Hi everyone, this petition is to draw your attention to the plight of women aspiring for Short Service Commision (SSC) at Army Dental Corps (ADC). According to the Information Bulletin  released by ADC on June 30th, 2022, the total number of vacancies for the grant of SSC to desirous civilian Dental Surgeons are 30 among which 27 are for Males & 3 are for Females (attachment 1) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JhxjvZKfgEzaAezmjv3SEiVftvUXh1Hn/view?usp=sharing. Vacancies should be filled based on requirement but not based on sex or any other criteria. This skewed gender distribution of available vacancies reflects the fact that women are not given due importance in the recruitment process.

The entire country celebrated when the honourable Supreme Court passed a landmark judgement allowing the Permament Commission & Command Positions for women in armed forces. However, when it comes to gender parity, we are still lagging. According to a recent Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) report (attachment 2) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MGaGPMNkqjo5iHYIbqLesfcUA3cw2zHV/view?usp=sharing titiled “Selection and Training Officers In Indian Army”, as of January 2020 there were 1648 women officers in the army i.e., 4% of total strength of commissioned officers in the force. Currently the army has a shortage of more than 7000 officers which reflects the urgent need for increasing the intake of women short-service commision officers. 

In the recent Global Gender Gap Report released by World Economic Forum’s (WEF) (attachment 3) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zKUzxFI0CX1hY9Lj-1a-FxefBSK4BIc1/view?usp=sharing it could take 135.6 years to close the global gender gap based on the current rate of change. As per the report, in the year 2020, India had ranked 112th among 153 countries. However, in the latest ranking, India is ranked at 140 out of 156 countries which is worrisome.  

There needs to be a huge leap forward in bringing the gender parity to armed forces as the gap remains very high. In a country like ours, where women are considered as ‘Nari Shakti’, women-led development should be the central theme for governence as empowering women in the workforce is in everyone’s best interest.

I sincerely request you all to support this petition and help us achieve gender parity in SSC recruitment process at ADC. Thank you.