Opinion: High Time Men In Military Accepted Women As Equal

Time and again, a harsh but obvious truth asserts itself - men cannot stand women. The latest example is the outgoing Corps Commander (17 Corps) Lt Gen Rajeev Puri's five-page letter to the Army Headquarters flagging his concerns around women Commanding Officers. These concerns ought to be tackled head-on. 

Let's start with the senior officer's diagnosis of the many symptoms. He's pegged "officer management issues," "exaggerated tendency to complain," "misplaced sense of entitlement", et cetera on "The desire to prove oneself in a field which was supposed to be a male bastion is likely a driver behind the over-ambitiousness in some women COs... In order to be perceived as strong individuals and avoid being judged as soft-hearted, women COs handle HR issues with a firmer hand than their male counterparts". 

Basically, according to the General, women are now behaving like men, and therefore, it's a problem. Game, set, match. But let's not leave it at that because, as a woman, this writer has taken it upon herself to bust certain myths that have been in circulation, ably bolstered by such 'concerned' articulations. Since it's raining generalisations, here we go: we women fight better. 

In their iconoclastic research, Orna Sassoon-Levy and Sarit Amram-Katz demonstrated in 2007 through the Israeli military's mixed-gender training bases that there is rarely a difference in the operational suitability of men and women in the time of hi-tech warfare. But then, why should men accept that? 

Sassoon-Levy and Amram-Katz provide further insights. "The military schema, in contrast, positions the masculine body of the warrior as a universal military ideal. This is an androcentric rule demanding that all soldiers, men and women alike, shape their bodies and behavior in accordance with the warrior model, and the closer one gets to the core of the military, the more crucial is his or her resemblance to the combat soldier". 

The Indian military also seems to be stuck in worshipping the masculine body as the gold standard for soldiering, ignoring all the other aspects of warfare. While all three arms, especially the Air Force, are seeking to build intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, this insistence on superman-like physical ability to discriminate against women is counterproductive. 

It has been a long-standing myth, even in more gender-balanced militaries, that mixed-gender units are less efficient due to limited "male bonding". This was dismantled by a 1995 study conducted by the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences. The study concluded that "the relation between cohesiveness and performance is due primarily to the commitment to the task' component of cohesiveness, and not the "interpersonal attraction or 'group pride' components of cohesiveness." Taking the argument further, scholars Robert MacCoun, Elizabeth Kier, and Aaron Belkin demonstrated via a study in 2006 that "all of the evidence indicates that military performance depends on whether service members are committed to the same professional goals, not on whether they like one another".  

Another senior analyst researching the US armed forces, Leora Rosen, concluded that acceptance (institutional and personal) of women had a positive impact on a unit's effectiveness. But no, we won't accept women. And then we'll blame them for inefficiencies. 

A study conducted by the Norwegian Defense Department-one of the only two countries to have undertaken such a research project-established that one of the three reasons why women soldiers left the military is their perception and experience of the military as a male-dominated and exclusionary culture. No organisation with high attrition rates can boast of efficiency. 

Since the Indian military does not have any comparable studies to refer to, we'll have to proceed with transposing these findings with suitable caveats to our context. Demonising and demoralising women leaders in the military will have negative consequences for our security apparatus. 

Data from Kashmir, for example, show that the periods of relative calm are achieved not by successful counterinsurgency operations but by a reduction in local recruitment into jihadi outfits through peacebuilding measures, complemented by reliable intelligence gathering. There's a case for Indian Military to act more as a peacekeeping force in the region. India sends a significant number of police and military personnel to UN peacekeeping missions. It can draw lessons from the United Nation's stated goal of getting more women into the fold to improve operational effectiveness. 

Talking of UN peacekeeping operations, Sandra Whitworth stated in 2019 that ''the introduction of peacekeeping forces has actually served to increase some local people's insecurity rather than alleviate it''. This seems to hold for the relationship that insurgency-ridden regions have with Indian armed forces deployments there. In its landmark resolution, UNSCR 1325,  the Security Council recognised how women are disproportionately affected by armed conflict. The resolution also focussed on how women might have a unique way of minimising conflict and initiating the peacebuilding process and made an appeal for increased participation of women at stages in all levels of peacekeeping. 

Lt Gen Kirsten Lund, the first female Force Commander in a UN peacekeeping operation, famously said that women soldiers have access to 100% of the population. If a higher number of women soldiers in conflict-ridden regions can ensure a better intelligence network due to increased access and reduce the "gender problem" in highly militarised areas, the consequent security outcomes are sure to display an upward tick. 

Another positive fallout of the increased number of women in conflict-ridden regions could be turning the women population there into essential stakeholders in the peace process. Not so far in the past, in 2019, then Commander of Srinagar-based Chinar Corps of the Indian Army, Lt Gen KJS Dhillon, made a famous appeal to the "mothers" in the region to cooperate in curbing fresh recruitments to jihadi outfits and helping in the surrender of armed militants.

However, we cannot win over women outside the military camps while constantly deriding the ones within. 

(Nishtha Gautam is a Delhi-based author and academic.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author