Monocle

The Taliban now have yet another reason to resent the fairer sex: the Islamist militants could soon find themselves staring down the barrels of their guns. Australia announced this week that it was dropping all restrictions on women serving in frontline combat, allowing its female soldiers access to the most dangerous roles war has to offer, including as Special Forces operators in Afghanistan.

The decision, which was announced on Tuesday by Australian Defence Minister Stephen Smith, places Australia among a small handful of countries – Canada, New Zealand and Israel – that allow women soldiers to serve in all the same capacities as their male counterparts. As in most developed nations, Australia had barred them from many direct combat roles.

But Smith likely had more than just equality in mind with the announcement, which came in the wake of a wave of embarrassing sex scandals that have called into question the credibility of the Australian Defence Force.

In one case, a male cadet at the elite Australian Defence Force Academy was caught streaming video of a sexual liaison with a female cadet to his friends via Skype, without her knowledge. A government inquiry into misconduct onboard the HMAS Success painted a picture of a battleship that better resembled a fraternity house – male sailors had placed “bounties” and dollar values on female crewmembers, while a 2009 “goodwill” trip to Asia culminated in the drunken trashing of a Manila bar.

Not exactly the type of behaviour one would expect under the country’s first female leader, Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Indeed, while the scandals may have helped bring the role of women in the armed forces front and centre, Gillard’s government would likely have made this move anyway, says Michael Fullilove, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a think tank.

“This decision is about treating men and women equally and so it’s the kind of thing that is written into Labor’s DNA,” he said. “It strikes me as one of those decisions that causes a brief flurry of comment and outrage; then, in 10 years’ time, people will ask what all the fuss was about.”

Women already comprise nearly 14 per cent of full-time service members in the ADF, which maintains the largest contingent of any non-NATO member fighting in Afghanistan. Those numbers are roughly on a par with women in the United States’ armed forces, while Britain lags behind at less than 10 per cent. Both countries, however, still bar women from serving in the infantry and Special Forces.

But R D Shanahan, a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, was quick to play down the significance of Australia’s move. In the countries where similar barriers have been lifted, he said, women have been slow to answer the call to duty.

“While it makes for a good policy announcement, the reality is that the take up from women who are suitable for employment in these roles hasn’t been particularly great,” he said.

Matt Siegel is a Monocle contributor based in Sydney