We’ve given up on Canada’s military, so let’s abandon it altogether

[Remius]

But thats an important question to ask isn't it? 

Im not sure what changing our marketing would aim to accomplish. 

I'm hoping saying a feminist approach to recruiting is just a dumb way of marketing the CAF to women more (somehow)  and not changing any more of the recruiting process.

I think it has more to do with marketing but also creating the conditions to make the CAF an attractive career option for women.  Things like improving and facilitating family life, changing the perception about harrassement etc etc.

While yes it is a feminist approach, it also improves the organisation as a whole.  PATA leave wouldn’t have happened without MATA leave and that was a reaction to getting women to be able to have kids and work.

 

[RedcapCrusader]

But thats an important question to ask isn't it?  I regularly try to follow up with people I help recruit.  The last guy I spoke with said 15 some recruits from his course failed the FORCE test, 12 or 13 of them were female. Only a couple females passed. The CAF then spent money and instructor hours sending  all 15 to warrior platoon essentially paying them to work out, clogging the system and taking spots on future serials.  It seems to be a common theme (YMMV). 

Im not sure what changing our marketing would aim to accomplish. 

I'm hoping saying a feminist approach to recruiting is just a dumb way of marketing the CAF to women more (somehow)  and not changing any more of the recruiting process.

How many women are out there hauling sandbags around and dragging 100kg of equipment behind them?

Even prior to the FORCE test, the Expres Test had women excelling during the 20m Shuttle Run, but then would fail when it came to the push ups; common trend was that they lacked the muscular/upper body strength.

I hear it all the time from women "Oh I use the elliptical and do yoga, I would never lift weights because I don't want to look like a man."

It's not us that's the problem, and these women aren't entirely to blame either, it's just the way Canadian society has been built.

Maybe, Warrior Platoon isn't such a bad idea when you look at it from that perspective. Lots of women have never thought about strength, having PSP trainers available to them can do great things.

As for clogging up spots... They're not really clogging anything when the dropout/recourse rate would negate there being a "surplus" of recruits waiting for reintegration; they've already been accounted for in the numbers.

 

[Navy_Pete]

I think it has more to do with marketing but also creating the conditions to make the CAF an attractive career option for women.  Things like improving and facilitating family life, changing the perception about harrassement etc etc.

While yes it is a feminist approach, it also improves the organisation as a whole.  PATA leave wouldn’t have happened without MATA leave and that was a reaction to getting women to be able to have kids and work.

Having the MFRC daycares with adequate capacity would be a start for single parents (in general); in Halifax there was a three year waiting list for the 18 month old+ spots (do the math there) and the cost of private made it make more sense if you were a couple for one person to stay home. Still means you are SOL for when you are at sea if you are single so you would need to figure out child care arrangements, but at least having reliable daycare where you work would be a good start.

 

[Halifax Tar]

I think trying to target certain identifiable groups is great and it would be awesome if the CAF was 100% reflective of the country demographically.  But that is probably never going to happen.

Perhaps we need to come to terms with the fact free choice is what drives our recruiting.  Trying to dissuade that in some artificial manner is just a waste of resources and effort.  People who want to join will.  Regardless of all the minorities and women we put on recruiting posters. 

Our biggest recruiting tool is active members.  And I am not sure we, active members, are speaking as highly about a career in the CAF as we once were.  If my assumption is correct then we need to take time and find out why our own members aren't promoting this as a career and take a long hard look at how we can change things. 

 

[RedcapCrusader]

I think trying to target certain identifiable groups is great and it would be awesome if the CAF was 100% reflective of the country demographically.  But that is probably never going to happen.

Perhaps we need to come to terms with the fact free choice is what drives our recruiting.  Trying to dissuade that in some artificial manner is just a waste of resources and effort.  People who want to join will.  Regardless of all the minorities and women we put on recruiting posters. 

Our biggest recruiting tool is active members.  And I am not sure we, active members, are speaking as highly about a career in the CAF as we once were.  If my assumption is correct then we need to take time and find out why our own members aren't promoting this as a career and take a long hard look at how we can change things.

The same reasons my grandfather and my father told me "Stay in school, stay away from the Army."

It's all great but, the quality of life can be shite on the best of times, and at the end of your service you may not necessarily get anything of value out of it (certifications, education, a pension you can actually live off of etc). Isolation, archaic and convoluted policies, making things as difficult as possible for serving members to just live (like the new BGRS system - yuck).

There's lots to love about it, but does it really outweigh the rest?

 

[EpicBeardedMan]

Perhaps we will be taking lessons from those Nordic Swedes.....:dunno:

Shield maidens!!!

 

[Bird_Gunner45]

Thanks it's great to hear the CAF is no longer going to discriminate against males when it comes to incentive levels and PER points. I'm genuinely humbly corrected.


