Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Women in military' that was published in Newsband

Women in military

Indian Army is to open doors to women in combat roles, according to General Bipin Rawat. Very few countries including Germany, Australia, Canada, the US, Britain, Denmark, Finland, France, Norway, Sweden and Israel have allowed women in combat roles. Currently women are allowed in a number of select areas including in medical, legal, educational, signals and engineering wings of the Army but combat roles are kept off limit for them due to operational concerns and logistical issues. The Army Chief said he was ready to recruit women as jawans and the matter is being taken up with the government.

Creating history, the Indian Air Force, last year, had inducted three women as fighter pilots. A decision on having women as fighter pilots will be taken after evaluating performance of the three women. The Indian Navy is currently deliberating on a policy on having women onboard the ships.

Speaking from the global angle, for over 3,000 years in a large number of cultures and nations, women have played many roles in the military, from ancient warrior women, to the women currently serving in conflicts, although the vast majority of all combatants in every culture have been men.

Even though women serving in the military has often been diverse, a very small number of women in history have fought alongside men. In the American Civil War, there were a few women who cross-dressed as men in order to fight. Fighting on the battlefront in disguise was not the only way women involved themselves in war. Some also served as nurses and aides.

Despite various, though limited, roles in the armies of past societies, the role of women in the military, particularly in combat, is controversial and it is only recently that women have begun to be given a more prominent role in contemporary armed forces. As increasing numbers of countries begin to expand the role of women in their militaries, the debate continues.

More recently, from the beginning of the 1970s, most Western armies have begun to admit women to serve active duty in all of military branches. In 9 countries women are conscripted into military.

The only nation to deploy female combat troops in substantial numbers was Russia. From the outset, female recruits either joined up in disguise or were tacitly accepted by their units. The most prominent were a contingent of front-line light cavalry in a Cossack regiment commanded by a female colonel. Others included the famous Maria Bochkareva, who was decorated three times and promoted to senior NCO rank, while the New York Times reported that a group of twelve schoolgirls from Moscow had joined up together disguised as young men. In 1917, the Provisional Government raised a number of "Women's Battalions", with Bochkareva given an officer's commission to command the first unit. They fought well, but failed to provide the propaganda value expected of them and were disbanded before the end of the year. In the later Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks employed some women infantry, while female soldiers are also recorded in the White Guard.

In the 1918 Finnish Civil War, more than 2,000 women fought in the Women's Red Guards.

In World War II, all the main nations used women in uniform. The great majority performed nursing, clerical or support roles. Over 500,000 had combat roles in anti-aircraft units in Britain and Germany, and front-line units in Soviet Union.