The Prelude to a Long History of Gender-Based Violence in the Canadian Armed Forces

Armed Forces are stereotypically represented as institutions ridden with issues of gender-based violence. Unfortunately for the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), they do not escape this common preconception. 

Before delving into more recent problems of gender-based violence in the Canadian military, let us provide some insights into women’s participation and integration in the Forces. 

Women have served in the military for a long time, although excluded from combat. But it was not before 1970 that the question of women’s integration in the Canadian military as equals to their male counterparts was raised. 1970 was the year the Royal Commission on the Status of Women released its report, which contained recommendations on women’s military service: the Commission recommended that the military allow married women and women with children to serve; give women the same initial length of engagement at enrollment as their male counterparts and the same provisions of service; and open all occupations (including combat) to women. 

In spite of multiple measures, including trials to study women’s operational effectiveness, the opening the military to married women and women with children, the expansion of the range of occupations (occupations that were outside of the line of power and that were subject to “Male Minimum Requirements”) in which women could join, it was only in 1989 that the Canadian Armed Forces removed all restrictions on women’s military service.

On February 20, 1989, after 4 years of hearings and cross-arguments, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) gave its verdict that concluded Brown v. The Canadian Armed Forces. At the heart of this case, which born from the merger of five complaints, was whether or not being male was “a bona fide occupational requirement” for operational effectiveness. The concept of “a bona fide occupational requirement” was a condition laid out in the Canadian Human Rights Act of 1977: an employer could determine that specific characteristics were necessary for the job to be done well and could discriminate against groups that did not present these characteristics. In the case of women in the military, the CAF argued that being a man was an occupational requirement, and that women, due to their sex, were liability to operational effectiveness. Allowing women in combat, the CAF argued, would present a risk to the security of servicemen and to the security of the nation.

Despite acknowledging that the CAF indeed believed that women represented such a risk, the CHRT found no evidence to substantiate women’s inherent inability to be good combatants. As such, it ordered the CAF open all its positions to women and reach “full integration” of women (also known as “gender integration”) in its ranks within 10 years, i.e., by February 1999.

The progress in the number of servicewomen in the CAF between 1989 and 1999 is very telling of the success of gender integration in itself. The year the CHRT issued its verdict, women represented 9.9% of the Canadian military. Ten years later, they represented 10.8%. According to an internal report by the Chief of Review Services – an internal CAF agency mandated to provide evaluations on specific topic upon the request of the Assistant Deputy Minister (Policy) – argued that this 0.9% increase was mainly due to the severe downsizing of the military occurring that same decade which led servicemen to leave the military at greater rates. 

Between 1989 and 1999, the CAF opened combat positions, and women made many strides: women finally entered battle schools and became combat officers; they were able to deploy abroad, notably in the first Gulf War, to Somalia and the Balkans. But gender integration as ordered by the CHRT had not succeeded. 

Throughout the decade, the CAF leadership had received criticism for how it facilitated integration. The Canadian Human Rights Commission had the impression that leaders were not taking the CHRT order seriously. The Minister’s Advisory Board on Gender Integration in the Canadian Forces repeated many of its recommendations – which were never implemented and was continuously curtailed and then shut by 1994. Gender integration responsibilities were diluted down the chain of command, with only one major-level desk officer responsible for it at the institutional level by 1994, and commanding officers having to carry the burden of integration without any guidance from the top leadership. The CAF had not devised a long-term plan for integration, and leaders have admitted that the CHRT order and its implementation had been put on the backburner. 

Servicewomen thought that their leaders were “saying the right thing,” but that they felt nothing was being done. All in all, servicewomen felt “alone.” 

The lack of constant and consistent effort, along with a “piecemeal” and uncoordinated process (according to the Chief of Review Services) gave room for gender-based violence to rise and to become normalized inside the Canadian military.

We will explore the manifestations of that gender-based violence tomorrow.