THIRTY YEARS of service by women in the Irish Army was celebrated with a number of events in Dublin yesterday.
Serving and retired female members of the Defence Forces were welcomed by their supreme commander, President Mary McAleese, to a reception in Áras an Uachtaráin, before going on to a military reception and equipment display at McKee Barracks in Dublin.
Women were prohibited from joining the Defence Forces – the Army, Air Corps and the Naval Service – until the Defence (Amendment) Act 1979. The first four female cadets entered the cadet school in March 1980, as part of the short-lived women’s service corps. Seven more women were to join that year. Of the 11, two remain in the forces.
The women’s corps was abolished in 1981, paving the way for the full integration of women into the Army.
Though there was no longer a specific women’s corps, and female recruits were training and serving alongside men, they were precluded from combatant roles.
It was not until 1992, following pressure from female members internally as well as pressure outside, that women were fully integrated. They could then carry out the same duties, undergo the same training and serve overseas in combat roles just as their male colleagues. Women have been able to join the Air Corps since 1990 and the Naval Service since 1995.
Among those who joined the army in 1980 was Cmdt Pauline O’Connell, who now runs the officers’ mess in McKee Barracks.
“I was a national school teacher in Bayside in Sutton [Dublin] when I saw the ad and I thought, ‘What a great thing to do’. I thought it would be something different. I knew it would be an opportunity to pick up a lot of new skills, to get really fit and to travel overseas.
“There was a bit of wide-eyed curiosity about us. People didn’t really know how to take women, but I can tell you after we did the same runs and same physical training the mystique went out of it.”
Ann Moran (nee Molloy), from Tullamore, also joined in 1980 and retired from the Army in 1991. She was from a farming background and says she found the physical training “very easy for me”.
She recalls an occasion in the 1980s when her male counterparts were getting ready to go for combat training at the Glen of Imaal, Wicklow, and she was not rostered to join them. “I went to the commanding officer and I said, ‘You’re not going to leave me here on my own in the barracks? If you let me go I promise I won’t let you down.’ They had no separate accommodation for me. They had to put a bed at the end of the room with a hospital curtain around it. But it was great.”
She soon became a physical training instructor herself.
There are today 566 women in the Defence Forces, which has 9,577 members.
This represents a slight increase in female representation, from 4 per cent since 2000 to 6 per cent today.
This compares with a female representation of 9.6 per cent in the British armed forces.
The most senior woman is Lieut Col Maireád Murphy, who is officer commanding of the military hospital in the Curragh.
Speaking yesterday chief of staff Lieut Gen Seán McCann said he was confident the proportion of women would increase.
“The fact that we have had a female deputy battalion commander in Chad, that we have female bomb disposal personnel, heavy vehicles mechanics, snipers, ship’s captains and pilots, to mention but a few, is a testament to the enormous progress of the organisation and to the enormous contribution made by the women to Óglaigh na hÉireann during the past 30 years.”
Women on the frontline across Defence Forces: page 15
