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Breaching barriers: Navy to deploy more women on warships
The count of women serving aboard warships has gone up from just four earlier this year to 28 as of December as a result of the navy sharpening its focus on the plan, said one of the officials cited above.
The Indian Navy is going ahead with a plan to give women officers more opportunities to serve aboard warships alongside their male counterparts, with several women already assigned to front-line ships operating in the broad expanse of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), navy officials familiar with the matter said on Friday.
The count of women serving aboard warships has gone up from just four earlier this year to 28 as of December as a result of the navy sharpening its focus on the plan, said one of the officials cited above.
The navy deployed four women officers on warships in early 2021 after a hiatus of almost 25 years, opening more roles to them and crushing gender barriers that limited opportunity.
“The number of women on warship duties is steadily increasing. We are looking at deploying two to three women officers on every warship. Currently, 28 women are serving aboard around 15 warships,” said a second senior officer. The women are serving as pilots, observers, logistics officers and doctors on warships.
Excluding the medical wing, in which women have served for decades, the navy accounted for more than 700 women officers who formed 6.5% of its overall officer cadre (as of March 2021).
Submarines, however, are still off limits to women.
In early 2021, India’s only aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya and fleet tanker INS Shakti became the navy’s first warships to be assigned women crewmembers (two each) since the late 1990s. In a short-lived experiment, women from the navy’s logistics and medical branches were deployed on fleet tanker INS Jyoti in 1997.
Navy chief Admiral R Hari Kumar on Friday said the navy was taking initiatives to give women more opportunities in consonance with the government’s objective to empower them.
“We have taken measures towards providing additional opportunities for women officers. They have been appointed on board almost all major warships. Induction of women officers into the information technology branch will commence in June 2022,” Kumar said at his annual press briefing on the eve of Navy Day.
“The women who join the navy are of very high calibre and they have been performing on par with their male counterparts. Sometimes even better,” the navy chief said.
He said the modalities for downstream training of women cadets at the National Defence Academy (NDA) were being worked out, and the navy was fully prepared to induct women across a spectrum of roles and responsibilities.
A third of the over 500,000 candidates who took the NDA examination last month for entry into the premier joint services training institution near Pune were women.
It was their maiden attempt at cracking the entrance exam conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) on November 14, after the Supreme Court opened the doors of the academy to women in a landmark order in October.
The apex court’s order making women eligible to join NDA -- formally inaugurated 66 years ago and has thus far been a male preserve -- came almost three decades after they were first allowed to serve in select branches of the army, air force and navy as short-service commission (SSC) officers. Women in the military are now eligible for permanent commission.
The headcount of women in the military has increased almost threefold over the last six years, with more avenues being opened to them at a steady pace. As of February 2021, 9,118 women were serving in the three services.
One of the turning points for women came in 2015 when the Indian Air Force decided to induct them into the fighter stream. But tanks and combat positions in infantry are still no-go zones for women.
