An equal right to fight?

Press, 3 September 1986, Page 16

An equal right to fight?

Should women in the Armed Services have equal opportunity with men to take part in any fighting? The Ministry of Defence, drawing on a long tradition, opposes the suggestion that women should serve in combat roles. The Prime Minister, speaking to the women’s council of the Labour Party, has said he believes it is an untenable argument for the Ministry not to be prepared to send women into combat. Equal opportunities, it seems, should include the right to be killed or wounded. The difference of opinion reflects a similar difference in the attitudes of the community. The recent poll conducted for the Defence Committee of Inquiry found New Zealanders almost equally divided on the question. Forty-eight per cent thought women should take part in all military activities, including combat. Forty-five per cent thought they should be involved in everything except combat. Only 4 per cent did not want women to serve in the Armed Forces. Males, and younger people, were rather more in favour of women joining in the fighting than were women, and older people. History offers plenty of examples to support the Prime Minister’s case for equal opportunities. The British, who resisted the Roman invasion 2000 years ago, included among their leaders Queen Boadicea who is supposed to have been a skilled leader of war chariots. At least, that is how modern Britain chooses to display her in a striking statue on the bank of the Thames. Come forward to modern times and when Uganda’s Idi Amin,

of 'unlamented memory, set up a “mechanised suicide brigade” as a personal bodyguard, he staffed it with women. Perhaps it is worth recalling, though, that Boadicea lost her war; and there is no evidence that Amin’s women ever fought for him. In a real crisis, when a society is facing subjugation or annihilation, women have always fought alongside men. There were women in the Maori ranks at Gate Pa, just as there were women in the French Resistance movement and among the fighters in Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto. If, in the last resort, women are going to join the fighting anyway, perhaps it is only fair that they should be given the training and skills to make them effective.

In this century war has returned to its earlier barbarisms, so that all citizens of an enemy country have sometimes been regarded as fair targets. Those targets can hardly be denied the right to shoot back. Yet there is still something unwholesome about the idea of training women to kill. Many men would still hesitate, perhaps for a fraction too long, if they saw their enemy opposite was a woman in uniform.

Old instincts and old decencies die hard. Common sense suggests that a country as small and isolated as New Zealand is now should be ready to enlist all its citizens in its own defence. But it will still take a generation or two for many people to feel comfortable with the thought that female fingers may be on the nation’s triggers.