Caf Disadvantages

Key Considerations Beginning in the 1970’s the CAF expanded the roles of women in the force, especially after the introduction of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. The CAF proudly boasts 14.8% of those working for the force were women. However, 1.7% (960 force members) reported being victims of sexual assault in 2016 alone. Additionally, of these 960 cases, 1/4 reported the assault to a supervisor and 1/10 reported to the military police. This suggests there is a barrier preventing men and women alike from reporting their assault. Retired Supreme Court justice Marie Deschamps attempted to bring more public attention to the issue and to push the CAF to deal with the issue. This is unarguably a serious issue because, as

This demonstrates that some of the actions on the part of the government and the media are working to a degree. The situation is better than was seen in the 1990’s and early 2000’s because there is more public knowledge about the crisis and some action is being taken. This improvement could be due to Operation HONOUR or the increase in media and public support for survivors of sexual assault. However, there are potential disadvantages of the military coming under such intense scrutiny. These include the creation of a moral panic in which the public believes the problem is more severe and more prevalent than it is in actuality. Furthermore, as mentioned in the Maclean’s article in defence of the military, many other women came forward calming sexual assault is significantly less common than in the earlier years when women first joined the force. One female 25-year veteran further went on to state that commanding officers are quicker to crack down on everything include ‘teasing’ (Bergman,

However, they have arguably received more media attention and coverage of the issue which led to the making of the documentary The Invisible War in (2012). However, unlike Canada which creates ‘operations’ and gives members of the military a slap on the hand as punishment, the American system of justice introduced the Military Justice Improvement Act (MJIA) or almost known as Senate Bill 1752. It was introduced by U.S. Senator Gellibrand in 2013 to reform the process of trial by court-martial. Additionally, the focus of the bill was to address the way in which military sexual assault is handled. The Senator stated that the bill was partially inspired by the aforementioned documentary (The Invisible War, 2012). Additionally, America has made more movements to reduce the commonality of sexual assault with help from the group Protect Our Defenders. This group has worked with Congress to pass legislation on victims rights to remain informed during the court-martial process and to pass legislation to attempt to specifically present trainer sexual assault which occurs due to the inherent imbalance of power (CITE). Therefore, while America has a serious problem to this day, they have made greater steps to reconcile the problem, through legislation improving victims rights and preventing assault