Women in the present scenario are professional, bread-earners for their families and an independently thinking individual of the country even after only being responsible for many responsibilities of the life. The Indian government also has played great role in the women empowerment by taking an initiative to involve women in the Indian Navy. Soon the government will recruit women as fighter pilots. Indian Navy is all geared to welcome women on its rolls but has made it clear that there will be no combat positions yet. The move comes on the heels of the government announcing law week its decision to induct women as fighter pilots in the Indian Air Force.
The navy has forwarded the proposal to the Defence Ministry for induction of women as pilots for its fleet of maritime reconnaissance aircraft. The official announcement regarding the same will be made in upcoming few days. Defence Minister made it very cleared that decision of the navy to open its doors for women should not be confused with the recent order of the Delhi High Court.
As per the recent orders issued by Delhi High Court on September 4, 2015, "sexist bias and service bias" would not be allowed to block progress of women. The court, while granting their plea, said the "women are here to stay" and since they "work shoulder-to-shoulder" with their male counterparts, it would "frown upon any endeavour to restrain the progress of women".
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said, “Except where an aircraft is required to be stationed on the ship overnight, like aircraft carrier, rest of flying areas will be open to the women.” The Navy has also recently challenged the order issued by Delhi High Court which had lectured it over the issue of permanent commission for women in the force.
In the year 2008 the navy started recruiting women along with men in Short Service Commissionfor granting permanent commission. Till 2008 even the permanent commission for SSC was not an option for men.
Further he said, “There is no gender bias...It was equal to both men and women. In 2008, the navy granted SSC to be changed to permanent commission to women in three streams -- education, law and naval constructions. The other areas have some logistics and infrastructure problems as those are executive branches.”
He also added, "And therefore the HC order has 2-3 issues for which we are approaching the Supreme Court because we want to give almost equal status to women in all areas wherever possible, subject to training limitations and logistics and infrastructure capabilities. So we will be approaching the apex court because that judgement is based on the pre-assumption that there was a gender bias, which is not there.”
