L'organizzazione Men can stop rape ha cominciato una collaborazione con Department of Defence per combattere la violenza sessuale nei ranghi militari.

La Campagna è intitolata Our Strengh is for defending: preventing sexual assault is part of our duty. Un'iniziativa lodevole della quale sarebbe auspicabile si parlasse di più, se non altro perchè potrebbe essere presa a modello presso gli eserciti di altre nazioni.

In support of Sexual Assault Awareness Month and as part of their recent efforts to create a “culture of prevention” to reduce sexual violence, this week the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO) is launching a social marketing campaign it developed with internationally recognized expert, Men Can Stop Rape, Inc. (MCSR). 

Patrick McGann, MCSR’s Project Director for the development of the DoD campaign adds, “While the realization of a culture of sexual assault prevention is still off in the distance for the military and for us all, we take hope in what the Department of Defense and all of us are doing starting in April’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month and throughout the year to prevent sexual assault.”

http://www.mencanstoprape.org/info-url2699/info-url_show.htm?doc_id=872912

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=53377

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Ovviamente le donne musulmane possono e devono far parte dell'esercito danese. Indossando la stessa identica divisa delle loro colleghe. Un pò di sano buon senso dalla Danimarca.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to show the same flexibility in this area for people employed by the armed forces or in military service as is the case for their civilian colleagues,’ Gade stated in his written response.

http://www.cphpost.dk/news/national/88-national/46425-minister-no-headscarves-in-military.html

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“I did everything there,” Ms. Alfaro, 25, said of her time in Iraq. “I gunned. I drove. I ran as a truck commander. And underneath it all, I was a medic.”

Before 2001, America’s military women had rarely seen ground combat. Their jobs kept them mostly away from enemy lines, as military policy dictates.

But the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, often fought in marketplaces and alleyways, have changed that. In both countries, women have repeatedly proved their mettle in combat. The number of high-ranking women and women who command all-male units has climbed considerably along with their status in the military.

Women are barred from joining combat branches like the infantry, armor, Special Forces and most field artillery units and from doing support jobs while living with those smaller units. Women can lead some male troops into combat as officers, but they cannot serve with them in battle.

In gradually admitting women to combat, the United States will be catching up to the rest of the world. More than a dozen countries allow women in some or all ground combat occupations. Among those pushing boundaries most aggressively is Canada, which has recruited women for the infantry and sent them to Afghanistan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/us/16women.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1250521239-OaVNBXVbuvNQwWYC6ywf4Q

 

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Si tratta della prima donna ad occupare tale posizione in assoluto, ho però voluto nel titolo sottolieneare che si tratta di una donna afroamericana.

King's elevation marks another barrier broken in a still male-dominated service of 550,000 soldiers, of which only about 14 percent are female.

There were few women training alongside men when she first entered the military in 1980, just out of high school. Several years later, she was chosen to train as a drill sergeant.

King rose to become the first female first sergeant named to oversee the heart and soul of Army warfighters: the headquarters company of the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, N.C., where she was responsible for 500 paratroopers, 22 sergeant majors, 22 colonels and three general officers. She's served in South Korea and Europe and held jobs at NATO and the Pentagon.

While opportunities for women have increased over the past two decades, they are still excluded from assignments where soldiers engage in direct combat, such as infantry and tank units.

 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090918/ap_on_re_us/us_drill_sergeant_commandant

But Sergeant Major King’s ascension is also a reminder of the limits of gender integration in the military. Just 8 percent of the active-duty Army’s highest-ranking enlisted soldiers — sergeants major and command sergeants major — are women, though more than 13 percent of Army personnel are female.

In particular, the Army has struggled to recruit women as drill sergeants, citing pregnancy, long hours and the prohibition against women serving in frontline combat positions as reasons. Sergeant Major King said one of her priorities would be to recruit more women into her school.

But she pushes back at the notion that she has risen because she is a woman. “When I look in the mirror, I don’t see a female,” Sergeant Major King said. “I see a soldier.”

 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/us/22sergeant.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=us

 

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Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo, who commands US forces in the northern sector of Iraq, issued a general order last month in which he stated that getting someone pregnant or becoming pregnant as a way to get out of a deployment could be punishable under the military court system, the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, to include court-martial.

But after an angry response from women’s rights groups and others, Cucolo on Tuesday appeared to retreat from that stance. While he retains the authority to court-martial a soldier under those circumstances, he said, the punishment would be unlikely to go that far.

"I do not ever see myself putting a soldier in jail for this," Cucolo said in a conference call with reporters. He noted that he'd had four cases of pregnancy in a war zone so far, and in each case the soldier received a letter of reprimand and nothing more.

Four Democratic senators wrote the Army Tuesday to demand that the "deeply misguided" order be rescinded immediately.

