Last week I participated in a Department of Defense sponsored Bloggers roundtable. The occasion was the announcement of the first graduating class of the female Officer Candidate Course (OCS) for the Afghan Army. There were 29 graduates of the 20 week course and they will join the nearly 300 women already serving in the Afghan Army. The women were trained by a mix of coalition and Afghanistan Army personnel. According to one report, Afghan Major Fahmima, one of the female OCS instructors stated, “I hope that these girls who have graduated from here do not forget their lessons and show for the people that Afghan girls can serve in the military. Participating in the roundtable were US Army Captain Janis Lullen and US Army First Sergeant Kristin Norton. Both served as advisors to the program.
According to Captain Lullen, the training the women received was identical to the training for male OCS students, to include weapons training. Initially the women will be assigned to the Ministry of Defense and will be working side by side with the men. When asked if the women would be placed in charge of troops, Captain Lullen said, “As far as we’ve been told they will start in finance and logistics…What they do go from there we haven’t been told.” When asked how the Afghan public viewed the program, First Sergeant Norton replied, “So far with the Afghanistan Army that we have worked with, it has been very accepted, but we can’t gauge how it’s going to be accepted by everybody.”
According to Norton, the biggest challenge was getting the woman physically fit. “Their bodies weren’t used to the physical activities that we pushed them through. But through 20 weeks, it was definitely a transformation.” The fitness training was a large part but Norton added, they also worked on “getting them to understand the concept of time management, also…the concept of…taking ownership…if you’re going to be the class leader, lead the class…And it was just those types of things that we molded the students into realizing…You are no longer just a civilian. You’re in the military now. And the military has a structure that we have to follow.”
September has been a significant month for Afghan women. In addition to the advances in the military, women are making strides to play a larger role in the Afghan government. According to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), there were 2,600 candidates running for office in the recent election 406 were women. “This figure is 25% higher than in the parliamentary elections five years ago. In Afghanistan’s constitution, it is required that at least one-quarter of the seats in the Wolesi Jirga be held by women. To put this in perspective, consider that the proportion of seats held by women in the U.S. Congress is only 17 percent, more than 100 years after the emergence of the women’s movement.”
Making this all the more remarkable for me is the fact women in the US running for office just have to put up with having their character attacked, while in Afghanistan candidates running for office had to endure campaigning in an environment where threats of violence were ever present. CSIS reported that most of the candidates killed during the campaigning were female and 5 volunteers for a female candidate were killed by the Taliban. Additionally, “Female citizens in many communities, the primary supporters of female candidates, are strongly discouraged from going out to vote at all. Threats are often made against them, further limiting their ability or willingness to vote.”
As I contemplate the efforts of these pioneering women several thoughts come to mind. Probably one of the most important books I have ever read was Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. In the introduction they state: “In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this century, the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world.”
The book points out that gender equality is a worldwide phenomenon and not confined to the Middle East, Asia or Africa; pointing out that in “America, millions of women and girls face beatings or other violence from their husbands or boyfriends, and more than one in six undergoes rape or attempted rape at some point in life.” On a positive note the book gives examples of how helping women can be a successful strategy for fighting poverty and stimulating economic growth. Using East Asia as an example they state that the region “took young women who previously had contributed negligibly to gross national product (GNP) and injected them into the formal economy, hugely increasing the labor force.” This is being called the “girl effect”.
Martin Luther King said: “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality”.
Getting back to the Afghan Army’s 29 newest officers, I was much encouraged reading quotes from the young women stating many were encouraged to join the military by male family members. My concern is what happens next. I know only too well of what I speak.
I was the test case for the Navy in what was then considered an “operational” or “combat” related job in the 1970’s, 20 years before laws changed and it became a common occurrence. It was ultimately a happy ending but my first two and a half years were extremely challenging. If it were not for the love and support of my family, mentoring by Navy Chiefs in my unit and the support of many of the other men in my organization I would not have been able to endure the hostility I faced on a daily basis.
When I asked Captain Lullen if the Afghan women would be mentored, she replied: “Everybody throughout the Afghan National Army does have a mentor…So they aren’t being thrown to the wolves.”
I’ll conclude by saying I don’t believe that just because these women are serving in a country where women have not in large numbers been allowed to pursue non traditional jobs means they are doomed to failure and a lack of acceptance. I filled in as Acting Military Attaché in a Middle Eastern Country, a position that had never been held by an American woman. Initially the US Embassy in the region turned me down saying military men in that part of the world would never deal with a woman. Turned out they were wrong. In all of my time in the military I was never treated with more respect and professional courtesy. Not once did someone question my credentials, professional expertise or say I didn’t belong; things that were a frequent occurrence for me in the US military. The attitude of military men in the Middle East was if I was given the job then obviously the folks who assigned me believed I was qualified. That was good enough for them.
I’m not beating up on the US military, as mentioned; my story had a happy ending. Everyone faces challenges in the work place. It’s just I had to endure more career bumps in the road than many of my male counterparts first because I was a test case and second because some and I emphasize “some” co-workers saw not a fellow military person but a female they believed to be an unqualified “social experiment” that was being forced on them. Fortunately for me those men were in the minority and the military leadership made it known that attitude was not acceptable. As always my views are my own. Think I’ll head out for a bike ride.
