NEW DELHI: Air Vice Marshal (AVM) Shakti Sharma on Tuesday assumed charge as Assistant Chief of the Air Staff (Education), becoming the first woman officer from a non-medical branch of the Army, Navy or Indian Air Force to attain the two-star rank or its equivalent.
It is the distinction between the medical and regular branches that makes AVM Sharma’s appointment a milestone. Women have held flag rank in the Indian military for five decades, beginning with Major General Gertrude Alice Ram of the Military Nursing Service in 1976. Air Marshal Padma Bandopadhyay became the first woman Air Vice Marshal in 2002 and later the first woman Air Marshal, while Lt Gen Punita Arora and, more recently, Air Marshal Sadhna Saxena Nair also rose to three-star rank.
All came through the medical or nursing services, which had opened their ranks to women decades before the armed forces began commissioning women into their regular branches.
That began in 1992, when the first women cadets joined the Officers Training Academy (OTA) in Chennai and the Air Force Technical College at Jalahalli. In the three decades since, women from those streams have gone on to serve as flight commanders, commanding officers and one-star officers.
AVM Sharma was commissioned into the IAF’s Education Branch in 1994 and has since served at training establishments, field stations, command headquarters and Air Headquarters. She was earlier the first woman Group Captain in the IAF outside the medical branch and the first woman officer in the three Services to head a Sainik School, serving as Principal of Sainik School Kapurthala.
Her elevation comes as the presence of women in the armed forces moves into a new phase, with officers commissioned since the early 1990s now reaching the seniority levels from which flag and general officers are drawn.
The fighter stream was opened to women in 2016, while women began entering the National Defence Academy (NDA) in 2022 with their commissioning earlier this year. The Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling on permanent commission also opened longer careers to hundreds of women officers who had previously been confined to short-service tenures.
AVM Sharma’s appointment, however, also underlines how far women remain from the highest levels of command outside the medical services. No woman from a non-medical branch has yet reached three-star rank or held a major operational command. The Army’s combat arms also remain closed to women, while disputes over gender-differentiated promotion criteria continue to reach the courts and tribunals.