Women unsuitable for frontline combat role

Lt Gen Tejinder Sahrawat (retd)
Former Director General, Defence Intelligence Agency

A simple letter from a gusty girl, Priya Jhingon, in 1990 to the then Chief of the Army Staff, Gen Sunith Francis Rodigues, asking to allow the women to join the Indian Army as officers in branches other than the Army Medical Corps accelerated the process of induction of women in the Army. 

Jhingon became the first lady cadet to join the Officers Training Academy at Chennai and passed out along with a batch of 25 other lady officers on March 6, 1993. 

Today, over 1,500 women officers are serving in 12 branches of the Army that also include the branches which operate in the combat zone. These include the Corps of Engineers and Air Defence Artillery. The Corps of Engineers carries out multifarious combat tasks such as laying and breaching of mine fields, laying of operational tracks in areas captured from the enemy during war, laying of mechanised heavy floating bridges on rivers and canals in the enemy territory for quick induction of armoured vehicles, artillery guns, etc. 

Similarly, women officers in the Air Defence Artillery, as part of combat tasks, handle radar control guns, air defence missile batteries and integrate enemy air threat intelligence on minute-to-minute basis for optimum employment of air defence systems. Therefore, the impression that women in the Army are not employed in combat zones is totally unfounded.

All over the world, women are not employed in those verticals of army which are designed to be employed for close combat also known as hand-to-hand fighting. 

In the Indian Army, the infantry and Special Forces come in this category with officers in combat roles. There are many good physical, psychological and situational reasons for not employing women in close combat roles. The infantry and Special Forces Operations, besides professional competence, demand a disproportionally high physical strength and prowess. These operations may often lead to bayonet charges with the enemy which then becomes a contest of brute physical strength. Obviously, a stronger built person has a greater advantage. 

Even in the sporting arena, sportswomen compete among themselves and do not compete against men in disciplines such as boxing, wrestling or even cricket and hockey. It is because women in terms of physical strength are not comparable to men. A research at the Center of Military Readiness in US Army shows that on average women soldiers are shorter and smaller then men with 40 to 50 per cent less upper body strength and 25 to 30 per cent lesser aerobic capacity. These are genetic factors over which women have no control. These factors work to their disadvantage in close combat in infantry and Special Forces. This will not only cause disproportionately high casualties among women in close combat but also lead to the failure of the mission in question. 

A person should be put on a task he/she is best suited for. In 2015, a study was carried by the US Marine Corps with 100 volunteers to evaluate the suitability of women for close combat operations. It observed that male squads demonstrated better performance than women intermixed squads in 93 of 134 parameters evaluted. The male squads were faster while completing tactical movements, specially in tasks involving operation of crew served weapons such as heavy machine guns and mortars. The male infantry squads, on the whole, had better accuracy in operating individual weapon systems used by infantry soliders such as carbines, automatic rifles and grenade launchers.

Unlike Western countries, India faces a brutal enemy on the western border which shamelessly disregards the Geneva Conventions. The infantry soldiers are required to regularly patrol the LoC in J & K. There have been instances of infantry patrols being ambushed and the soldiers’ bodies being mutilated and in some cases, even beheaded. The story of Capt Saurabh Kalia, who was captured along with his patrol while patrolling the LoC before the Kargil war, is a case in point. His body, when returned, bore marks of extreme torture with his genitals cut and eyes gouged out. 

A women soldier, if captured, will face multiple sexual assaults and all kinds of unimaginable brutality from  a savage enemy. Such a situation will not be acceptable, both to the Army and the nation. Therefore, employment of women soldiers in combat zone is not at all desirable in our context.

A study by the Australian Military has found that men in Special Forces are reluctant to take along women soldiers for special operations. Because then it becomes a  priority for them to save women soldiers from harm and thus, possibly, endangering the mission. While male soldiers can be programmed to kill, it is not easy to programme them not to protect women officers accompanying them. A highly professional army like the Israeli army has observed that behaviour of a male soldier on seeing a wounded women solider in close combat becomes instinctively protective, accompanied by uncontrollable aggression against the enemy. This has the potential to derange a well-planned operation being conducted by an infantry unit. The Israeli forces, despite having classified women as combat soldiers, do not allow women solider to take part in close-combat situations. The women are also barred from joining brigades that are deployed on the front during war. 

Women may claim that the Constitution allows them to choose the profession they desire, however, it is the responsibility of the government and the Army to assess the suitability of employment of women soldiers for suitable combat roles.

Women in the Indian Army are already being employed in combat roles in the combat zone. The Army is proud of the performance of its women officers in the combat roles assigned to them. However, in war, there are only winners and therefore in any army a person should be employed for the job he /she is best suited for.