NEW DELHI: A top Army officer has called for a comprehensive policy on “gender neutrality” as well as a “pragmatic performance analysis” of Colonel-rank women commanding officers (COs) in the force, citing several instances of them not measuring up to requisite standards due to their lack of training for command, among other factors.
Lt General Rajeev Puri, who completed his tenure as the commander of the China-specific 17 ‘Brahmastra’ Mountain Strike Corps at Panagarh on Nov 20, stressed the need to ensure gender neutrality in postings and selection of COs, in a letter addressed to Eastern Command chief Lt-General R C Tiwari last month, with copies to the Adjutant General and Military Secretary at the Army HQs.
Women officers have from last year onwards begun to command units in air defence, signals, ordnance, engineers, intelligence, service corps and the like.

Women COs’ ‘lack of empathy’ among concerns flagged
Women officers are still not allowed in main ‘fighting arms’ of infantry, armoured corps and mechanised infantry of the over 11 lakh-strong Army. With eight such women COs in his corps, Lt Gen Puri said an analysis was conducted after an “in-house review” based on “demonstrated performance” of the officers. Women COs have been exhibiting poor “interpersonal relations”, with an “exaggerated tendency to complain” to senior commanders about their subordinates rather than exercising their own authority and powers first, as well as “lack of empathy” for officers and troops in their units. “Any professional disagreement or minor argument is viewed as insubordination… The lack of empathy may be attributable to a need to overcompensate,” he said.
Women COs have also been found to over-centralise decision-making without proper consultations, in a “my way or highway” kind of approach, instead of a “directive style of command”.
Some even have a “misplaced sense of entitlement”, Lt Gen Puri said, citing the case of a woman CO who insisted the unit’s subedar major (SM) open her vehicle’s door whenever she arrived, contrary to orders on the subject. “Occasionally, when the SM would get delayed in doing so, the CO would continue sitting in her vehicle and not disembark,” he said.
Some women COs exhibit “over-ambition”, leading to repeated incidents of “unreasonable performance demands” on officers and troops, and consequently, high levels of stress in their units. “An uncontrolled urge to make derogatory statements regarding juniors to usurp credit, rather than encouraging them, is routine,” Lt Gen Puri said. On the other end of the spectrum, a few women COs have taken a “low profile, low initiative route” to command, he added.
With Supreme Court enforcing permanent commission and command roles for women in the armed forces, who had long opposed it because of what they called “operational, practical and cultural problems”, the Army had finally empanelled 108 women officers for command assignments through a special selection board after “multiple policy waivers” early last year, as was then reported by TOI. These women colonels, however, were not trained and groomed for challenging role of COs, unlike their male counterparts who do ‘junior command’, staff college and other adjunct courses as well as the requisite appointments as young officers.
Apart from lack of command training, he said, “The postings of these officers did not expose them to command roles. Hardly any woman officer has tenanted high-pressure command/staff assignment prior to her role as the CO.” With women officers not getting much exposure to operational tasks, “preferential treatment” has led to “lack of understanding of hardships and resultant lack of compassion for the troops involved in these tasks”, he said.
“The desire to prove oneself in a field which was supposed to be a male bastion is likely a driver behind the over-ambitiousness in some women COs… In order to be perceived as strong individuals and avoid being judged as soft-hearted, women COs handle HR issues with a firmer hand than their male counterparts,” he added.