Article content continued

If the military is to protect Canadians, it must be able to deploy the soldiers best suited for the assignment, not those with the best babysitting networks

The Tiger Team is said to have proposed an advertisement showing a female soldier removing her helmet at day’s end, while “male and female co-workers gather and agree to having a campfire at a sandy beach,” later roasting marshmallows and relaxing together.

The Tiger Team might be right that this sort of video would entice more women to join up — though they may be overestimating the female appetite for after-work gatherings that resemble summer camp singalongs — but is this really what recruits would find once they became members of the military?

If so, then maybe this helps explain why Canadians pay so little attention to their Armed Forces. (It’s hard to get worked up about defence spending and replacement of equipment if you think your soldiers are mostly just holding chummy cookouts.) If not, then how long will these recruits stick around after they realize they have been sold a bill of goods by the Tiger Team’s commercials?

Photo by Cpl. Peter Ford, Tactics School, Combat Training Centre (CTC) Gagetown

Women currently make up 15.9 per cent of the Canadian Armed Forces. That percentage may not be as great as the percentage of Canadian women out there who would want and excel at a military career.

But then again, maybe it is. As of 2014, women made up approximately 14 per cent of the active duty army in the United States as well, and as of 2013, women were matriculating into the West Point military academy at a rate of 16 per cent to 17 per cent.

It is possible that North Americans self-sort by gender into military positions at about this rate, which would make the Canadian military’s goal of having a quarter of its force be female one that will take changing what it means to serve in order to achieve.