Army nurses are indignant at the male bias and stereotype their white uniform represents
THE nurses in our army aren’t in the pinkest of moods these days. And it’s mostly to do with the colour and also the type of their uniform. Changed from white skirts and blouses to olive green trousers and shirts recently, the nurses are fuming at the imminence of an order which will put them back into their discarded white robes again. They crib that a chauvinist army wants its women members dolled up to appease its "huge male ego".
It has all the makings of a mini-revolt in the ranks of the care-givers. Hundreds of representations against the impending change of uniform are being made daily. On the mailing list are the President, defence minister, chiefs of the armed forces, Human Rights Commission, Women’s Liberation Cell, Trained Nurses Association of India, even the ‘pro-woman’ I&B minister Sushma Swaraj and Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Vehement protests —mostly anonymous, occasionally bravely signed—at the unfairness of being dressed in and out of clothes are being posted in the dozens out of army hospitals.
Just last July, after discussion and trial, the army nurses found themselves discarding their white skirts, blouses and stockings for sets of spanking new suits—olive green shirts, trousers and white lab coats—which they insisted should have been theirs a long time ago. Till, a seven-member review meeting of the various army medical contingents held at the office of the director general, Armed Forces Medical Services, in January revoked the decision in one stroke: military nurses were to revert to white uniforms. The only opposition then came from the representative of the nursing community—the head of the Military Nursing Services: "mns officers are satisfied with the present dress. They don’t find anything wrong with it."
The reasons for the change, as listed in the minutes of the meeting (no. 44073/msac/ 1(2001)dgafms/dg-1c(i)), cites the five-month-old olive green uniform as "patient unfriendly" and "not compatible to the patients’ perceived understanding of a nurse". Citing "patient feedback", it says the clientele in the naval hospitals "confirm that the olive green trousers-and-shirt combination has not been accepted as a dress befitting the nursing staff". It further makes the claim that a nurse with "OG (olive green) trousers, tucked in shirt and belt looks more like a rigid and overbearing military person rather than a nurse with a healing touch. This is likely to affect the patients’ psyche".
The nurses, however, are livid. The olive green uniforms that doctors, ward boys, ward masters, food distributors and sweepers don don’t seem to have detrimental effects on the "patients’ psyche", they point out. The nurses allege: "The fact is that men in the army don’t want the women in it to dress like them. We’re treated like second-rate citizens, segregated by colour."
Their uniforms, the military nurses charge, have always been tailored to discriminate by gender. Skirts, in their opinion, can be uncomfortable. Bending down for patient care, driving to work, being airlifted to help jawans serving in difficult terrains in such outfits can be very hassling. Besides, maintenance of the starchy whites only adds to the troubles. "But what hurts the most is that we’re lieutenant colonels and majors only on paper, even the sipahis in olives never see us as one of them," one of the representations exhorts. "And why should they? We aren’t even seen eligible enough to wear the same uniform."
The nurses had to spend a fortune for their smart new olive green uniforms—anything between Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 with stitching charges for the winter clothes and ceremonial suits. They say they weren’t even reimbursed for the changeover. "We’ll become the laughing stock of the force, being dumped from one apparel into another," says one. The fear now is that the men might meddle again. "Next they might want us to crop our hair short."
There’s the discontent about inequitable salaries, stretched working hours and honour too. Supposedly on par with the other officers, the nursing officers are paid less—lower basic pay, and no rank pay, a component of all other army wages. Entitled to "salute", according to the defence services regulations, the care-givers claim that even the soldiers don’t salute them. Long working hours, night shifts that stretch for 12 hours for 15 days, few holidays—all add up to make for a discriminated lot. The nurses even plan to even move the courts. A war over uniforms is the last thing that our embattled army would want today.