WHEN PRESIDENT McAleese met the Defence Forces last week to mark the progress made by female members since their induction into our armed services 30 years ago, she rightly congratulated all concerned. The role they have forged does indeed, as the President said, “mark a watershed in the history of the Defence Forces and a fundamental shift in the culture and values of this country”.
In her role as President and as their Commander-in-Chief, she went on: “With the recruitment of women to the Army, Navy and Air Corps, an important step was taken towards the realisation of a culture of equal opportunities and a turning away from the cynical, sexist culture of waste, exclusion and discrimination. The first female recruits were pioneering ambassadors for all those women who seek to make the fullest contribution to their lives, their communities and their country. We see today how the inclusion of women has shaped an organisation which enjoys great praise and acclaim both at home and abroad, a force in which we take justifiable pride.”
The history of our Defence Forces is markedly different to many others in modern Europe. Our Army grew out of the Irish Volunteers, a revolutionary movement founded 98 years ago whose aim was to secure independence from an imperial neighbour and help forge the nation state denied to previous generations. Since then, however, few have argued with convincing plausibility that the Defence Forces, into which the Volunteers metamorphosed after independence and the trauma of the Civil War, could successfully defend, however well-equipped, however well-motivated, the national territory against a determined external aggressor, should one ever emerge. While a commendable role was played in more recent years defending the State from internal usurpers, the Defence Forces’ real metier has been found through United Nations peacekeeping and, more recently, European peacekeeping initiatives backed by the UN.
The idea that women, and the particular qualities they bring to peacekeeping and community level conciliation, would not be available to the Defence Forces does not stand up to modern scrutiny. As the President told servicewomen in Áras an Uachtaráin last week, the 565 female members of the Defence Forces, from cadets to lieutenant colonel, “inspire us to keep working towards the goal of a Republic which cherishes the abilities and talents of our entire population, regardless of gender, culture, ethnicity, sexual orientation or disability”.