So then we're paid the same, have the same rights, same fitness standards, all trades are open, no extra per points due to incentive levels depending on gender.  Feminism is defined as fighting for women's equality. What exactly is this feminist approach to recruiting?

Well, the academic studies would suggest that implicit bias/Implicit leadership theory (ILT) is an indicator for female numbers, particularly within the combat arms.

ILT, in its simplest form, is simply the concept that leadership and the leader/follower dynamic is based on in group/out group dynamics and how the individual conceives their place within the organization. In this, people develop bias based on the internal self-to-leader (sub-divided into self to prototype (comparing oneself to the self conceived ideal of what a leader in that organization is) and self to exemplar (comparing oneself to the best example of a leader)) analysis. How one conceives leadership and the culture of the organization has the follow-along effect of  impacting how they view their role in the self explanatory in and out groups. If people see themselves as being within the out-group of the organization based on their pre-conceived notions than they are unlikely to participate in it (Article 1).

In terms of gender, ILT has been noted to play a key role in identifying why males and females go into certain jobs. In basic terms, females and males are both equally effective in leadership positions, both inside the military and outside of it. Interestingly, females are found to be more transformational leaders than males who statistically tend to fall more into transactional leadership models (article 2).

So, to your question- what is the feminist approach to recruiting? To improve recruiting of females, particularly in the combat arms, there is a need for a change in how females view these trades and within the organizational culture of the trades themselves, which is related back to the ILTs. While clearly some trades will remain more aggressive than others (infantry vs HCA), the recruiting must allow females (and people from other cultures) to see themselves within those trades.

 

[Jarnhamar]

Prof Jordan Peterson had an interesting article on this subject.
I don't remember off the top of my head which country  but he looked at a country known for having the least amount of obstacles and barriers for women to choose whichever profession they wanted.  He highlights how women in this country, with the least amount of barriers, still gravitated towards traditionally women dominated fields. Men gravitated towards male dominated fields.  Just like in bad North America.

Why? Choice.

 

[Bird_Gunner45]

Prof Jordan Peterson had an interesting article on this subject.
I don't remember off the top of my head which country  but he looked at a country known for having the least amount of obstacles and barriers for women to choose whichever profession they wanted.  He highlights how women in this country, with the least amount of barriers, still gravitated towards traditionally women dominated fields. Men gravitated towards male dominated fields.  Just like in bad North America.

Why? Choice.

Yes, choice. The ILT articles and most research on the matter says that Prof Peterson is accurate though he certainly doesn't go into any sort of analysis of the "why" but points at the "what". The question then becomes, why do they choose to stay out of these fields? Why do women generally not want to be infantry officers and men dont generally want to be nurses? It's the individual conception and leadership/organizational stereotype held by persons about the style of leader and soldier required in those jobs that drives gender specific movement towards those fields. The reason why men and women dont go into the fields, though they are open, in equal numbers is because they dont see themselves fitting into the stereotypical image of what it is to be an infantry officer or nurse.

So, to change this there needs to be a change in both how people in the society view certain trades and professions and how the organizational cultures of the trades present themselves to the wider society. That's the more difficult question for many trades - how (or can) infantry adapt to allow more women to see this as a viable career option?

 

[Jarnhamar]

BG45 that post might explain what I was talking about. Sounds like it could be plausible. I'll check the sources you included and read up.

 

[Piece of Cake]

Thanks it's great to hear the CAF is no longer going to discriminate against males when it comes to incentive levels and PER points. I'm genuinely humbly corrected.


So then we're paid the same, have the same rights, same fitness standards, all trades are open, no extra per points due to incentive levels depending on gender.  Feminism is defined as fighting for women's equality. What exactly is this feminist approach to recruiting?

Is this really a question in 2018?

 

[Halifax Tar]

Yes, choice. The ILT articles and most research on the matter says that Prof Peterson is accurate though he certainly doesn't go into any sort of analysis of the "why" but points at the "what". The question then becomes, why do they choose to stay out of these fields? Why do women generally not want to be infantry officers and men dont generally want to be nurses? It's the individual conception and leadership/organizational stereotype held by persons about the style of leader and soldier required in those jobs that drives gender specific movement towards those fields. The reason why men and women dont go into the fields, though they are open, in equal numbers is because they dont see themselves fitting into the stereotypical image of what it is to be an infantry officer or nurse.

So, to change this there needs to be a change in both how people in the society view certain trades and professions and how the organizational cultures of the trades present themselves to the wider society. That's the more difficult question for many trades - how (or can) infantry adapt to allow more women to see this as a viable career option?

OR

Perhaps, in general terms, women and men just have different interests in career fields.

