One of yesterday’s big news stories in Australia was about the Government approving changes to allow women to serve in all areas of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). Currently, us girls do not have access to approximately 7% of the roles in the ADF – namely front line and elite service roles.
Personally, I think this is great news. As long as standards are not lowered to meet any kind of quota requirement of women vs men on the front line, if a woman can pass the same requirements a man does to get into the SAS or an infantry battalion, then why shouldn’t she be allowed to perform that role?
Allowing women to be on the front line is something I have been in favour of for quite some time. There are all sorts of arguments against it, ranging from the potential problem of men being endangered by a natural instinct to protect a woman, to women not having a place on the front line due to the fact that they have a period. Some of these arguments I dismiss as being utterly ridiculous and simple-minded and others, I think, should be things that we look to overcome, rather than hold them up as reasons as to why a woman can’t perform in these jobs.
When it comes down to it, if Shannon and Shannon can both run fast enough, lift and carry enough weight, pass the same psychological assessments, and can both shoot straight after a 30km pack march hauling 60kg of kit, then why should one of them not make the cut simply because she is a female?
I actually had this same discussion yesterday afternoon live with Tom Tilley on Triple J’s Hack program – I can’t tell you how excited I was to be involved in this show! You can listen to the podcast here (and laugh at my cutesy little “thank you” as Tom welcome’s me to the show!) – it was definitely an interesting conversation, and well worth a listen.
I think that when it comes down to it, the basic story is about equality. We cannot tell someone that they cannot perform a certain role based only on their gender; that’s archaic. There probably won’t be a huge rush of women vying to get into a front line role with the ADF – it’s not for everyone, and of those who do want to give it a go, not all of them will be able to meet the grade for various reasons; but I believe that there is absolutely no valid reason that we should stop women from having the right to have a go if they want to.
How do you feel about women serving on the front line?
