Australia is to lift all gender-based restrictions on military combat positions, paving the way for female soldiers serving along-side their male colleagues on the frontlines, in roles previous denied to them, including Special Forces units, infantry and certain artillery roles.
The propsed changes will put Australia into a small group of conventional state militaries that have ensured equality for female soldiers - namely, Canada, Israel and New Zealand.
Announcing the proposed changes, Stephen Smith, Australia's Defence Minister, said,
“We have an Australian Army that’s been going for 110 years, an Australian Navy that’s been going formally for 100 years, and an Australian Air Force that’s been going for 90 years, and last night, we resolved to remove the final restrictions on the capacity of women to serve in front-line combat roles,”
“In the future, your role in the defense force will be determined on your ability, not on the basis of your sex.”
The uplifting of restrictions was firmly endorsed by the country's first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and have been welcomed widely the world over.
The Financial Times, in its editorial on Thursday, congratulated Australia on removing one of "the last bastions of formal gender discrimination in most developed countries" and dealing a "righteous blow to what has long been a largely emotional argument."
Critics have attacked the move as one that would undermine the military capability of Australia's army, arguing that it would endorse or even perpetuate a lack of respect for women, by men, within Australian society.
Worldwide reports of high levels of sexual abuse and rape of female soldiers by their male colleagues within conventional state militaries however, undermine this notion that combat restrictions in some way protect women or indeed earns them respect in the eyes of their male counterparts.
See here for a report in Time magazine on rape of female soldiers within the US army.
Arguably a gender-neutral meritocratic military is precisely what fosters genuine respect.
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