Gandhiji encouraged the active participation of women in the nationalist campaign but conferred on them the image of traditional womanhood. The ideological framework draws a parallel structure in the Defence forces where women are encouraged into the central systems of the nation-state but are assigned a peripheral role in the mainstream activity. The woman has a virtual, marginalized centre under the protective guidance of the patriarchy. Inequality generates itself through socio-political attitudes and cultural institutions. In the nationalist discourse, the attribution of motherhood to the nation serves to construct the reproductive role of woman. Employment opportunities in the defence sector in India are a clear indicator of the sexual discrimination between men and women. The depiction of women in the armed forces of the nation is a reflection of the position women hold in Indian Society. The military system of the nation-state is an authentic platform to articulate the Indian woman’s identity. Discrimination of women in the forces is functionally defined by socio-cultural attitudes. In the exclusion of women from specific spheres such as combat unlike the American counterparts, the male construct evades being challenged. In contemporary politics too, the presence of few women MPs helps the male to marginalize women.
The Indian Defence Review article “Women in the Armed Forces: misconceptions and facts”(Vol 25.1 Jan-Mar 2010) states that the induction of women can be “disastrous” to the nation. The article further contains a reference to the idea that granting SSC to women has “achieved nothing except increase the load on maternity wards of military hospitals.” This implication of the reproductive role has denied access to an unbiased realization of women’s potential and prowess. Women are not allowed to transgress this male ideological construct. The dismissal of a woman officer after her charges of sexual harassment by male superior officers and the suicide of another female officer is an instance of how resistance is contained within the ideology of power. The question remains if it is the army that is still to cope with women as officers or the male ideological constructs. Amidst a lot of activists’ protests a male official withdrew his statement of not ‘needing’ female officers for the system. The construction of a woman’s identity is essentially a male construct and thereby a cultural construct.
Are reservation bills, preferential verdict all couched reassurances of a culturally instituted ideology that also practices combat exclusions? Perhaps the couched ideology gains visibility in the Indian navy tradition where women experience the virtual ‘centre’ as warships are named in feminine names. Further it is a woman who by tradition inaugurates the naming and commissioning of an Indian warship. Every woman who embarks an Indian naval warship is saluted but no woman is allowed on board a warship except on occasions like Families’ Day when identity as the spouse of a male officer permits her presence.
The nationalist concept of motherland as opposed to the fatherland of Europe has only served to construct the reproductive role of woman. Woman’s intellectual freedom and potential still remains chained to the male dominated discourse. Education is fundamentally perceived as an entry into advanced sectors of social and political life. But the educated woman still carries the ideological burden of the woman of the past. A woman‘s world is still determined by a patriarchal authoritative society. Even within the nationalist discourse, the woman holds a peripheral identity. Do women who defy male constructs and enter certain spheres pose a threat to man?
Will the male gaze continue to prevail on less rewarding insights even if women are intellectually stimulating equals. Nehru’s observation, “You can tell the condition of a nation by looking at the status of its women” reminds us further that the defence system as a mirror image and microcosm of the nation-state needs to examine the ideological framework that decides preferential treatment. Are women denied autonomous access and equal opportunities because they are born unequal or culturally constructed unequal?
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