US Edition
Army strategising on gender-neutral ranks, says General Sir Patrick Sanders
Chief of the General Staff says ‘masculine-coded’ terms are ‘something we need to think about really carefully and really hard’
The British Army is considering making ranks gender-neutral to be more inclusive of women.
General Sir Patrick Sanders, the head of the army, revealed conversations around the subject were currently taking place.
Speaking to Colonel Henry Llewelyn-Usher on the Centre for Army Leadership Podcast, Sir Patrick said that the “masculine-coded” terms are “something we need to think about really carefully and really hard”.
He said: “I hear from a lot of women that these small things are the things that exclude - it’s like saying blokes, or guys - it’s coded masculine language.
“There are currently no female equivalents for male-ranking conventions such as guardsman, kingsman and craftsman in the Army.
The Telegraph understands that while the Army is not likely to change its language in the immediate future, Sir Patrick is “deadly serious” about doing so.
The Chief of the General Staff added: “There is no getting away from it that rifleman and guardsman is a masculine-coded appointment and title and identity.
“We know that at the moment, the experience of women in our Army is not what it should be – most of them love it, but there’s still not enough of what we want to see.”
However, Sir Patrick said many women serving in the Army were proud of their masculine-coded rank.
He said he had a conversation with one female section commander at a Servicewomen’s Network meeting who said: “Be really clear, don’t you dare take this rank away from me, because I am proud to be a rifleman. That’s my rank as much as it is yours.”
In 2021 the RAF dropped the terms airman and airwoman in favour of aviator.
The year before the Royal Navy said it was moving away from “gendered language” by replacing the term “unmanned” with “uncrewed”.
It comes at a difficult time for the military where numerous claims of bullying and sexual assault have engulfed all three of the services.
Earlier this year a report found that more women left the Armed Forces than joined in 2022.
The UK Armed Forces biannual diversity statistics found that while female representation across the services has slightly increased, for the first time since 2017 more women have left the military than joined.
This is despite the Government’s response to the Women in the Armed Forces report where it pledged in November 2021 to ensure women comprise 30 per cent of the intake of the Armed Forces by 2030.