Canada follows Jamaica with first female military head
CHIEF of Defence Staff of the Jamaica Defence Force Vice Admiral Antonette Wemyss Gorman was front and centre of the audience recently as General Jennie Carignon was appointed the first female head of the Canadian Armed Forces
The appointment marks a significant milestone in the journey towards gender parity within the armed forces with General Carignon following in the footsteps of General Alenka Ermenc in Slovenia, who was appointed in November 2018; and Vice Admiral Antonette Wemyss Gorman, who was appointed in January 2022.
“As I sat in the appointment ceremony of General Carignon, I reflected on my own journey to the Britannia Royal Naval College in 1993, as an officer cadet and my name tag read ‘Midshipman Kong WRN’, an acronym that meant ‘Women Royal Navy’. This distinction, now a relic of the past, underscored the clear gender distinctions within the same force, highlighting the barriers that women had to navigate within the military.
“And now to welcome another woman as head of a military is testament to the hard work of women before us like the oldest surviving female veteran of the British Army — Ena Collymore-Woodstock — who was born in Jamaica in 1917, and Canadian Major Edna Esther Andrews who was a decorated Second World War veteran who retired as matron of the Canadian Army Nursing Service,” said Vice Admiral Wemyss Gorman.
The two female military heads quickly began to discuss the continued strong partnership between their nations. This includes the ongoing Canada/Jamaica defence dialogue evidenced in Canada’s support to Jamaica’s humanitarian disaster response operations as well as training and pre-deployment for the multinational security support (MSS) mission to Haiti.