Four years ago the federal auditor general concluded that the Canadian military had no strategy to meet its goal of having women make up 25 per cent of its ranks.

Since then, the Canadian Armed Forces have launched targeted recruiting campaigns and relaxed its rules to allow ponytails and not require heels and nylons for women in uniform. Not exactly big moves, but not bad ones either.

But now we discover that the forces have also suggested that updating the uniform to include shorter skirts and calling military medals “bling” will attract more women to the military.

The bling and short skirts — along with ads that highlight the social aspects of life in the ranks and social media posts such as “my war paint is camouflage” — are among the proposals in strategy documents from 2017, 2018 and 2019, obtained by the Ottawa Citizen through freedom of information laws.

It’s beyond ridiculous.

The notion that women would be more attracted to a career in the military if only the uniform was somehow more attractive shows, perhaps better than anything else, how little progress we’ve made in eliminating sexism from the forces.

How has the military not learned more from all the court cases, class action lawsuits, human rights claims and reports detailing the sexism, bullying, discrimination, harassment and abuse that women in the Canadian forces have faced for so long?

Truly addressing those concerns would do far more to boost the military’s recruitment efforts than lifting skirt hems.

For three decades the Canadian military has claimed that it’s an equal opportunity employer. Every job, it says, is as open to women as men.

Yet its recruiting difficulties suggest many women don’t believe that. And, really, why should they?

Just last year the federal government agreed to pay $900 million to settle multiple class-action lawsuits over gender discrimination, sexual harassment and sexual assault in the military.

And lest anyone dismiss that as an exercise in mopping up historical problems that were solved long ago, there’s the military’s own statement in 2019.

“Sexual misconduct continues to be a destructive problem within the Canadian Armed Forces, and we have made rather limited progress in eliminating it over the past two-and-a-half-years,” the then vice-chief of defence staff said.

That admission came with the release of a Statistics Canada survey of 36,000 members, which found 70 per cent of them had witnessed or experienced sexualized or discriminatory behaviour in 2018. The only glimmer of hope is that the figure was down from the 80 per cent who reported such problems in 2016.

The military’s efforts to combat sexual misconduct is also not helped by how few women are in top leadership roles, particularly at the sharp end of the forces. Indeed, about half the women are concentrated in a few occupations including administrative support, medical technicians, nursing and cooks.

According to the documents examined by the Citizen, even the Canadian forces’ “Tiger Team,” which was set up to look at the issue of female recruitment, states that “systemic barriers remain in place, making the military a less than desirable choice for the majority of young Canadian women.”

In 2016 Gen. Jonathan Vance, the chief of defence staff, announced that the forces would boost the participation of women, then 15 per cent, to 25 per cent by 2026.

Four years later he’s way off that mark. Currently just 15.9 per cent of service members are women. And with the level of thinking demonstrated in these recruitment documents there’s no reason to think the target will ever be reached.

That’s a problem — and not just for women.

The Canadian Armed Forces have struggled for years to attract and retain the thousands of people needed for a fully staffed service. The military is short of people. So it can’t afford to allow itself to be all but written off by half the population.

If the military is serious about wanting to dramatically raise the number of women in uniform, it must do more to prove it really is turning the corner on sexism.

It has made some improvements to family support. But it also routinely comes under fire for failing to properly deliver those services, along with sufficient mental health services and timely access to veterans benefits for women and men alike. Fixing those problems certainly couldn’t hurt recruitment efforts.

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Vance has admitted that the number of women in uniform is “not going up as fast as I thought it might.” But he says he remains committed.

“I believe you can get to 25 per cent of women in the Armed Forces,” he said last year.

That may well be, but it sure won’t be through advertising short skirts and bling. The sooner the military realizes that the better.