Naval Combat Forces experience the highest rate of female resignations in the Canadian Military. Add this newest fact to a lot of others: women drop out of all branches of the armed forces, women in the military file a lot of complaints, women are not the most eager to join the military, and more women are needed in the Canadian military in order to fulfill a 1989 human rights tribunal ruling insisting the full integration of women.
Art Hanger, defence critic for the Canadian Alliance, states that training standards have been lowered to a level that "compromises combat capability" in order to accommodate more women. Art Eggleton, the current Minister of Defence, maintains that while he is not filling a quota, standards have been lowered to support and embrace women entering the forces–a much more cost-conscious measure than expanding support services for existing female soldiers.
However, making the door wider is not going to make the house more habitable. Ask any bachelor: if a woman does not like her surroundings, she’ll leave. Society raises its daughters to be confident, affirmative, ambitious, intolerant of physical harm and violence from anyone, and to believe success is independent of physical ability. Today’s woman welcomes the idea of greater physical strength and using female physical differences to her advantage. She is equipped enough to give birth, which is a sustained long-term battle of mind and physical strength.
This strong and mentally tough attitude is exactly what should be found in a good soldier. An environment full of large men where physical ability rules, a hierarchical patriarchal society where institutionalized meanness and violence are genuinely believed to produce an excellent fighting soldier (who, surprisingly, is then expected to return to society a normal if not outstanding citizen) does not have great appeal to such a personality. Moreover, blind acceptance of all the above flies in the face of what these new females grew up to believe and thrive on. Men may bond over mistreatment, but women would rightly leave.
Unfortunately, neither Hanger nor Eggleton cares to address the clear psychological differences and needs as opposed to the physical ones. I don’t know where to find greater insult, in Hanger’s blatant disdain for doing anything to make the forces more accessible to women, or in Eggleton’s apparent need to hold a woman’s hand while she’s filling out her application.