Review into the treatment of women at the Australian Defence Force ...

Chapter 7: ADFA’s Structure and Staffing – Recommendations 11-15The ADFA Report’s review of international literature from comparable international military educationaland training establishments found that:the greater the presence of women, both in terms of the breadth of the roles they occupy, aswell as their presence in leadership positions, the more likely women will be viewed as equalparticipants. 43The Audit also found that female undergraduates at ADFA derived great value from having female staffaround:Most of the females have a completely different story about their career, which means that thefemale undergraduates know there’s a lot of different options for them. 44I found that earlier in the year too that the trainees, particularly the first years that we had comethrough, were really inquisitive and wanted to know about the female staff and what they’d gonethrough. 45At an interpersonal level the Audit had the opportunity to observe the connection that was madebetween new female undergraduates and female staff during the YOFT Gender briefings. 46 The femalestaff who presented these sessions were powerful and positive role models for the new undergraduateswho were able to provide information in a sensitive, informed and genuine manner. They offered theirwisdom and experience and also shared with the undergraduates some of their personal stories aboutbeing a woman in the ADF. They also encouraged undergraduates to approach them and other femalestaff as mentors and guides.The Audit welcomes the trend of an increasing number of military women being posted to ADFA andtrusts that the Services will continue to pay particular regard to the representation of high performingwomen at ADFA. Implementation of a deliberate strategy to ensure steady representation of womenshould be considered.Wider pool of good educatorsIt has been difficult to assess progress on the implementation of this part of the Recommendation asvery little information has been received. The Audit notes that on the Communications Plan this itemis marked at ‘Not Applicable’ and that it receives no attention on the RIT’s Progress Matrix. 47 The onlyreference to the consideration of innovative solutions to sourcing a wider pool of good educators was inone discussion:I noticed there was some rank-ranging options talked about. Air Force is more inclined to dothat than the other two anyway. Navy is pretty flexible like that too, probably more flexible thanArmy…For me, it’s not a rank issue because it’s all AFS [Average Funded Strength] so as long asit’s a position that Air Force owns that I’m filling, I can rank-range a bit. 48But elsewhere, it was suggested that identifying specific skills for educators was not something that wasa key concern in selecting educators, as ‘all officers are expected to be able to instruct’ as a key part oftheir duties, and ‘people aren’t differentiated’ according to their abilities as educators. 49The RIT states that:The wider pool of good educators and positive role models for cadets is being met by externalproviders (both military and civilian) who are selected on the basis of skills and not rank. 5054