Just as certain senior leaders in the Guards in the 1980s stated that ethnic minorities would never serve in their crimson ranks “because the sergeants would not stand for it”, so today there has been opposition to women soldiers taking on combat roles in the infantry or in tanks.
Britain has a long and shameful tradition of excluding certain people — homosexuals, ethnic minorities and women — from military service, or at least from areas of it, be it the Guards, submarines or the infantry. This has continued long after society has judged such restrictions to be irrelevant and even insulting to our national values. So it is a relief to know that finally the army is planning in the coming months to allow women to serve in combat roles.
Opponents of this enlightened step typically argue either that it would be impossible to find sufficient numbers of physically robust female soldiers who could cope with the demands of infantry life or that women would negatively affect the way soldiers support each other in a fire-fight or in the close confines of a tank turret. Just as it’s ridiculous to think that a person who is homosexual would create chaos in a platoon of trained killers, so too is the notion that men and women would somehow be distracted from their purpose under fire. Countless recent tactical actions in Afghanistan and Iraq have proven otherwise; as does the work of the remarkable women who have served in and alongside the UK’s special forces for years.
But one doesn’t have to expose the extraordinary quality of these modern-day special forces heroines, who follow in the tradition of the brave female special agents parachuted into Nazi-occupied France during the Second World War, to highlight what is possible.
Many other armies have broken down the gender barriers to military service. The American, Swedish and Canadian military all allow women to serve in combat units; while the world leader in this area is the Israeli Defense Force. It has mixed-gender infantry battalions, with women in the majority, serving on the country’s complex front lines. These are not isolated and abnormal individuals, but hundreds of female soldiers trained and equipped to fight alongside their male comrades against suicide-vest wearing Islamic extremists and conventional armies alike.
Advertisement
“Courage, conviction and the capacity to kill are gender-agnostic
Courage, conviction in uncertainty, the capacity to kill and to keep going when others are killed, as well as the ability to make the right decision under extreme pressure are all martial qualities that are demonstrably gender-agnostic. It can even be argued that women soldiers are a benefit in counter-insurgency operations, such as in Afghanistan, as they are able to connect with women and children in operations where success and even survival depends on a unit’s ability to engage with a potentially hostile population.
It is, however, true that the basic physical fitness standards expected of the average infantry soldier are necessarily demanding — the job is a tough one and beyond the capabilities of many, but the requirements are not herculean. They should be respected, and not slackened, but if women can pass them and wish to sign up for the bone-breaking grind and grit of infantry service why would we exclude them ? Such a bar, if maintained, would make no more sense than stating that an Afro-Caribbean or a homosexual could not serve as a Guardsman or preventing Alan Turing from working as a code-breaking scientist at Bletchley Park .
As for service in tank or attack-helicopter units — both combat roles where the physical demands are clearly different from those of the infantry, even if the psychological ones remain the same — it is hard to argue that women cannot play their part as equals to a men, as long as they can pass and maintain the basic fitness and skill standards.
Unless, of course, you are the type of military leader who will not make the right change for fear of upsetting the sensibilities of the sergeants, as in the case of those military racists of the 1980s.
“To end bigotry and exclusion is an act of true leadership
Or one whose leadership and administrative ability is not sufficiently firm or creative enough to ensure that soldiers of both genders can be trained, accommodated and led in ways that respect the needs of each, and their human rights. This appears to not have been the case at the Deepcut military barracks in the 1990s, with tragic and shameful results.
Advertisement
It is said that it was the Prince of Wales, as Regimental Colonel of the Welsh Guards, who broke the deadlock in the Guards and persuaded its leadership to welcome any citizen who could pass its training, regardless of ethnicity. If true, it says much about his values — as well as the dark, shaven-headed and tattooed forces that were confronted. Whoever it was, it was a fine example of the same far-sighted leadership that stopped a serviceman’s sexuality from being a bar to military service 15 years ago.
To end bigotry, exclusion and bullying within the military forces is to believe in the values of the nation you protect. To ensure parity of opportunity for women and men in the combat services is not a choice, nor is it a compromise of our ability to maintain our fighting spirit. Instead it is a clear commitment to the freedom that we seek to protect.