Indian Navy is opening submarine doors to women, but it must navigate crewing challenges

The Navy is set to induct women in submarines, but these deployments come with specific crewing, bunking, and privacy issues that must be addressed.

Representational image of the Scorpene submarine Vaghsheer | Photo: PIB

Some cultures, such as the French, Portuguese, and Italian, consider ships to be masculine, while the Germans use ‘it’, in the neuter gender. But in India and other parts of the world, a ship is referred to in the feminine gender. An explanation, supposedly rendered in a humorous vein, is more naughty than nautical—the first thing a ship does on arriving at a port is to make it for the ‘buoys’! It is perhaps not surprising that among the three Services of the Indian Armed Forces, it is the Navy that is at the forefront of inducting women and projecting ‘nari shakti’. Recently, the Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Hari Kumar, envisioned the Navy’s aspiration of having a woman as its chief within the next 30-35 years.

In line with this, the Navy is opening its doors to women across ranks and departments, including its Submarine arm—a gender bastion considered to pose the greatest challenge for women volunteering for combat roles in any of the three Services. Apart from the challenging combat role itself, there are issues related to crew/bunk management, accommodation, and privacy, arising from the highly restricted space available for working, living, physical movement, and ablutions.

Moreover, these challenges have to be managed and endured for extended periods that could last up to a couple of months. Therefore, health and medical care issues, as well as the psychological implications of mixed-gender crews, also come into play.

 

Crew and bunk management

 Crew and bunk management in submarines are interconnected issues. The essence of the matter is that if genders are segregated, relieving a female crew member with someone of the desired qualification, rank, and gender would be extremely difficult due to the limited pool of available women, especially during the transitional stage to mixed-gender crewing. This issue is further complicated by the fact that service is voluntary, making it unfeasible to assess the availability of female volunteers over foreseeable deployment periods in advance.

The restricted space in submarines does not leave any scope for empty bunks. In some submarines in service with the Indian Navy, ‘hot bunking’ is a common practice, where two sailors on opposite watch rotations share the same bunk. Therefore, mixed accommodation becomes a viable alternative. But this deepens the privacy issue.

Privacy and health

Bunking and personal ablutions are two main areas of concern when it comes to privacy. It is possible to design future submarines for mixed accommodation, wherein all submariners are allocated individual bunks with privacy curtains. There would also be a need to specify a minimum attire policy (for example, shorts and t-shirts) to be worn at all times, including while sleeping, for the entire crew.

In the extremely confined space of the submarine environment, mutual understanding and respect for each other’s privacy are cultural necessities that must be instilled. Prohibitions on socialising and proximate interpersonal relationships have to be strictly enforced, as is already being done on board surface ships. 

However, there is very little room for modifications in the existing inventory of submarines. In the case of personal ablutions, the existing submarines are provisioned with toilets at an average ratio of roughly 1:20/25 people, depending on the Submarine Class. There is no room for any separate provision of toilets based on gender.

Moreover, the submarine atmosphere is characterised by a lack of sunlight, high noise and vibration levels, relative inactivity, and a chronically elevated level of CO2, all of which present documented health risks. Treatment for general gynaecological needs is not available on board, and women are more vulnerable to osteoporosis due to the lack of sunlight. Female volunteers will need to be educated about these risks and will require enhanced medical screening prior to embarkation.

Such issues may impact the quantum of volunteers until future submarines are designed with mixed crewing in mind. But they need not deter those with resilience, self-confidence, and a spirit of adventure.

Challenges can be overcome

In many navies, women, both in officer and enlisted ranks, have been serving on submarines for more than three decades. Norway led the way in 1985 and had the first woman submarine captain in 1995. Sweden, Australia, and Spain followed in the 1990s; Canada and Germany in the 2000s; the US, UK, and France in the 2010s; and Japan and South Korea inducted women in 2018 and 2023, respectively. India decided to do so in 2023 and is in the process of evolving an induction plan.

There is plenty to learn from the experience of other navies, and for sure, the Indian Navy will imbibe knowledge in this sphere and integrate it into the Indian cultural context. Also, having inducted women on surface ships in 1997, the Indian Navy has sufficient experience to draw upon, especially in the areas of crew/bunk management and privacy. In fact, INS Imphal, commissioned in December 2023, includes separate accommodation for female officers and enlisted personnel. However, since such features are not readily adoptable on submarines, the Indian Navy will have to shape its management policies differently for these vessels.

The central challenge during the transition period is the preservation of operational effectiveness. This would require meticulous planning informed by long-term replacement and acquisition plans, which are not solely in the hands of the Navy and are often contingent on the availability of fiscal, material, and technological resources. Ensuring adequate reserves of human capital with specialised skills in various domains of submarine operations would be mandatory. Coupled with the adoption of a mixed-crew accommodation model, this could help mitigate the challenge of managing the uncertain availability of resources based on gender.

Transitional stability can also be better achieved if women officers are inducted in the first phase, followed later by enlisted ranks. This model, adopted by the US and some other countries, has the advantage of providing a period to learn lessons and ensuring the availability of experienced women officers on board to mentor inductees from the enlisted ranks.

 

A national lesson

Watching the Women’s Premier League (WPL) cricket matches, one cannot help but be struck by the talent of Indian women. All that is required is to provide them platforms of opportunity. The talent on display at the WPL holds the promise of taking India’s women cricketers to the world level. It could be a repeat of what the Indian Premier League has done for male cricketers.

This, in fact, is the greater national lesson. The best thing that governments can do is provide opportunities for Indians to realise their potential. Yet, this remains a task that successive governments have yet to achieve on a scale that could make the difference between a developing and developed country.

Lt Gen (Dr) Prakash Menon (retd) is Director, Strategic Studies Programme, Takshashila Institution; former military adviser, National Security Council Secretariat. He tweets @prakashmenon51. Views are personal.

(Edited by Asavari Singh)