Escaping Gender in the Military

 Captain Nichola Goddard was the first woman soldier to die during Canada’s engagement in Afghanistan. An artillery officer with the First Regiment, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, she died in May 2006 after a shrapnel from a Taliban rocket propelled grenade hit her. 

She posthumously received the Meritorious Service Medal, and her husband was the first widower to be awarded the Silver Cross. 

Across the country, she is remembered as “Canada’s Daughter.” A symbol of women’s participation in combat and the tragic loss that can ensue when serving in a conflict zone. 

“Canada’s Daughter.” A title Captain Goddard would have pushed back against, according to her parent. As many women in the Forces, Goddard tried her best to make herself one of the boys, to make her femininity disappear. 

In her biography of the late Captain, Sunray: The Death and Life of Nichola Goddard, Valerie Fortney relays testimonies from servicemembers who knew Goddard, and content of the letters Goddard sent to her husband. Some of these stories conveyed the difficulty of navigating femininity in the ranks.

Fortney writes how, after one social event, a private slapped Goddard’s butt, for which she verbally reprimanded him. She also told her husband how there were constant rumours about her having affairs with some of her fellow servicemen, and she would feel the need to reassure her husband of her faithfulness. 

Goddard was aware that being a woman was “a Catch-22: if you want to be one of the guys, you’d better keep up. But if you screw up, the boom will come down harder on a woman officer.” She also despised what she saw as preferential treatment: during one exercise, which required overnight camping outside, her comrades had set up a private area and unrolled her sleeping bag for her.

Being in the field in Afghanistan was not any easier. When she arrived in Kandahar, there had been 6 sexual assaults at the camp in the week preceding her arrival. The troops were aware, but no one told her. She wrote to her husband her frustration with the absence of knowledge, and that she had walked 300m to and from the showers alone at night. She wrote that, “at least [she] had [her] pistol,” but in subsequent letters she expressed that her pistol did not feel sufficient to protect her. She had to “work out an escort at night.” Nobody knew who the perpetrators were, so the threat could have come from her comrades, Afghan soldiers, or Afghan civilians living in the camp. 

But Goddard’s experience with harassment and fears of sexual assault was unique in that she was well-liked and respected among her peers. She was able to make herself one of the boys, although she had to deal with reminders of her gender identity. 

In Sunray, Fortney interviewed other women in Goddard’s unit, who did experience worse. Lisa Haveman, also an officer, recalled that when she first arrived in Shilo, a year after Goddard did, the infantry company sergeant major would not speak to her. She said she had a lot of warrant officers bully her, leading her to wonder if it was because she was a new officer or because she was a woman. 

Her status as a woman was necessarily a factor. But the interesting question is why Nichola Goddard did not face such a pushback. Was it because she was a very well performing officer? Was it her efforts to make herself one of the boys, her conscious efforts not to make femininity a salient part of her identity? 

All in all, Captain Goddard’s experience with the military resembles that of other women in combat roles: however competent a woman may be, their gender will be an element that can cause violence, most its least to most extreme form. 

So, when remembering her, we need to acknowledge this part of military life.