In a recent first for women in the IDF, a woman has been appointed to the position of deputy squad commander for an Israeli Air Force squadron of unmanned aircraft at the Palmachim Air Force Base.
In an interview with Israel Hayom following her appointment, Capt. Bar, aged 26, said that “women can do anything men can do, and even do it better.”
The one-upmanship has been something of a pattern in the air force, where women have been able to attain any position that their male counterparts are eligible for.
In 2014, the IDF inaugurated the first female combat battalion commander, Maj. Oshrat Bacher of the Eitam Field Intelligence battalion, and this past month the IDF inducted Capt. Bar into its elite ranks.
Some 18 years after Alice Miller first won her pivotal court case allowing her to enrol in the IAF flight school and later to become the first female fighter pilot, the IDF has taken a more accepting stance in including women in various command positions in combat units in many branches of the IDF.
As of November 2011, women made up over three percent of all combat soldiers, with the majority of them in the IAF, Carcal Infantry Unit, Oketz Special Forces Unit, Artillery, Border Police, and military police positions.
“Today, almost every single position in the IDF is open for female soldiers including combat, field instruction, intelligence and more. Upon enlisting to the IDF girls are offered combat positions in a variety of units,” the IDF Spokespersons Unit stated.
Since 2011, those numbers and positions available to women have only increased.
Bar explained that she never felt any special exclusion and that it was circumstantial that no woman has ever been appointed to her position until now. “I think that it was just by chance that only now was a woman appointed deputy squadron commander, because they needed a woman who wanted a military career and whom the army wanted to have a military career. Up until now, there was no one like that.”
Bar, who met her fiance in the squadron, said that she was very much in favor of choosing a military career for herself, and felt that it was right for her.
“From where I am now, it’s the most interesting and challenging thing I could do with my life. A lot of people my age feel that they’re done with security and aircraft. But I think that what I do is important, and it also makes me feel good, so I decided to stay,” she said.
“Society sees a woman aspiring to a military career as something weird and unusual. There are girls who think it’s too demanding, it’s a societal standard. But there are girls who are also lawyers or who work in high-tech, where the work is no less intensive than it is in the army. Army work is demanding, but if it’s something you think is important enough, it’s worth the demands.”
Bar spoke very highly of the way that others in the IDF have related to her as a woman, and as a woman who wanted to take a command position.
“Throughout my service, I’ve never felt different because I was a woman. It’s important to me to tell women, especially those who are being drafted, not to be afraid of the thing called ‘the army.’ The army knows how to give women what they need, at least that’s what I felt. It’s important to me that women in the army will aim as high as possible and not just think about how to finish (their service.)”
