By Military Woman
Q: If pregnancy is a normal fact of life, why is it still a big deal in the military?
A: In the June 2020 Military Women column, pregnancy was indeed highlighted as a perfectly normal physiological life event, however pregnancy is also a commonly cited bone fide sex difference that we know can impact military employment and operational effectiveness. Let’s consider some of the unique aspects of pregnancy in the military first within the context of the history of women in Canadian
society.
Did you know that women only became legally recognized as “persons” on October 18th, 1929 (Edwards v Canada)? This constitutional change paved the way for women’s increased participation in public life, a milestone acknowledged annually with the official designation of October 18th as Persons Day.
During both world wars, women were asked to temporarily fill traditionally male military and civilian work roles. However, once World War II was over, married women were expected to return to the home, while unmarried women were pushed back into gender normative civilian positions. Employee pregnancy was not something the male dominated workspaces, military or civilian, expected to be seeing or dealing with.
In 1960, all Canadian women were finally accorded the right to vote. In 1965, due to human resource shortages, the military allowed a handful of gender-appropriate trades to recruit up to 1,500 unmarried women into the regular forces. Military women were still being released upon marriage, in part due to the assumption that they would soon become pregnant. Those assumptions were no longer valid when the oral contraceptive pill was made legal in 1969. The ability of women to control their own reproductive status was a gamechanger.
The pivotal Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (1970), noted that society has “a responsibility for [the] special treatment of women related to pregnancy and childbirth”. The Commission opened the doors for women to potentially return to the workforce after a pregnancy with recommendations for both maternity leave and guaranteed job security. The report also opened up military colleges, gave women access to previously men-only military pensions, and removed marriage and pregnancy as reasons for mandatory military release. Finally, women didn’t have to choose between a family and a military career—at least not on paper.
In the same decade, the Canadian Human Rights Act (1977) prohibited federal workplace discrimination related to sex, marital status and/or family status, and the military conducted a complete personnel policy update review (1978).
Momentum for women to stay in the workforce, both during and after pregnancy, grew in the 1980s. Canada signed the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1980) that, among other things, called for special workplace protections for women during pregnancy.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982), prohibited workplace discrimination based on sex. The Employment Equity Act (1986) required the identification and elimination of unnecessary barriers to employment in federal workspaces for identified groups, including specifically women. The decade ended with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (1989) supporting a complaint against the military for employment discrimination based on sex. The result was that the Canadian Armed Forces was ordered to fully integrate women into all jobs within 10 years. Since the 1990s, women have entered with ever growing numbers into the previously male-only military operational combat roles and environments.
The last 100 years have seen the legal barriers to workplace equity for Canadian women removed—including in the military.
However, many employers have put more resources into enrolling women into the previously male-only trades then proactively ensuring their safe retention through enabled, appropriately accommodated workspaces. In the military, the politically driven focus on total numbers of women working in non-traditional and operational military roles continues to overshadow the parallel concurrent need to knowledge generate evidence-based protections and supports for those working women, especially while pregnant or breastfeeding. How to best address that is another discussion for another day.
