Exercise during Operation REASSURANCE on HMCS Halifax
Photo Credit: Cpl Trudeau, CAF/DND
Esprit de Corps Magazine June 2020 // Volume 27 Issue 5
Let's Talk About Women in the Military – Column 15
By Military Woman
Question:
Do we still need special workplace considerations for military women?
Answer:
Laws have been in place in Canada for a long time to prevent employment discrimination based on biological sex. So, it's fair question to ask, do military women still need "special" considerations?
In the 1980s and '90s, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) was seen as a world leader in military gender integration for having opened up all previously closed non-traditional work roles to women. CAF initially applied all the same male salaries, benefits, research findings and resulting policies "equally" to the newly incoming women. This "gender-blind" integration strategy was often hailed as acknowledging equality of the sexes.
Unfortunately, there were unintended consequences to this "add women and stir" approach to gender integration. Particularly for operational settings, opportunities to identify and address biological sex differences, and their implications for work, work safety, and health outcomes, were not provided.
Since women only began to have full careers in operational military roles in significant numbers around 30 years ago, little was already known about how these types of workplaces might impact women's health. Medical conditions, such as work-related cancers, can take decades to manifest. This means service-related exposures to carcinogens, that could result in women specific cancers (breast, uterine or ovarian), may only now be getting identified as a risk; assuming such type of women's health issues are being tracked and researched at all.
Basic research about military specific workplace hazards has been completed for men but is still sadly lacking for women-both in terms of funding and prioritization. This begs the question of whether military women-specific topics should be viewed as "special" versus as standard and integral for all taxpayer funded military and veteran research.
One example of a biological sex difference relates to urination. When a fighter pilot has to "cross the pond" (ocean) in a jet, and refuel along the way mid-air, there is no gas station bathroom to quickly pop into. Pilots are instead issued a urinary relief device to confidently use without fear of a "liquid accident" amongst the complex electrical circuitry tightly surrounding their strapped-in bodies. Is being provided a urinary device that doesn't require a penis for its successful use, a "special" consideration, or an obvious basic necessity?
Furthermore, because women have a shorter urethra than men (the tube between the bladder and the outside of the body), woman are predisposed to stress incontinence. "Crying tears" down your leg after a sneeze, cough, and/or belly laugh, is a not an uncommon condition after one or more vaginal deliveries. Military women may notice the same leaking problems during their PT jumping jacks but resulting from repetitive lifting and carrying tasks such as sandbagging and rucksack marches, versus pregnancies. So, should stress incontinence be discussed in all medical exams and prevention/treatment physiotherapy programs offered as something "special", or as standard military practice?
Another biological sex difference relates to pregnancy. Pregnancy is a normal physiological condition-not an illness or injury. Pregnancy does, however, increase the risk levels for specific illnesses and injuries, including sudden incapacitation and death when compared to the non- pregnant state. Military leadership must always try to identify and mitigate risks to a soldier's health and wellbeing, while concurrently achieving operational mission success. To balance these sometimes-competing needs, especially for complex situations like pregnancy, requires specialized training, policies, and research.
Is the development of pregnancy related occupational workplace safety expertise a "special" consideration, or a legally and ethically mandated employer due diligence?
In the end, one can argue that NO – military women do not need "special" workplace considerations. However, what is needed is a paradigmatic shift away from the assumption that all soldiers are men or people that are interchangeable with men as their "biological equals". What military women do need is a willingness to acknowledge their differences from men, but only when those differences impact effective, efficient, and safe workplaces for all.
"It is not our differences that divide us.
It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences."
~ Audre Lorde