 

[Piece of Cake]

But thats an important question to ask isn't it?  I regularly try to follow up with people I help recruit.  The last guy I spoke with said 15 some recruits from his course failed the FORCE test, 12 or 13 of them were female. Only a couple females passed. The CAF then spent money and instructor hours sending  all 15 to warrior platoon essentially paying them to work out, clogging the system and taking spots on future serials.  It seems to be a common theme (YMMV). 

Im not sure what changing our marketing would aim to accomplish. 

I'm hoping saying a feminist approach to recruiting is just a dumb way of marketing the CAF to women more (somehow)  and not changing any more of the recruiting process.

Clogging the system?  I think we need to look at how much it costs to process a new recruit.  Is it not in the best economic interest of the CAF to help those who may struggle with fitness during BMQ / BMOQ than simply release them due to being unfit?  The CAF is a different lifestyle, and as such, a lifestyle a new recruit may not be familiar.  We should be giving all new members the tools to succeed, and that includes placing someone on warrior platoon. 

 

[Jarnhamar]

Is this really a question in 2018?

Sure is.

 

[ballz]

Clogging the system?  I think we need to look at how much it costs to process a new recruit.  Is it not in the best economic interest of the CAF to help those who may struggle with fitness during BMQ / BMOQ than simply release them due to being unfit?  The CAF is a different lifestyle, and as such, a lifestyle a new recruit may not be familiar.  We should be giving all new members the tools to succeed, and that includes placing someone on warrior platoon.

Yes, clogging the system. The cost to process a new recruit? What about the cost to pay someone a full salary and benefits for 6-12 months so they can literally just work out because they aren't even fit enough to *start* training yet. It's in the best economic interest of the CAF to not enroll people who can't already pass the test. In the past, you had to pass the fitness test before you got accepted into the CAF.

At some point along the way, during a major recruiting drive, they decided that due to a lack of enough quality applicants, it was better to get them in through the door, into the system, and at CFLRS, without doing a fitness test first, with the idea being that we'd now bear the burden of a increasingly fatter society. This may have been in the best interests of the CAF overall, but I highly doubt cost-savings was one of the benefits of the change.

http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadas-military-forced-to-accept-fatter-less-educated-recruits-as-demographics-change-audit-reveals

"Despite this, they warned “raising the quality line” could backfire by making it even harder to find new recruits, and instead noted a number of initiatives such as sending out-of-shape recruits to fat camp before basic training has had positive results."

 

[Jarnhamar]

Clogging the system?  I think we need to look at how much it costs to process a new recruit.  Is it not in the best economic interest of the CAF to help those who may struggle with fitness during BMQ / BMOQ than simply release them due to being unfit?  The CAF is a different lifestyle, and as such, a lifestyle a new recruit may not be familiar.  We should be giving all new members the tools to succeed, and that includes placing someone on warrior platoon.

I can give them tools.  Tell them what the fitness standard is and tell them if they don't meet it then they won't have a job. I'd be benevolent enough to give them nutritional reading material, work out routines and a link to Milnet.ca that has not only tons of work out and training advice but actual first hand accounts from instructors and students.
What we need are recruits who are adults and take responsibility for themselves.

 

[Quirky]

Totally agree, I'm a 1/2 marathon runner (did the Army Run last year in under 1 hr 50 min) and the first year they did the measurement there was a guy in my unit who couldn't run 5Km let alone 21.1Km and he scored a Silver and I was in the "Operational Fit but Marginal Health-Related Fitness" and we had almost identical timings (except the burpee/run which I had 8 seconds faster) - and all because my waist is a 38" and his was 32"... pffffft ... ok I got derailed

To be fair, a larger waist size means you are at a greater risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer. Running long distances doesn’t exactly help contain that belly fat either. I’ve stopped running a long long time ago and focus more on strength training and proper diet habits. My cardiovascular endurance has increased in CF sports, waist size has gone down and overall strength has improved substantially. People run because it’s easy, not necessarily overall healthy. Apologize for the thread derailment.

 

[MarkOttawa]

Also not often mentioned--most men do not want to join the PBI.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[jollyjacktar]

Also not often mentioned--most men do not want to join the PBI.

Mark
Ottawa

Even Walts, they just pretend.

 

[angus555]

Prof Jordan Peterson had an interesting article on this subject.
I don't remember off the top of my head which country  but he looked at a country known for having the least amount of obstacles and barriers for women to choose whichever profession they wanted.  He highlights how women in this country, with the least amount of barriers, still gravitated towards traditionally women dominated fields. Men gravitated towards male dominated fields.  Just like in bad North America.

Why? Choice.

He was talking about Scandinavian countries.
Jordan B Peterson: Why so many Male Engineers and Female Nurses?

:cheers: