WOMEN AS PROFESSIONAL SOLDIERS:
CANADIAN VALUES ON THE FRONT LINE
BY: Drs. Stéfanie von Hlatky and Christian Leuprecht
On 30 April 2015, the government released the External Review into Sexual Misconduct and Sexual Harassment in the Canadian Armed Force, known as the Deschamps Report. This review, named after its external authority, former Supreme Court Justice Marie Deschamps, presented some challenging findings for the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). Acknowledging that sexual misconduct is not unique to the CAF, the Report emphasizes its endemic nature within the military, concluding “that there is an underlying sexualized culture in the CAF that is hostile to women and LGTBQ [Lesbian, Gay, Transsexual, Bisexual, and Queer] members, and conducive to more serious incidents of sexual harassment and assault.”1 Indeed, the external review was commissioned by then Chief of the Defence Staff, General Thomas Lawson, after victims of sexual harassment made their stories public as part of journalistic investigations featured in the Canadian magazines Maclean’s and L’Actualité.
This was not the first sex scandal for the CAF. The military went through a similar ordeal in 1998, when incidents of sexual harassment made the news and caused public outrage. Why has the CAF been so complacent? How might the Department of National Defence focus its efforts post-Deschamps? Can Canada’s action plan restore the excellent reputation it achieved when it was among the first countries to remove all barriers to women across military trades? In response to these questions, we highlight the key factors at the domestic and international levels to understand the CAF experience with gender integration. We conclude by offering some modest suggestions.
Women in the Military: Arguments for Greater Integration
The integration of women in the armed forces has proven controversial, especially in the combat arms (infantry, armoured reconnaissance, artillery, engineers). There are at least three good reasons for their inclusion: institutional legitimacy in a democratic society; the functional imperative; and recruitment.
First, the citizen-soldier ideal in democratic societies holds that military organizational culture should be in line with the expectations of Canadian society and the government: If women face no professional restrictions in other fields, the military should follow suit. A CAF that is broadly representative of Canadian society is likely to be more closely aligned with that society, which translates into greater support from taxpayers who ultimately float the armed forces and its mission. Gender diversity, then, is a proxy litmus test of civilmilitary relations: How proactive is the institution as opposed to diversifying largely in response to external pressure, such as legislative change and parajudicial adjudication?
Second, there is a case to be made for operational effectiveness and mission success. Recent military experiences in Kosovo and Afghanistan confirm that including female teams in combat units is key to fulfilling mission objectives. For cultural reasons, reaching deep into communities and including women in political activities could not have been achieved without the presence of female soldiers. Having a man search a woman at a checkpoint would be an inconceivable contravention of cultural norms in these societies. Institutional diversity also offers operational advantages by increasing the skillsets required in postmodern society and warfare.2 Hybrid wars of the future are likely to fuel demand for more women to fulfill some of these essential military tasks. However utilitarian, such instrumental arguments make a strategic case for greater integration of women, along with minorities and other underrepresented Designated Group Members (DGMs), within the CAF.
Finally, there is the recruitment argument. Broadening the military’s applicant pool by removing barriers to certain trades will boost recruitment efforts. More applicants mean greater competition, which should result in more qualified recruits overall. Over the course of two world wars and the Cold War, the military gradually removed restrictions on the service of women until a decision by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) in 1989 opened up all ranks and trades to women (except for submarine service, which took until 2000). Nondiscrimination legislation aside, Canada’s 1995 Employment Equity Act (EEA) actually requires federal institutions to be proactive about remedying disadvantage and under representation
among DGMs: women,
visible minorities,
Aboriginal peoples, and
persons with disabilities.
After unsuccessfully trying
to negotiate exemptions
to the EEA, the CAF was
successful in delaying the
lifting of restriction until
2002. The EEA has since
resulted in the Canadian
Armed Forces Employment
Equity Relations, which,
along with the CHRT
decision, prompted
the CAF to develop a
methodology to establish
annual recruiting targets.
Still, the recruitment
targets for the CAF,
when compared to other
security organizations, are
not overly ambitious – so
much so that the CAF
recently altered the methodology so as
to ensure that recruitment targets would
not escalate. The target for women is 25.1
percent, compared to the RCMP’s target
of 30 percent. Yet, the CAF falls well short
of this and other DGM targets: in 2015
women make up 17 percent of officers
and 13.4 percent of non-commissioned
members of the Regular Force, for a total
of about 14.3 percent (16.6 percent in the
Reserves, for a CAF total of 15 percent).
The delta between already conservative
employment equity representation
targets and actual representation rates
suggest that there is room for the CAF
to aim higher and do more. However,
that arguably runs counter to deeply
engrained premises of force cohesion
and a tight institutional culture that
values homogeneity and conformity.
Yet, a tightening labour market due to
population aging is raising the specter of
stiffer competition for talent. The CAF’s
functional imperative thus hinges on it
becoming an employer of choice for all
Canadians.
A CAF that fails to accommodate by
drawing more extensively on a more
diverse recruit pool under conditions of
population aging and a tightening labour
market may either end up having to lower
standards of recruitment – if it tries to
recruit from the same yet shrinking cohort
on which it has conventionally drawn – or
shrinking the size of the force if it cannot
find the requisite quality of recruit within
its conventional yet shrinking recruit
pool, neither of which are desirable. As
the CAF contemplates more ambitious
change, the post-Deschamps taskforce,
which is mandated with implementing
the core recommendations, has been
looking internationally for best practices.
Benchmarking: What Are Canada’s
Allies Doing?
