Australian women could soon be given the right to fight and die for their country by serving in front-line combat positions, Australian Minister for Defence Stephen Smith said yesterday.
Women are allowed to fill many military roles, but are excluded from the most dangerous and demanding, including in the special forces and rifle companies.
Smith said this could change after the defense force announced a series of reviews into the treatment of women sparked by a sex scandal involving a young female cadet at Australia’s elite military academy.
“It’s very realistic [women will serve on the front line],” Smith told reporters, saying positions should be determined on physical and mental capacity, not sex, in a bid to change the male-dominated military culture. “What you do in the forces should be determined by your physical and intellectual capability or capacity, not simply on the basis of sex or gender.”
“It opens up all of the leadership roles for women in defense — and that’s an unambiguously good thing,” Smith said.
Several countries, including New Zealand and Canada, already allow women in some front-line positions and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Canberra’s first female head of state, made clear no job should be denied on the basis of gender.
“A few years ago I heard [former Australian defense chief General] Peter Cosgrove say that men and women should have an equal right to fight and die for their country,” she told reporters. “I think he’s right about that and I think it’s a good turn of phrase. It puts the choice very starkly.”
Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick, who has been tasked with reviewing how women are treated at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA), said women fighting alongside men would be “very symbolic.”
“It will send a strong message that men and women will have equality in terms of opportunity for jobs,” she told reporters.
However, not everyone wants to see women putting their lives on the line, with the Australia Defence Association think tank saying it was not realistic.
“The nature of war doesn’t change just because some feminists kick up a fuss,” the spokesman Neil James told ABC radio. “Simple common sense tells you that if you put women in some jobs where you directly fight men, enemy men, one-on-one in a physical confrontation for a continuous period, then we are likely to suffer more female casualties than male casualties.”
A series of inquiries into the role of women was launched after a male student filmed himself having sex with a female colleague at the ADFA and allegedly secretly broadcast it to his friends.
The woman went to the media and it triggered a series of fresh complaints about sexual misconduct within the military stretching back decades.
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