NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday blasted the Army ’s dogged resistance to provide permanent commission to women officers and called for “true equality in Army”.The Army, through senior advocate R Balasubramanian, gave many grounds to deny permanent commission to women officers. Among them were that women had to deal with pregnancy, motherhood and obligation towards children and family which made them unsuitable for leading the life of a soldier; lack of physical capability to engage in combat and inherent physiological differences between men and women; all-male environment in a unit would require ‘moderate behaviour’ in presence of women officers and the difficulty they would face in areas where soldiers lived with ‘minimal facility for habitat and hygiene’.A bench of Justices D Y Chandrachud and Ajay Rastogi trashed the reasons and said these were “based on sex stereotypes premised on assumptions about socially ascribed roles of gender which discriminates against women”.“Underlying the statement that it is a ‘greater challenge’ for women officers to meet the hazards of service ‘owing to their prolonged absence during pregnancy, motherhood and domestic obligations towards children and family’ is a strong stereotype which assumes that domestic obligations rest solely on women. Reliance on the ‘inherent physiological differences between men and women’ rests in a deeply entrenched stereotypical and constitutionally flawed notion that women are the ‘weaker’ sex and may not undertake tasks ‘too arduous’ for them,” the SC said.Responding to Balasubramanian’s argument that it would be inadvisable to post women officers in conflict zones which had minimal facilities for habitat and hygiene, counsel for women officers, Meenakshi Lekhi and Aishwarya Bhati , placed on record that 30% of the total 1,653 women officers were, in fact, deputed to conflict areas.Writing the judgment, Chandrachud said: “These assertions... only go to emphasise the need for change in mindsets to bring about true equality in the Army. If society holds strong beliefs about gender roles — that men are socially dominant, physically powerful and breadwinners of the family and that women are weak, physically submissive, and primarily caretakers confined to a domestic atmosphere — it is unlikely that there would be a change in mindsets.”