Sexism in the military and the difficulties faced by women in service

The Indian military is the military service branch of the Government of India under the Ministry of Defense. The Indian Armed Forces is responsible for carrying out combat operations, conducting exercises, maintaining and supplying army bases, maintaining control over sensitive borders to prevent hostile forces from entering the country, conducting humanitarian operations, and maintaining peace, order, and public tranquility.

With an active military force of over 948,000 active personnel, the Indian Armed Forces are the world’s fourth largest military in terms of personnel. According to the Ministry of Defense records, there are nearly 25,000 women serving in India’s armed forces, out of which 9,000 are in the army and 16,000 are the commissioned officers or other ranks. India has always been ruled by very masculine armies. It is only in recent years that we have taken a good look at what they could do and are trying to understand their capabilities. All services can be categorized as either land, air, or marine forces as there are three distinct branches of armed forces: the Indian Army (including the Army Air Arm, Marine Corps, and Artillery), Indian Navy, and the Indian Air Force.

Sexism in the Indian military sexism exists as a result of the way in which the military is structured. In contrast to other countries, the Indian state maintains control over all of its military units. This control allows each unit to maintain social norms, and because of the strong social norms there is almost no way to get around these norms. This allows most women in the military to be free from the kind of societal harassment and harassment that might cause them leave the military if it were more common. Nevertheless, women are still faced with a significant amount of sexual tension and mistreatment.
The way of socialization that allows for these norms to create such tensions has been a result of the social structures that have governed most of India since independence. All women have participated in the military in India historically, making women socialized into these norms naturally. For this reason, more men in Indian society than most other countries are expected to act like machos because this is how they were raised.

There is not a lot of sexual harassment in the military among upper brass. While there is some, it is largely not directed at women as opposed to the lower ranks. There is no strong official policy or a set of rules about how women are supposed to act, but one of the informal results is more pressure on the lower levels for lower military ranks if there is potential sexual harassment to stop. While it is not difficult to get around these pressures on male recruits, there is often a great deal of pressure on women. The first place this is often apparent is in the relationship between male and female military personal.