Women in Defence👩‍✈️

What is women empowerment?

Empowerment of women has been a major objective and debate in the recent past among the academia and civil societies across the world. Women empowerment is the process of changing the system of society or any institution that positions women subordinate to men. Therefore in its simplest term women empowerment is a practice through which women acquire the ability or power to exercise their rights in a society concerning their own lives and realizing their sense of self-worth, their right to have and determine choices, access to opportunities and resources and their ability to influence the direction of social change to create more just social and economic order by involving themselves in decision making process, at local, national, as well as international levels. It involves undoing of all the social constructions that have kept women confined to the domestic realm. Hence, women empowerment is very necessary for nation's development.

Women in defence:-

India has ranked fourth worldwide in military field after United States, China and Russia and no doubt it has unstoppable military power. But still gender inequality can be seen. Still high grade officers think 10 times before appointing a female commander while appointing a male commander is not a big deal. The supreme court, in February ruled that women could serve as army commander brushing the government's stance that following a female's commands by males is "disturbing".

The recent announcement by defence minister says to recruit 20% of women in the corpse of military police comes as a positive step towards women empowerment will be a morale booster to women wanting to join armed forces. As of now, the Indian Army has 3.80% of its work force as women, the Air force has 13.09% and the Navy 6%. The women are recruited in defence only in officer's rank. They are not allowed as combatants in the specialist forces such as ,"Ghatak","Garud","MARCOS","Para-commandos",etc.

Women's role in the Indian army can be traced back to 1888 when the 'Indian Military Nursing Services' was formed during British Raj. From 1914 to 1945, Indian Army nurses served in the first and second world wars and as per records, 350 nurses died, taken prisoners or declared missing in action. It was only in 1992 the Indian army decided to induct women to serve in the infantry, The Armoured Corps and Mechanised Infantry.

The centre had earlier informed supreme court that women is not fit for military services because of many reasons such as patriarchal societal norms, family demands, over expose of women in combat situations or the male who belongs to rural area and are not schooled to follow female's order. These reasons go against the gender equality.

Recruitment in military in India is voluntary that is everyone is eligible to apply irrespective of their caste, religion, sex, etc. In 2020, first batch of womem police rankers were recruited. They were basically trained for 61 days and had advanced training afterwards under same circumstances with their male counterparts, in Bangalore, India. This in fact,shows that India is gradually developing optimistic sense towards women but more needs to be done. India still have lot to do in this field. For sustained growth, a strong nation like India needs to strengthen its military capability by inducting more women into military keeping in mind the changing domain of the battlefield.