"Although Major General Cucolo stated today that a pregnant soldier would not necessarily be punished by court-martial under this policy, we believe the threat of criminal sanctions in the case of pregnancy goes far beyond what is needed to maintain good order and discipline," the letter stated in part. "This policy could encourage female soldiers to delay seeking critical medical care with potentially serious consequences for mother and child." The letter was signed by Sens. Barbara Boxer of California, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, and Barbara Mikulski of Maryland.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2009/1222/Court-martial-for-pregnant-soldiers-General-backs-off-under-fire

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The Department of Defense will begin making the morning-after pill Plan B available at all of its hospitals and health clinics around the world, officials announced Thursday.

The decision came after a recommendation by the Pentagon's Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee, an advisory panel that voted in November to include Plan B and the generic Next Choice on the list of drugs all military facilities should stock. The Pentagon accepted the recommendation Feb. 3, a spokeswoman said.

Women's health advocates had long been pushing the Obama administration to allow the sale of the morning-after pill at military facilities. The same panel made a similar recommendation in 2002, but the policy was never implemented.

"It's a tragedy that women in uniform have been denied such basic health care," said Nancy Keenan of NARAL Pro-Choice America, which estimated that the decision would affect more than 350,000 women in the military. "We applaud the medical experts for standing up for military women."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/04/AR2010020404050.html?wprss=rss_politics

 

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If the Ministry of Defence follows suit it would open a new area of the senior service to the Navy's 3,700 women sailors.

The Australian, Canadian, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian navies already allow women to serve on their submarines.

Women account for about 15 per cent of the more than 336,000 members of the U.S. Navy.

Top U.S. military officer Admiral Mike Mullen first called for the change in written testimony to Congress last year, saying he wanted to 'continue to broaden opportunities for women' in the armed forces.

Congress has 30 days to comment on the move before it is put into effect.

Nancy Duff Campbell, an advocate for expanding the role of women in the U.S. armed forces, applauded the decision and said she did not expect any opposition from lawmakers.

'This is something that has a lot of support (within the military) and the Navy has a serious plan to carefully integrate submarine personnel,' she said.

Allowing women on submarines would be another step forward in expanding the role of women in the U.S. military.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1253466/U-S-Navy-lift-ban-women-serving-aboard-submarines.html

 

The Pentagon has moved to lift a decades-old policy that prohibits women from serving aboard Navy submarines, part of a gradual reconsideration of women's roles in a military fighting two wars whose front lines can be anywhere.

"I believe it's time that we take a look at what women are actually doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. And then we take a look at our policies," Casey told the Senate Armed Services Committee. While no organized effort is under way, "I think it's time," he added.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124015349

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What does it tell us that female soldiers deployed overseas stop drinking water after 7 p.m. to reduce the odds of being raped if they have to use the bathroom at night? Or that a soldier who was assaulted when she went out for a cigarette was afraid to report it for fear she would be demoted — for having gone out without her weapon? Or that, as Representative Jane Harman puts it, "a female soldier in Iraq is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire."

The problem is even worse than that. The Pentagon estimates that 80% to 90% of sexual assaults go unreported, and it's no wonder. Anonymity is all but impossible; a Government Accountability Office report concluded that most victims stay silent because of "the belief that nothing would be done; fear of ostracism, harassment, or ridicule; and concern that peers would gossip." More than half feared they would be labeled troublemakers

 Women are often denied claims for posttraumatic stress caused by the assault if they did not bring charges at the time. There are not nearly enough mental-health professionals in the system to help them. Female vets are four times more likely to be homeless than male vets are, according to the Service Women's Action Network, and of those, 40% report being victims of sexual assault.

But there are some signs that both Congress and the Pentagon are getting serious about this problem. It is now possible for victims to seek medical treatment without having to report the crime to police or their chain of command.

 The failure to provide a basic guarantee of safety to women, who now represent 15% of the armed forces, is not just a moral issue, or a morale issue. What does it say if the military can't or won't protect the people we ask to protect us?

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1968110,00.html

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Netzanet Fredeh is constantly required by her surroundings to bear the title "an Israeli of Ethiopian origin." But she bears this title with pride. As commander of the Immigration and Integration Branch of the Israel Defense Forces' Education Corps, she works to advance the lot of Ethiopian soldiers - an advancement that she herself epitomizes.

At the age of nine, her mother sent her to Israel with an uncle. There, she enrolled in the Segula girls' religious high school in Kiryat Motzkin. She considers this "one of the best things that ever happened to me. It was there that I was given the confidence to stand on my own." 

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1163994.html

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The first U.S. women allowed to serve aboard submarines will be reporting for duty by 2012, the Navy said Thursday as the military ordered an end to one of its few remaining gender barriers.

The cramped quarters and scant privacy aboard submarines, combined with long tours of up to 90 days at sea, kept them off-limits to female sailors for 16 years after the Navy began allowing women to serve on all its surface ships in 1994.

