WOMEN: Argentina Prepares for First Women Army Officers

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 28 1999 (IPS) - Besides beginning a new century and another millennium, the year 2000 also will mark a historic turning point for Argentina when a group of women graduates from the nation’s Military College as army officers.

Sixteen women are on course to complete the initial stage of their military training to achieve the rank of sub-lieutenant. Should they continue their careers, they now can reach the rank of general within 25 years in an artillery, engineering or communications regiment.

Not long ago, the only women in the armed forces were in the medical corps – doctors, dentists, nurses or biochemists.

In 1996, they were permitted to pursue careers as non- commissioned officers and, a year later, women were admitted to the National Military College, founded nearly 200 years ago to train army officers at university level.

Interviewed by IPS, trainee officers aged 22-25 years recalled how they had discovered their vocation; how they felt within an institution that until recently would not accept them and, how they planned to reconcile a professional career with family life.

Their model is the US Army because few other armies in the Americas accept women as career officers, who could someday attain the rank of general and command troops. The changes occurring in the Argentinean army and air force have come only recently.

In the United States, 20 percent of army personnel with the rank of lieutenant are women. Argentinean military officers who have become acquainted with these officers through international peacekeeping missions have learned to respect them.

Army Commander, Gen. Martin Balza, affirms that women in the army “offer multiple positive contributions, and permit the appointment of personnel to specific posts on the basis of suitability rather than sex.”

The women interviewed preferred not to comment on the dark past of the Argentinean military, which led every coup d’etat in the history of the country and brought profound discredit on themselves during the last dictatorship (1976-83).

“The army has changed,” they declared, almost in unison.

Of all the women currently attending the Military College, some 60 percent have a relative in the armed forces, but more and more are entering the school who do not have a parent in the military or lack any familiarity with military life.

Viviana Ruiz, 22, is in her first year at the College. She was previously a schoolteacher but was not satisfied in that career.

No one else in her family had ever served in the armed forces, but she said that she always liked “to prove that I can do things that people say only men can do.”

“My family and friends said I wouldn’t even last a week because I am physically small, but I love army life.” said Ruiz. She added that, when she goes out dancing on the weekends, she avoids discussing her career choice because “men get scared.”

The career of an officer requires students to live at the College from Monday to Friday, and to receive both physical training and instruction in military theory, in addition to majoring in the specialty that will be performed in the army after graduation.

The first graduates with the rank of sub-lieutenant will hold degrees in accountancy or business administration, subjects that will provide them with the tools they need to carry out future missions with technical proficiency.

Professors at the College commented that their intellectual performance was very good. “I think that we stand out,” Ruiz said with pride, although she added that in terms of physical capability, men are still superior.

Graciela Arguello is 25 years old and will be one of the first graduates from the College next. Since she first enrolled in 1997, many things have changed, but she seems determined to uphold the spirit of the armed forces and refused to talk about the problems women encountered with male colleagues.

“It was hard for them, but they’re getting used to it,” she said.

She began as a volunteer, but when the chance arose for her to enroll in the College, she felt that a career in the army would offer a more stable future. “As a volunteer, you have very limited options,” she said.

For Arguello, the greatest challenge after graduation will be when she is put in command of male soldiers, many of whom are her parents’ age.

She also imagines that in the future, it will be difficult to balance her career and family. “The wives of military men accept the life of their husbands, but if we marry a civilian, we are going to have to move somewhere where he can work, too,” she commented.

Romina Lombardi, 22 years old and currently in the third year of her studies, said that leaving behind an infant to serve in Kuwait is not the same for a military mother as a military father.

“We’d have to find a way to deal with being shipped out,” she said.

At the College, 150 women live side by side with 650 men. They share the same hours of study and physical training (with different requirements for men and women), eat together, organise parties and go to the movies, but sleep in separate dormatories.

The students are not allowed to date. Outside, each may do as they like, but every three months, the women must submit to a urine test to determine if they are pregnant, because the College does not accept cadets with children, including men whose lovers are pregnant.

Once the students graduate and are assigned to a post in the army, they can marry and have children. Pregnant officers will be given a maternity discharge.

The objectives of the institution have not changed with the admission of women, rather the women have adopted the values and goals of the army. “We seek peace, but we prepare ourselves for war, that is the essence of military life,” Arguello said.

Ruiz added that members of the armed forces also participate in international peacekeeping missions, to help the victims of floods, to protect the environment or to combat drug trafficking.

The women attaining the rank of sub-lieutenant will have taken the first big step, but they will still have most of the ladder left to climb, from sub-lieutenant to lieutenant, to first lieutenant, captain, major, lieutenant-colonel, colonel and general.

When a women completes this career track, the armed forces will have fully incorporated women into their ranks, giving them the opportunity to develop their full potential, like other institutions which have done so in recent years. (FIN/IPS/mv/mp- mj/ip-hd/k)