“Grant permanent commission to women in more branches”
A parliamentary panel has slammed the Defence Ministry for its “negative” approach in treating women officers in the three services as a “time gap'' arrangement to meet the shortage of male officers.
The committee also pulled up the Ministry for the “discriminative'' policies in granting permanent commission to women and accused it of turning a blind eye to recommendations on inducting more women in armed forces.
“We fail to understand the negativism when it comes to employing more women in the armed forces and reiterate their earlier recommendation to enhance intake of women in various branches of armed forces,'' the Committee on Empowerment of Women said in its report on “Women in Armed Forces'' tabled in Parliament on Friday. On its recommendation of opening more branches for permanent commission to women, the committee said, “The Defence Ministry has turned a blind eye to this recommendation by sticking to their earlier stand that women officers would be considered only in specific branches.''
The report said the committee's suggestions to explore the possibility of having more women officers in branches such as the Military Police, Army Postal Service and General Service have been dismissed with a grim reply by the Ministry.
“It is extremely disturbing to note that the Ministry has not even bothered to try even exploring a single other option for women officers and instead relied heavily on the existing discriminative policies,'' it said.
The committee objected to the way women officers were being used as a time gap arrangement to compensate for the shortage of male officers without showing an iota of concern for their future.
Keywords: parliamentary panel, Defence Ministry, women in armed forces
It is good for the women if Armed Forces limited them to fields that are suitable to them. Armed Forces go by realistic requirements than taking into account the popular views. The primary concern of the Armed Forces are Security and Safety which is undoubtedly a hardship that women not necessarily be subjected to.
Being in armed forces I dont think so..
Let it be in any field bookkeeping,accounts,stores etc. job in armed
forces is basically as a soldier who needs to be tough, handle any
kind of situations they are in like hard areas,hard shifts ,no limits
for duty hours,physical & mentally fit enough. Handling these
situations after certain age ,after marriage, children ,with
commitments to family and relations will not be easy enough .
Its easy to discuss this issue being outside armed forces saying that
women are equally competent with man in all areas , but its is totally
different getting in deep aspects of these jobs after getting into
the armed forces.
Nothing wrong in the induction of ladies in the armed forces.They
cannot ask for quotas and reservation but in large concentrations
of service personnel they will find it safe to operate in medical,
ie. As Doctors and in nursing,bookkeeping,secretarial,accounts,kitchen
services,stores,driving and other non combat duty jobs.Any questions
about that?
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