A safe place for women: Military needs greater gender sensitisation

The military's growing number of women officers highlights the need for gender sensitisation. Recent harassment cases show systemic flaws that must be addressed for true gender equality

Accusations of rape and sexual harassment by a wing commander posted at the Indian Air Force Station, Srinagar, underscore the urgent need for greater gender sensitisation in the security and armed forces, which have started admitting women in larger numbers. The Air Force admits women in combat roles, so the issue of integration is not merely a social necessity but a security imperative as well. The fact that the victim had to approach the Jammu and Kashmir Police for redress points to the multiple organisational deficiencies that led to this outcome. The victim’s complaint reportedly showed that the base reflected all the infirmities of a male-dominated work environment. First, she stated, the sexual assault followed two years of harassment and mental torture by the authorities. The victim said her complaint of a sexual assault after a New Year’s party at the Officers’ Mess on January 1 this year was not taken seriously.
 

It took more than two months for the station to assemble an internal complaints committee and due process appeared to be seriously compromised.  A medical examination was also conducted only at the victim’s insistence, that too on the last day of the investigation. The committee’s verdict that the complaint was inconclusive for lack of eyewitnesses is also astonishing; sexual encounters, especially non-consensual ones, are unlikely to be conducted openly. The victim is also reported to have claimed that one witness for the prosecution had been pressured to leave the base and other witnesses had been “tutored”, again a common problem when the perpetrator happens to be a person in a position of power.
 

The lack of action by the hastily convened internal complaints committee compelled the victim to approach the police, which had booked the officer concerned. India now has a proud record of recruiting more women in its paramilitary and military forces. Over 9,000 women serve in the three branches of the defence services and both the Indian Army and Navy are required to follow gender-neutral career progression policies. Nevertheless, women are still a notable minority in these organisations. For instance, women account for just about 12 per cent of the police forces against a mandated 33 per cent, causing the home ministry to issue advisories to increase the representation of women. Even if the prevalence of women in these forces were to rise — some states like Bihar and Tamil Nadu have over a 20 per cent presence — the culture embedded in these hitherto

all-male organisations is unlikely to diminish anytime soon.
 

This fact only underlines the urgent need to introduce more intensive gender-sensitisation programmes in these organisations and ensure that bases and stations are not only safe places for women to work in but senior staff members are responsive to complaints of sexual harassment and assault. Indeed, almost no military organisation in the world that has admitted women, especially in combat roles, has been immune to the problem of sexual harassment and it has taken considerable pushback from women to force their services to create gender-sensitive policies and environments. The US military, for instance, employs psychologists trained in preventing sexual assault and associated harmful behaviour in the ranks. Without such conducive policies, India’s ambition to emulate the best-in-class military and paramilitary forces in terms of gender neutrality is likely to be a distant dream.