After the Ministry of Defense revealed that they would be requiring female soldiers to march in heels, outrage online has them rethinking their plans.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry has received intense backlash after pictures were published of female students at Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv rehearsing for an upcoming military parade wearing high heels.
In the pictures, the female soldiers can be seen marching in military fatigues and black heeled shoes.
Ukraine criticized for making female cadets parade in heels https://t.co/2pkHsstAyY pic.twitter.com/pqGjMOHpCm
— New York Post (@nypost) July 5, 2021
Even the cadets have admitted that the heels are completely impractical.
“Today we are training in high heels for the first time. It is a little more difficult than in combat boots but we are doing our best,” Ivanna Medvid told ArmiaInform, the news agency of the ministry.
The ministry attempted to defend itself in a post on Facebook, pointing out that heels are part of the military dress uniform for women in several other countries.
According to reporting by Global News, “Defence Minister Andriy Taran had initially planned for the women to march in black pumps with heels for the parade on Aug. 24, which will mark 30 years since Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union.”
People within Ukraine and around the world are calling out the Defense Ministry over the idea, calling it sexist, outdated, and insulting.
“The purpose of any military parade is to demonstrate the military ability of the army. There should be no room for stereotypes and sexism,” three cabinet members said in a joint statement, noting that the 57,000 women who serve in Ukraine’s armed forces “have proved their worth not in heels, but with machine guns.”
Vice-speaker of Ukraine’s parliament Elena Kondratyuk referred to the plans as “ferocious trash” in a Facebook post, and former defense minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk called it “a step toward North Korea.”
Opposition politician Iryna Gerashchenko called the plan a “humiliation.”