• Saturday, October 30, 2010
• Inter Press Service

A woman took position alongside male soldiers at the graveside of a fallen colleague. She positioned her AK47 on her shoulder, and on command fired into the grey sky with the others. Mariatu Sesay became at that moment the first woman in the Sierra Leone army to take part in a 21-gun salute to honour a dead soldier.

Onlookers were not used to seeing women in such a role. Yet women are becoming a more common sight in the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces (RSLAF), after a gender policy introduced to ensure equal opportunities, with support from the Accra-based Women Peace and Security Network (WISPEN) and the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

Sierra Leone is a patriarchal society where women and girls are subjected to structural discrimination by practice, custom and law. The subjugation of women was worsened by the 1991-2002 war and its aftermath. A 2004 report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) noted the army's role in the systematic rape of women and girls as a strategy to sow terror.

But it is a changed army now. 'We are breaking the boundaries and barriers that limit our women in the RSLAF,' Chief of Defence Staff, Brigadier-General Robert Yira Koroma tells IPS. Koroma said the army has brought in flexible standards so women can clear the physical recruitment processes. There are an estimated 300 women in the army, of a total troop strength of 8,500, says Col. Michael Samura, in charge of personnel. And they are stepping further and further.

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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