The NDA must practise a gender-neutral mode as it opens up for female cadets
The three Service chiefs are in Pune on Friday. What they propose to do will be historic. They will study the changes in infrastructure needed at the National Defence Academy (NDA) that will open up for women cadets for the first time. The chiefs have been, coincidentally, course mates at the Academy. They know what the course is like. They know what the attitudes are like. They are in the best position to proceed with sensitivity to ensure that women are not discriminated against when they enter the Academy later this year. The physical, technical and teaching aspects of infrastructure are easily taken care of. Separate living quarters, toilets, locker rooms are a matter of building them. However, it is the mental infrastructure that needs to be tuned out of patriarchal snobbery and tuned into a gender-neutral mode. Without the Supreme Court’s protection, women would not have come this far but are still far from fighting arms like mechanised infantry, armoured corps and artillery. Women have been discouraged from joining the Services for reasons of patriarchy and gender discrimination that they are not at all responsible for. With the NDA now opening its doors to them, the defence establishment will get the first opportunity to nip the anti-women attitudes in the bud, at the training stage itself. That is why the visit of the Service chiefs to Pune becomes crucial.
What the Service chiefs need to tackle is the unwritten dictum that the woman has to behave like a man in the Army. The woman has to become masculine to pass muster. Is she a “weak man” or a “strong woman”, as some analysts said? An assertive and aggressive man is called an able leader but what about a woman with the same qualities? Should she not answer that question herself? As of date there are structural barriers — which the Supreme Court is breaking one by one — and social barriers that work towards excluding women. The critical infrastructural change that needs to be introduced in the NDA is the introduction of feminine rules instead of making women act according to masculine rules. In order to be equal to the job, men and women cadets need to learn and acquire gender-neutral military characteristics, not merely a woman being asked to behave like a man. When a woman officer goes into the field on a mission, her instincts that take over are determined by her securities and perspectives as a woman and not as a man. And she would not be less competent for that. She can go out on patrols at night, fare well in combat roles, have no qualms about intolerable sleeping quarters and toilets but she cannot be a leader of men. That will not do. At a UNSC open debate on women in peacekeeping in April 2019, India’s delegate had suggested all-women units instead of mixed-gender units to increase the overall number of women peacekeepers. Is it not the attitude that needs change?