“It’s called a band of brothers. I would rather rephrase it to a
band of brothers and sisters.” With its “no-exclusion policy,”
Canada is also recognized internationally as one of the few
militaries to have officially removed all barriers to women.
Canadian women have served and died on the front line in
Afghanistan, and make up four percent of the roles in Canada’s
so-called combat arms divisions, and 14.8 percent of military
roles overall. Karen Davis, a gender integration expert for
Canada’s armed forces, acknowledges that women have to adapt to
the “masculine warrior culture” of combat units. But when
Canadian men and women were sent to fight on the front lines in
Afghanistan, fears that women’s presence would hurt all-
important unity did not bear out, she said. “What we learned
when we went into Afghanistan is that Canadian soldiers are
trained to do a job, no matter if they were men or women,” Davis
said, adding that proper and rigorous training before deployment
helped make this happen.