"I don't care about gender, just as long as he's the best person for the job"

 

The United States Navy is on track to have the first female Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) appointed to head the Service. Admiral Lisa Franchetti has been nominated to take over the role, marking the first time that a woman has led the US Navy and has been appointed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This is without doubt good news (even if the confirmation may take some time due to Senate politics). Hopefully the UK and other NATO allies will also be in the place where female officers are seen as credible candidates to lead their Services too soon. Just to say that last sentence on Twitter is to ignite a firestorm of easily triggered individuals who are convinced that this will only happen due to ‘quotas’.

There is something deeply concerning about the deeply insecure toxic masculinity present on social media that seems to act as if the world is ending should anyone other than a white, heterosexual, male be appointed to senior military roles (ideally a right hander too as lefties are a bit sinister). Each time an announcement is made that a woman or BAME (or even gods forbid both) candidate has been selected to a senior military appointment, social media lights up with so many tired tropes and comments, including:

“I don’t care about gender, as long as she’s the best person for the job”

“Why do you even need to mention her gender, surely you don’t need to mention it”

“She only got the post because of some quota/diversity agenda – just look at the RAF”

Firstly, if you don’t care about gender, why are you caveating that by saying ‘best person for the job’. You’ve implicitly stated that she may not be the best person for the job through your language. Why not just say ‘congratulations, well done’? The fact is that by being appointed into the role, the military selection process has worked out that this person is the best for the job by the fact they selected them. This may sound obvious but you never see posts like “Congrats to Bill Smith on his promotion. I don’t care that he’s a guy, as long as he’s the best person for the job’ because when you read them, it just sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? Yet its perfectly normal to see “Congrats to Jane Smith on her promotion, I don’t care that she’s a woman, as long as she’s the best person for the job’ plastered across some posts by commentators who feel the need to damn with faint praise.

The reason that it matters to recognise someone’s gender and comment or issue a press release when something new happens, like a senior Female  or BAME appointment is because it represents a change from the status quo. For centuries the armed forces have been led by straight white men who have occupied all the key roles and posts. It is only in the last 30 years or so that there has been a move to full integration as women are able to compete for posts and roles as equal peers to their male colleagues. What this means is the announcement of another male middle aged officer as an Admiral is not hugely newsworthy of itself and the media are highly unlikely to cover it. Why would an editor want to waste time or space covering a story that reflects the status quo?

At the moment though we’re seeing the first cohort of women coming through to the end of the career pipeline and starting to see credible numbers of them at more senior ranks as their careers develop. This means that as candidates are picked to compete at the 1 and 2* level for roles never before filled by women, there is more media interest – its different and reflects the changing nature of the armed forces. This interest is waning though – and that’s a good thing. For example it is now utterly routine for female CO’s to be appointed to RN warships (there are now usually women commanding at sea in every rank from Lieutenant to Captain all the time with next to no media interest). That doesn’t stop extremely stupid commentators making ‘jokes’ about women parking their ships, but it does mean that this has now become a very routine appointment. What will hopefully happen is that over time we’ll see a similar lack of interest in appointments at senior level as  these become ever more routine – but we’re not there yet though. That’s why its important to flag these achievements up – to make the clear point that women are progressing into roles and filling them as normal. It particularly matters at senior levels where there are still very few women, as it shows that there is no bar to rank. The reason it matters that we have a female First Sea Lord is that it shows that there is no bar to success in the Service. That any post is open to those with the right experience and skills – this is a message that will resonate and send a very positive sign of equality and that someone than a middle aged balding white guy can be trusted to lead the Navy. Showing that talent is properly managed is key here

Usually at this stage someone moans about ‘quotas’ – often in the misguided assumption that somehow promoting a woman or someone of BAME origins only happens because of their gender and background. At senior levels there are very few people in the running for roles – to fill most RN ‘dark blue’ roles (e.g. a senior single service post, not a tri-service one) there may only be three or four credible qualified candidates put forward and interviewed for the role (these days senior appointments do involve interviews). It may be that there is only one female officer and three male on the shortlist. If a male is appointed not a word would be said about bias, quotas or anything else. Heaven forbid the female officer performed the best at interview and was selected because at this stage the perception will be that she only got the job due to filling some mythical quota.

We need to call this out and constantly fight the narrative to be something different. We need to create the situation where either everyone is caveated as ‘congrats as long as you’re best for the job’ or no one is. To constantly assume that straight white males are beyond reproach or question, and to quibble and query anyone else is just wrong. Its wrong because it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy which makes the armed forces less appealing to people who may want to join as they feel they won’t be valued or welcomed. If you are a young woman thinking of joining the military, why would you want to work for an organisation where it seems any promotion would cause people to assume you don’t deserve it?  To those who think ‘oh its fine if they can’t take a joke they shouldn’t have joined’, well the problem is that they’re not joining. Just look at the personnel statistics – people are both signing off in droves and recruits aren’t arriving. If you tacitly shape the social media culture that makes people feel going in is more hassle than its worth, then why would people join up?

The armed forces are in an existential battle for talent and need incredibly bright capable people to sign up and stay the course for decades to come. If they don’t join then the security of the nation is at stake – we can’t magic up experienced SNCO’s or SO1’s in 20 years time out of nowhere – we need them to join and we need them to stay. If the military culture, and the surrounding ‘military community’ remains toxic and doubting of parts of its workforce, this is making the problem worse, not better. It closes the door to wider thinking, it reduces innovation and it doesn’t encourage others to join in their place – it just leaves gaps that can’t be filled.

This is a real problem and it needs to be tackled head on – it starts with little things like calling out idiots and their caveats on social media. It continues with getting the right kit for the people at hand – for example, the author understands that due to deficient contracts, the shirts worn by female members of the RN are practically transparent but there is no urgent move afoot to order new ones. This means females are required to wear uniform shirts that expose their underwear – simply because the system hasn’t gotten around to fixing this most basic problem. That’s the sort of tiny problem that a man will never understand, or guffaw loudly about without thinking about why its an issue.

The problems continue with the huge social resistance to change around essential things like breast feeding facilities. Even mentioning this word gets some of the gammon types angry and frothy. Its not ‘woke’ to provide sensible support facilities to help working military mothers try to balance out a career and childcare. If you look at the average age of mothers in the UK now, its slowly creeping upwards – the women who become mothers are likely to be experienced SNCO’s and SO2’s – the sort of person with the best part of 15-20 years’ experience that cannot be replaced. Its hard enough being a mother and balancing that off with being in the military -but if you make things harder than it needs to be, you just end up losing people. Yet when people try to do something about it, for example creating the Defence Breastfeeding network, the response from men, particularly on social media, has been crude and vile beyond measure. What is so frustrating is that these idiots are likely the same ones who bang on about ‘armed forces values’ yet see no conflict between bullying military personnel online for trying to do a good thing and moaning about ‘values and standards’.

As a straight white male, Humphrey cannot begin to imagine how exhausting it must be to go through a 30 year career, excelling at every level and then finding each time you are promoted, or get a good appointment that a whispering campaign begins against you, not because of who you are, but because you are a woman. That in the eyes of too many people you implicitly don’t belong in the job you’re in because you’re not good enough to do it, and you only got it because the ‘quota’ needed a woman in the role. How exhausting must it be to every day know that no matter how good you are, how exceptional an officer, how skilled a war fighter or how fantastic a leader you are, you will always be seen as an imposter and an impersonator by people who don’t think you belong in that role or deserve to be there. No matter how many decades of service you have, or medals hard earned in distant lands, in the eyes of too many, you’ll always be the person that doesn’t belong in a straight white mans military.