Keeping women in uniform

THE statistics cited by the Chief of the Defence Force, Angus Houston, on the employment of women in the services show that military careers remain overwhelmingly a male preserve. Speaking at the launch of the action plan for the recruitment and retention of women, Air Marshal Houston noted that women were a little more than one-eighth of service personnel, compared with more than a third of the Australian workforce. Women are more common in the navy (18 per cent) and air force (17 per cent) than in the army (10 per cent). A quarter of a century after the passing of the Sex Discrimination Act, and the elimination of explicit barriers to women's employment in other parts of the economy, that is not a particularly good record.

The battle beyond the war zone

'WHO do you think joins the Taliban?" the Afghan engineer wants to know. Our interview, in a meeting house in Tarin Kowt, is almost done. The flasks of chai are empty, the low table is littered with the debris of home-grown almonds consumed over long discussion of development works in the impoverished nearby villages, some of them using money provided by Australian taxpayers.