My name is Lieutenant Commander Letitia Van Stroem. I’ve been in the navy now for 13 years. I joined because I wanted a bit more travel and adventure, I suppose, as opposed to be just sitting in a legal office. There are plenty of opportunities for females in the Defence Force. Even though it is still more male dominated we still have exactly the same opportunities for promotion, for jobs and we’re certainly given those opportunities and progress through our ranks at the same rate as males. We’re paid the same and there’s plenty of opportunities available if people are interested in joining the Defence Force.
Certainly in the past the Defence Force has received some bad press for sexual harassment and issues in equity and diversity. We have addressed those and we have a whole system in place for people to make complaints. If there’s any issues that they are concerned about, if they feel they have been discriminated against or harassed. And, we certainly take it very seriously. There are few incidents from time to time, but basically we do deal with those and we deal with them very seriously. So we are not in favour, we do not support any type of harassment in the workplace.
As we look back through history there were times where wars were fought to the bloodiest point that they could be. People died, thousands and thousands of civilian casualties, et cetera, et cetera. And through that time since, certainly since the First World War we have developed and you know, become signatory to a number of international conventions for example the Geneva convention. To make sure, that yes, there will be wars, there will be conflicts but to ensure that the innocent people are being harmed and that they’re able to be removed from the situation or at least inflict the least amount of casualties possible to ensure that we are only trying to achieve a military objective. So those laws are in place to ensure those persons are being protected, to ensure that persons that are, that have been wounded, or killed are not mistreated in any way. It’s certainly just to make sure that we’re, we do engage in the conflict with some sort of conscience.