Sunray: The Death and Life of Captain Nichola Goddard by Valerie Fortney.
“There were six rapes in the camp last week, so we have to work out an escort at night,” Goddard wrote. She didn’t say whether the alleged perpetrators were fellow soldiers, who she said spread rumours about her sleeping with men on the base, or Afghan soldiers or civilians, who she said constantly leered at her.
Kimberly Ashton says she had no such problems, and saw only advantages to the presence of women on the base. In her experience, female soldiers are more patient, more detail-oriented, and better listeners than many of their male colleagues. “I listened to a lot of guys’ problems,” she says of her seven-month deployment in Afghanistan.
Finally, there’s the motherhood issue. The charge is that mothers have no place in combat units. Maj. (retired) Judith Webb, who in 1982 became the British Army’s first woman to command an all-male field force squadron, raised some eyebrows and a few hackles when in 2007 she wrote about her change of heart in an article for Britain’s Daily Mail entitled, “Why women should not be on the front line.”
“Yes, we may be capable of incredible mental and physical toughness, but there is no getting away from the fact that we are the more compassionate sex; instinctively nurturing,” she wrote. “The strong emotional ties of motherhood cannot be underestimated. All this makes women less effective than the men with whom they stand on the battlefield.”
Ashton agrees most women are more compassionate than most men. “Every time I’d see a young child in Afghanistan, I’d go, ‘Aww,’” she says. “But I don’t think that should stop us from going in the front line.”
What has stopped Ashton is the strain on her family life. The 36-year-old mother of three girls under 12 — with a fourth baby due this fall — says her long absences from her family have recently forced her to resign from her position as combat engineer to seek a noncombat trade within the military, thereby giving up her exciting career and her rank as master corporal. Her husband will remain a combat engineer.
“I just loved my job as a sapper,” Ashton says. “But it was starting to affect my family, and my kids need me here. I’ve done all that stuff. Now I just want a normal life.”
Shirley Robinson, the retired lieutenant colonel, agrees that motherhood probably doesn’t mix well with combat work (she has no children), adding it should be up to individual women to make those decisions. But she insists anyone in the Armed Forces — combat or noncombat — who expects to have a “normal life” while still in the military is dreaming.
“If you’re in the Armed Forces your first priority is to your country, not your family,” she says. “And that’s true for men, as well as women.”
Marcia Kaye is an award-winning writer whose nephew was recently deployed to Afghanistan
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/930155--u-s-to-allow-women-into-combat-a-move-canada-made-decades-ago
Your feedback is always welcome.
Thank you!
http://www.winncad.com/
http://www.docstoc.com/profile/corona7
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/paul-corona/10/63a/200
http://www.scribd.com/crown%20007
http://www.facebook.com/people/WinnCad-Elements/100001525374479
http://www.youtube.com/user/Winncad
The Resident: Do women belong in the military?
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