PDforra conference: ‘Attitude towards women must change’

The Government’s plan to double the number of women in the Defence Forces will fail unless its stops discriminating against them.

That is the warning from PDforra which has highlighted cases where women are prevented from getting their full pension entitlements if they take more than a year’s leave of absence during the course of their 21-year contract.

The recently published White Paper on Defence has proposed doubling the current complement of women who currently account for just 6% of the 9,000-strong Defence Forces and 15% of the 2,700-strong Reserve Defence Forces.