"We're going to look back on this four or five years from now, shrug our shoulders and say, 'What was everybody worrying about?'" said Bruner, the top sub commander at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in coastal Georgia, where the announcement was made.

The first group of women will consist entirely of officers assigned to guided-missile attack submarines and ballistic-missile submarines, which have the most living space in the Navy's fleet. They'll be assigned to two subs based at Kings Bay on the East Coast, and two others at the West Coast naval hub of Bangor, Wash.

Limiting women to officer slots lets the Navy, for a time at least, sidestep the more vexing and cost-prohibitive problem of modifying subs to have separate bunks and bathrooms for enlisted men and women. Enlisted sailors make up about 90 percent of a sub's 160-sailor crew. No timeline was given for integrating enlisted women onto subs.

About 52,446 women serve on active duty in the U.S. Navy, or about 15 percent of total personnel. Navy officials said women also make up about half the pool of potential recruits with educational degrees that qualify them for training as submarine officers.

"We literally could not run the Navy without women today," Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a statement.

Sailors interviewed aboard the Alaska at Kings Bay on Thursday said they're not opposed to the change.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jzfgPydc7rCj9bgMkMth6yJJIQ8AD9FCV9800

 

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“Every woman honorably serving our country in the U.S. military and the spouses of military personnel stationed around the world deserve access to the full range of reproductive health care available to women in the United States,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “The vote repealing this discriminatory and dangerous ban is the first step to ensuring that servicewomen can use their own private money for abortion care when they are serving overseas.”

The current ban on privately funded abortions in military facilities threatens the health and lives of women serving overseas. A servicewoman in need of medically necessary abortion would be forced to leave the secure military hospital on which she depends and receives health care. She would have to venture out to a local medical facility in the foreign country where she is stationed to obtain an abortion. In many countries where U.S. servicewomen are stationed, abortion care may be inadequate, unsafe or altogether unavailable — forcing a woman into a dangerous, security-compromised situation.

Additionally, this current ban discriminates against servicewomen who are courageously serving our country and unfairly prohibits them from exercising their constitutionally protected right to a safe and legal abortion, simply because they are serving on foreign soil.

 http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/planned-parenthood-applauds-senate-committee-vote-repeal-ban-privately-funded-abortion-care-ser-32721.htm

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The 2009 Sailor of the Year winners, who for the first time in history are all women, were meritoriously advanced to Chief Petty Officer during a ceremony held at the Navy Memorial July 22.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead was the guest speaker at the pinning ceremony hosted by the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy (MCPON)(SS/SW) Rick D. West.

Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Ingrid Cortez, U.S. Fleet Forces Sea Sailor of the Year; Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Shalanda Brewer, Navy Reserve Sailor of the Year; Operations Specialist 1st Class Samira McBride, U.S. Pacific Fleet Sea Sailor of the Year and Cryptologic Technician (Technical) 1st Class Cassandra Foote, Chief of Naval Operations Shore Sailor of the Year were each presented their chief petty officer appointment letter from the CNO prior to having their anchors pinned to their collars and combination covers placed on their heads.

"This is a great day for our Navy, and today we are making history with all for Sailors of the Year being women. These Sailors have proven themselves as professional Sailors, experts in their rates, role models to our junior Sailors and youth, and most importantly, true leaders," said West. 

http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=54845

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A chunk of the glass ceiling came tumbling down Monday as veteran national security officer Letitia "Tish" Long became the first woman to head a major intelligence agency.

Long, who has spent 32 years in government service, including more than two decades in the intelligence community, was sworn in as director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the office responsible for collecting and analyzing overhead imagery and geospatial information.

The swearing-in took place at NGA's sprawling $1.7 billion, 2.4 million square foot complex in Fort Belvoir -- soon to the agency's new headquarters.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, said the installation of a woman to run a spy agency with a multibillion-dollar budget and thousands of employees is a key milestone.

"This is an important appointment, and I hope that she will bring a new and determined management ability to this agency," Feinstein said.

  Women have served as second-in-command in most of the major intelligence agencies. Long spent the last four years as the deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

John McLaughlin, the former CIA deputy director, who worked with Long while she was at the agency said Long was ideally suited for the job, because, "not only does she have a deep understanding of defense intelligence needs but assignments over the course of her career have given her a unique window into civilian intelligence as well."

He added: "A woman at the helm of one of our major intelligence agencies is a long overdue step recognizing that the contribution of women to intelligence success has long been equal to that of men."

According to the most recent figures available from the office of the Director of National Intelligence, women represented 39 percent of the workforce at the six major intelligence agencies during fiscal year 2009.

Women held 27 percent of the senior positions within those six offices.

And 46 percent of all promotions in those agencies went to women.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/08/09/woman.intel.chief/?hpt=T2#fbid=h-2CShfXYY9&wom=false

 

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