Canada was among the first NATO allies
to remove almost all professional barriers
to women subsequent to the CHRT
decision in 1989. Today, the CAF is
actually more representative of society on
a per capita basis than most NATO allies,
save Hungary (20.3 percent), the United
States (18 percent) and Latvia (16.5
percent), which all have more female
uniformed members of their armed
forces. However, allied data may not be
readily comparable to Canada due to
policy differentials: some countries have
gender segregated roles that may affect
female representation while denying men
access to “feminized” occupational roles.
The Alliance has been collecting data
from each of its 28 member states through
a questionnaire, the Annual National
Reports to the NATO International
Military Staff Office of the Gender Adviser.
NATO recently enhanced data collection
from its member states in the hopes of
generating best practices for the Alliance
on gender integration in the armed
forces of NATO members.3 Comparing
national legislation and policies, human
resources trends, how gender is integrated
in military operations, as well as sexual
misconduct and harassment, NATO’s
Science for Peace and Security Program –
collaborating with external stakeholders
and experts – concluded: (1) professional
restrictions still exist for women in the military in seven NATO member states,
though all of them allow women to join
the national armed forces; (2) about
half of NATO’s member states support
women’s integration in the military
through targeted efforts by the ministry of
defence; (3) over three quarters of NATO
states have incorporated gender training
as part of operational or pre-deployment
training; (4) most if not all of NATO’s
member states face significant challenges
when it comes to addressing incidents of
sexual misconduct and harassment.
A non-NATO ally, Australia, has been
at the forefront of establishing best
practices. In 2009, the Australian
Defence Force took on ambitious reforms
called Pathway for Change that aimed to
transform the national military culture
to eliminate predatory behaviour and
establish a new professional standard
that is safe for all service members,
regardless of gender or background.
Canada has a similar opportunity with
the Deschamps report and the CAF
Action Plan on Inappropriate Sexual
Behaviour. With Lieutenant-General
Christine Whitecross at the helm
of implementing this Action Plan,
momentum is building to embark on an
effort similar to Australia’s.
Key to this effort will be strong ownership
of the process, from the military’s top
brass and all the way down, and to make
the link explicit between the need for
organizational culture to make policies
on diversity stick and effectively change
the CAF’s institutional culture. If the first
few speeches by Chief of the Defence
Staff, General Jonathan Vance, are any
indication, he appears committed to the
kind of transformative leadership that
worked in the Australian Army, under
their Chief, (now retired) LieutenantGeneral
David Morrison.
Conclusion
Within the CAF, the removal of formal
restrictions to service has met with
some success at improving recruitment
trends outside of the military’s
traditional recruit pool of rural white
heterosexual males. However, these
incremental improvements have been
spawned by outside pressure and parajudicial
intervention, be it legislative
or policy change, as with the 1992
Douglas case on homosexuals in the
military. By and large, then, the military
has been reactionary on matters of
diversity. Moreover, improvements in
representation are not keeping pace with
the changing demographics of Canadian
society. That is, inroads on improving
the recruitment and representation of
women remain tepid, and the delta of
diversity in Canadian society relative
to representation in the CAF is actually
growing. As the 1989 CHRT, multiple lawsuits, and Justice Deschamp’s 2015
report suggest, the military leadership
had hitherto underestimated the extent
of the equality gap and the external
societal, political, and legal expectations
to remedy it.
As compared to the 1990s, the CAF
no longer has retention issues among
DGMs: women who opt to serve appear
to be no less dis/satisfied than men. And
for the first time in the history of the
Royal Military College of Canada, four of
the top five cadets are women. So, there
is some evidence to suggest that the CAF
is on a positive trajectory. Nor is there
robust comparative evidence that issue
of harassment and sexual assault are
any more pervasive in the CAF than in
other workplaces or sectors of Canadian
society. However, the CAF appears to
have underestimated the extent to which
Canadians have higher expectations of
civil servants in general, and those who
serve in uniform in particular.
Rather than lagging behind, the federal
government and the CAF – as the country’s
single largest institutional employer –
should model employment equity to
the rest of Canadian society as well as
our allies. But becoming an employer
of choice for all Canadians will require
more than the 10 recommendations
outlined in the Deschamps report.
First, past precedent of the CAF’s
handling of gender issues suggests that
those well-intentioned efforts are bound
to fizzle unless federal politicians of all
political stripes commit to holding the
CAF and it leadership’s feet to the fire.
Second, the CAF’s institutional culture
will prove difficult to change unless and
until there is an unwavering commitment
to improving the representation of
DGMs. The CAF habitually justifies
under representation by observing that
apparently “they don’t want to join.”
If that is, indeed, the case – we are not
necessarily convinced that “they” do
not want to join – then perhaps the
operative question to ask is: Why would
they not want to join? Finally, the CAF
will fundamentally have to reassess its
approach to civil-military relations.
Old sergeants like to say: “We’re here
to defend democracy, not to practice
it.” But Canadians have been clear: the
CAF’s unique mission notwithstanding,
they expect the CAF to reconcile the
defence of democracy with democracy’s
fundamental norms and values.
Dr. Stéfanie von Hlatky is an assistant
professor of political studies at Queen’s
University and the Director of the Queen’s
Centre for International and Defence
Policy (CIDP). Her new book, The
Future of US Extended Deterrence (coedited
with Andreas Wenger) analyzes
US security commitments to NATO
(Georgetown University Press, 2015).
Dr. Christian Leuprecht is Professor of
Political Science at the Royal Military
College of Canada and Senior Fellow at the
Macdonald Laurier Institute. He is crossappointed
to the Department of Political
Studies and the School of Policy Studies
at Queen’s University where he is also a
fellow of the Institute of Intergovernmental
Relations and the Queen’s Centre for
International and Defence Policy
