“This is an historic day for equality and for our armed forces”, says Norway’s Defence Minister, Anne-Grete Strøm-Erichsen. “This is important for two reasons. Male-only conscription is out of synch with the rest of society. All citizens shall have the same rights and obligations, regardless of sex. Secondly, in order to secure our operational capabilities in the future we need to recruit the best, and we need diversity. Therefore we cannot limit our recruitment to the male half of the population”, she says to the Ministry of Defense’s web site.
The Norwegian Government plans to have a Bill on gender-neutral conscription ready for consultation by 2013. The new law on conscription will probably come into force in 2015.
Since 2010 initial online examination tests for conscripts have been obligatory for both sexes. In 2012, 63 841 young Norwegians completed the online examination - 30 825 women and 33 106 men.
The parliament’s decision does not, however, mean that all women must serve in the military. Norway’s armed forces have an annual requirement for 8-10.000 conscripts out of a total of 60.000 men and women in the relevant age group. Recruitment is already high and increasing, and the number of applicants each year exceeds the needs of the Armed Forces.
7836 people completed military service in 2012 - 706 women and 7130 men.
Also Norway’s Chief of Defense Harald Sunde is happy with Stortinget’s decision. He believes that Norway will get better armed forces with the introduction of gender-neutral conscription: “It has not been a good solution neither for society nor for the Armed Forces that we could use only half of Norwegian youth. This measure is important for the recruitment of women to the Armed Forces, but most of all we need women to meet our operational needs”, Sunde says to the Armed Forces’ web site.
Norway’s goal is to have 20 percent women in its armed forces by 2020. Today the share is nine percent. Over the years, a wide range of measures have been taken to increase the number of women, but they have yielded limited results.
