Navy to grant permanent commission to women
In a landmark decision last week, the Delhi High Court set right decades of official gender discrimination, directing the Indian Navy to grant permanent commission to women. This concluded a task undertaken in 2010, when the same Court had asked the Army and the Air Force to incorporate women in the Forces. Shattering the glass ceiling of an institution that in its very composition and mandate is a male preserve — of immense physical stamina, demanding work hours and gruelling combat conditions — the Court's order will now ensure that women walk shoulder to shoulder with men across the entire spectrum of the services. While timely and indeed a welcome boost to gender parity in one of the most impregnable male bastions of this country, it is unfortunate that the move is a court directive from the outside and not an institutional decision from within. The move does not flow from the defence establishment's exhibit of a similar urgency to right what clearly has been a systemic gender imbalance in the Services. Therefore, while welcome, there is reason to be circumspect about the implementation of the Court order.
After all, decades of institutional discrimination cannot be wished away overnight. Admittedly, the court order immediately grants equal status to women on paper — equal pay and pension opportunities, equal number of service years, and comparable promotions. However, the battle for gender parity is yet to be fought and won. In what is indeed a deep-rooted infestation of our social fabric, women still contend with issues of sexism and sexual exploitation in existing work places that otherwise offer equal job opportunities to them; a traditionally male preserve makes that task even more daunting. As of now, the Court's decision does not find the desired resonance in the defence establishment that would compel it to undertake urgent reforms and incorporate gender sensitisation as part of its recruitment and training programmes. Earlier, in the Supreme Court, the Army had regressively argued that junior officers from rural areas would be unwilling to accept women as commanders in combat operations. Indeed, rural India is grossly patriarchal; for the Army to extend this argument as a reason for women to be kept away is a blatant endorsement of a feudal mindset that every right-thinking, progressive Indian must eschew.
For the moment, it is to be hoped that following the Court's latest decision, the defence establishment embarks on a corrective course and puts in place a reforms structure to comprehensively weed out entrenched sexist biases instead of citing them as a justification to drive women away. This is no mean task. Even in the United States, home to various international bodies fighting for countless human and animal rights, the Pentagon decided to lift the ban on women in combat roles only in 2013. Now, it is for the Indian defence establishment to initiate exhaustive studies on the integration process and deliver on the Court's verdict post haste.