CANADA NEWS Updated January 24, 2013, 5:52 p.m. ET
Canada Offers Lessons on Women in Combat In spring 2008, Canadian Infantry Cpl. Katie Moman landed in Kandahar, Afghanistan, trained, equipped and ready to fight for one of the few Western armies that allow women in all front-line combat roles.
But as her six-month tour progressed, Cpl. Moman found her troubles had less to do with Afghan insurgents and more to do with what she says was her commanders' desire to keep her from them. The complaint—echoed by other Canadian women serving in combat—underscores one of several pitfalls America's neighbor to the north has encountered in its decades long experience with allowing women to enter front-line jobs.
Photo: Maj. Eleanor Taylor, the first Canadian woman to command an infantry company in a war zone, receives a medal from Governor General David Johnston in June. Canada opened combat roles to women in 1989.
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Video: The Pentagon is dropping the last vestiges of rules barring American women from serving in combat, paving the way for the largest expansion ever of their role on the front lines. Lt. Col. Juanita Chang and Lt. Col. Kareem P. Montague join The News Hub to discuss. Photo: AP.Canadian officers say women warriors proved as effective as men in front-line combat roles in Ottawa's most recent big military engagement, in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2011. But Canada has struggled to fill combat jobs with women, and those who do join can feel isolated as a result. And like Cpl. Moman, many of the women who volunteered for these jobs got the impression that their senior officers used them only sparingly in combat.
On Thursday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta officially opened up combat roles to American women. As the Pentagon weighed its decision, U.S. officials studied Canada's experience, according to U.S. and Canadian defense officials.
Israel, France, Norway, Australia and New Zealand are among countries that allow women to fight in many combat roles. And while U.S. women had been technically barred from combat, they have often ended up on the battlefield in America's two recent military campaigns, in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But Canada has one of the longest track records among U.S. allies, having opened combat jobs to women in 1989. Meanwhile, the country's bloody experience in Afghanistan, where it suffered one of the highest per-capita casualty rates among Western allies, offered a recent battlefield test of the policy.
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In May 2006, Army Capt. Nichola Goddard became the first Canadian woman killed in a combat role, during a firefight in Afghanistan. In total, four Canadian women have been killed serving in the country's armed forces, three of them in combat positions. While Capt. Goddard's death heightened public unease about the military mission in general, there wasn't a significant backlash to Canada's decision to send women into the battlefield.
But the country's efforts for combat-zone equality have hit other obstacles. For years, Canada has found it difficult to fill combat roles with women in the first place. Women account for about 14% of all military positions in the Canadian Forces but just 2.4% of combat jobs, according to government data.
Karen Davis, a defense expert at the Canadian Forces Leadership Institute in Kingston, Ontario, said women considering a combat role are more likely than men to cite concerns about the effect on their families.
For the women who did sign up and ended up fighting in Afghanistan, many found the experience rewarding. As part of a two-person, heavy machine-gun team, Infantry Cpl. Katie Hodges regularly carried 80 pounds of equipment, including 220 rounds of ammunition, and sometimes went out on patrol for up to four days in a stretch. "It was great," she said.
Canadian commanders have said women fighters perform as well as their male counterparts. Maj. Eleanor Taylor became the first Canadian woman to command an infantry company in a war zone. Army Brig. Gen. Dean Milner, the last commander of Canada's combat mission, said Maj. Taylor was "easily" one of the best officers to serve under him. "The bottom line is they are soldiers," Gen. Milner said in an interview.
But several women soldiers said they often felt excluded from the real fighting. No statistics were made available by the Canadian Forces on how often Canadian women were used in combat, but a frequent complaint among female veterans, in interviews, was a sense they were being passed over when it came to the real fighting.
A Canadian Forces representative declined to comment on individual cases.
"Participation on operations is based on the physical and mental abilities of soldiers.…This process does not include gender considerations," said a spokesman for the Canadian Army.
In September 2008, Cpl. Kimberly Ashton, a combat engineer, thought she was heading to Afghanistan for combat. But once there, she didn't leave the base.
"Not sure why they didn't pick me…maybe because I had a family and kids," she said.
Cpl. Moman, meanwhile, was mainly placed in backup roles such as intelligence and radio operations while serving in Afghanistan in 2008—tracking from afar the combat she believed she was being kept out of.
"Listening to it all," she said. "I felt I should be out there."
One former senior Canadian commander in Afghanistan, who declined to be named, said that while women performed well in combat roles, male colleagues often had a counterproductive desire to "protect" them. Men looked to carry women combatants' gear or protect them in the battlefield, he said.
Army Corp. Donald Hookey, who drove military trucks in Afghanistan, agreed with that sentiment. "That brother-sister protective thought was always in the back of your mind," he said.
Write to Alistair MacDonald at
alistair.macdonald@wsj.comA version of this article appeared January 25, 2013, on page A6 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Canada Offers Lessons on Women in Combat.
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