Sisters in Arms

Air Cmde TK Chatterjee(retd)

Induction of women into the armed forces comes with its set of challenges.

The first batch of women trainees graduated from the National Defence Academy (NDA), breaking another glass ceiling and adding a new dimension to gender equality in the armed forces on 30 May 2025.

I am reminded of a famous quote from a leading figure of the American women’s rights movement, Elizabeth Stanton. ‘Alone she goes to the gates of death to give life to every man that is born into this world.’ No one can agree more with this statement, and from this fundamental truth stems the societal value that has taught men for ages to protect women and shield them from the brutality of warfare, whether fought with sticks and stones, bows and arrows, or guns and bullets. Nature created men and women differently, both physically and psychologically, perhaps to serve different purposes on earth, as per nature’s design. Their areas of expertise do overlap, but were perhaps not intended to be congruent. But here we are competing with each other, trying to break into each other’s domains, confusing ourselves, and possibly Mother Nature, too!

I joined an all-male NDA in the early Seventies and was commissioned into an all-male Indian Air Force (IAF) in the late Seventies. Except for the medical branch, there were no female members in uniform. After commissioning, we were groomed to pay respect to women. Before the IAF, I had never seen a roomful of gentleman officers stand up when the wife of the junior-most officer entered the room. Even the fighter planes were referred to using feminine terms, and we were constantly reminded to handle them with utmost care, never to disrespect them. That was the attitude of men in uniform towards women. Should that change when women become sisters-in-arms and finally break the ultimate glass ceiling to join the combat arms of the armed forces?

I have trained female pilots in the IAF and in civil aviation. At both places, I have encountered good and bad trainees. I have also sent back both male and female trainees due to their inability to learn to fly. The reactions were different. At the Air Force Academy, whether male or female, they all left quietly. At the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Academy (IGRUA), the male trainees had their parents plead their cases, but ultimately, they left IGRUA and joined other flying schools that were less stringent about flying standards. In contrast, the female trainees went directly to the ministry of human resources and the ministry of civil aviation, alleging misogyny and gender bias; and if the trainee happened to be from SC/ST/OBC, caste bias was invariably added to the list. Will these trends permeate into the services? We hope not.

Having said that, I have also encountered excellent professional female trainees. At IGRUA, we flew an aeroplane called Zlin, which had never been assigned to female trainees because some control surfaces, like the flap lever, were very difficult to operate under aerodynamic loads. In one term, I was short of aeroplanes, so I selected a girl from Ladakh to fly the Zlin. I flew her in a Zlin and offered her the challenge mid-air. She jumped at the opportunity to be the first woman trainee to fly the aeroplane, and she successfully completed all of 150-odd hours on that aircraft. But