MOSCOW, March 5 (Itar-Tass) – The number of women in military service in Russia dropped almost to one-third, from 30,000 to 11,000, in the past five years, Lieutenant-Colonel Yelena Stepanova, the head of the department for monitoring social processes in the Sociological Research Center of the Russian Armed Forces, told reporters.
“The number of women in military service (officers and ensigns) dropped almost to one-third since 2007. As many as 30,000 women were serving under contract in 2007, including 4,300 of them officers,” she told on Tuesday the “Women in Service to the Fatherland” forum held in Military University of the Defense Ministry of Russian Federation.
Stepanova said this tendency is “no special action.” It is linked with the general tendency of the Armed Force’s reduction in the recent years.
“It should be noted that women are highly motivated for serving in the army. This has nothing to do with the wish to compete or challenge the stronger sex,” she added. “Women opt for military service not in order to test their strength or prove importance but to achieve self-realization in the military profession,” she said.
Major-General Yelena Knyazeva, the assistant chief of Military University for training and research, said, in her turn, that “the phenomenon of women in service to the Fatherland must be seriously discussed at interdepartmental and federal levels.” She recalled that 800,000 women fought in the Second World War and 200 of them were decorated with the Order of Glory, including four full cavaliers of the Order of Glory.