Thank you, Madam Chair.
In order to understand the problem of misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces, the CAF, we have to understand the prevailing culture in the CAF. As my colleague Mr. Spengemann has done, I will deal with the subject of the culture in the CAF.
As Dr. Maya Eichler points out:
…even in an allegedly gender-neutral military, military culture continues to reproduce warrior masculinity as the ideal if there is not a concerted effort to change the culture. While the 1989 tribunal ruling led to the removal of legal barriers that discriminated against women, the military's gendered culture was largely left intact. This became evident in the continued challenges to women's full integration into the CAF.
This is a very important point, because only by observing the trauma caused in the past will we be able to avoid trauma in the future.
Soldiering remained a gender-specific, male experience. As research based on interviews with female soldiers reveals repeatedly, women in the military face a catch‑22: being perceived as too masculine or too feminine. In order to be recognized ‘real’ soldiers, women are encouraged to perform masculinity while maintaining their femininity. Common themes reported are: having always to prove themselves, being seen as less capable, being singled out, being treated like outsiders, being demeaned, sexually harassed, asked to perform feminized tasks, and more.
Once again, we can see that this is a long-standing culture. As a government, this is what we must be tackling.
These themes illustrate how unequal gender norms persisted, despite an official policy of employment equity and gender neutrality (Taber 2009). It has remained up to individual women to find “strategies to successfully negotiate their participation and identity or leave the military”.
As a result, women’s representation in the CAF is disproportionately low (standing at approximately 15%), and uneven across the organization. Women are sill concentrated in occupations stereotypically associated with femininity—medical, dental, and clerical work—and underrepresented among the senior leadership.
We must give serious consideration to these factors in our report and we must allow the government to give a response. Women’s limited integration is particularly evident when it comes to combat roles. More than 25 years after the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decision, combat roles remain almost exclusively staffed by men and closely tied to a masculinized warrior image. In 2016, only 2.5% of the combat personnel in the regular force, and 5.5% in the reserve, were female.
Media coverage of Canada's war in Afghanistan illustrated the ways in which gender-neutrality became a key device for understanding the place of women within the Canadian Armed Forces. Captain Nichola Goddard’s death in 2006—the first death of a female Canadian soldier in combat—led to a spike in media reporting devoted to female soldiers deployed to Afghanistan. Military spokespeople and CAF members who were interviewed continued to assert that gender played no role in the military.
For example, an article on Captain Goddard's death in the Toronto Star quoted a Department of National Defence (DND) spokesman as saying that the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence regard a soldier as a soldier. No emphasis is given as to gender. The notion of gender neutrality was an explicit strategy of DND in managing public relations around the death of Captain Goddard.
An internal email exchange released under Access to Information shows that there was a real effort to downplay the gender of Captain Goddard. One of the emails states that everyone in theatre is a soldier.
Dozens of media requests to interview or profile women in combat roles were declined. To try to remove attention and emotion from the gender issue, the Department of National Defence was concerned about a female combat soldier's death and the public reaction it might trigger. They therefore chose a gender-neutral approach in response. As Claire Turenne Sjolander and Kathryn Trevenen point out, it seems possible that Captain Goddard's own assertion of her gender-neutrality was not a simple affirmation of gender integration, as the military and press assert, but rather, a common and tactically smart response to the high cost of being a woman in a highly masculinized environment. This message was reinforced by public statements from female soldiers. Goddard herself did not want to be singled out for being a woman. She made a concerted effort to fit in with her male colleagues. Similar statements were made by other women who were interviewed by the media. For example, Major Eleanor Taylor, Canada's first female infantry commander in combat, made it plain that she did not want attention for being a woman when male company commanders were doing similar jobs. “I don't really consider it relevant [that I am a woman]," she said. “The fewer people in my organization think about it, the better.”
Gender neutrality places the onus of change on female soldiers. Gender neutrality means that women are expected to fit into the norm of military masculinity; therefore, gender neutrality does not drive military culture towards change, it allows it to remain unchanged. Indeed, there is research that shows the persistence of a gendered military culture despite the official posture of gender neutrality. Donna Winslow and Jason Dunn have argued that the combat arms in particular “emphasize the values and attitudes of the traditionally male-oriented military organization and, in particular, masculine models of the warrior, thus resisting female integration”. For example, the prevalence of misogynist and homophobic attitudes among male combat personnel was documented in a 2005 study conducted by the CAF.
Even as legal barriers were removed, an ideal of soldiering centered on the male warrior undermined women's social integration into the military, especially in combat roles.
Once again, we must really consider this as a factor in our response, and we must allow the government to provide a response so that the matter can be settled.
As Taber argues, “The employment equity policies of the Canadian military do not counteract the embedded ideology of the warrior narrative.” That gender neutrality was indeed not sufficient to change a deeply gendered military culture was confirmed by the Deschamps Report.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.