I don't know what DND was thinking.
There was the tribunal. The human rights commission tribunal had determined...just months before I was aggressively recruited into the trade that I went into, although I wanted navy.
The tribunal said that, yes, it was open to all women—all trades, combat trades. I chose the navy, and I chose to be in a combat naval trade. As I mentioned in my testimony, I was the only woman, the only female in that group to go through the training. My ship was the first mixed-gender warship to be deployed on—I'm blanking on that acronym—NATO exercises.
You really have to understand that the navy in particular is highly.... Particularly at that time, there was no way they were.... They accepted women going to sea on supply ships in supportive roles, but definitely not as a combat sailor.
There are a lot of superstitions, hundreds of years of superstitions that come into the navy, and being out at sea, you're in international waters. In fact, we know that recently, sadly, someone did fall off a ship, and no one knew until it was too late. It does happen, but yes, 100 per cent, being a women was....