Women's role in Navy and defence

 In October 1976, Dr. Barbara Ghosh became the first woman officer in the Indian Navy to attain the rank of commander. Having joined the navy in 1961, she was also the first woman medical officer to receive a permanent naval commission.

Dr. Punita Arora, commissioned in 1968, is the first woman in the India Navy to reach the second highest rank as the Lieutenant General,and the first female Vice admiral. Padmavathy Bandopadhyay is the first woman Air Marshal of the IAF and the second woman in the Indian armed forces to be promoted to a three-star rank after Lt. General Punita Arora.Despite this Indian Navy is still against the idea of putting women in warship as sailor, eventhough they fly on maritime patrol aircraft like P8I and IL 38 

On 8 March 2018, International Women's Day the 6 member crew of INSV Tarini that took part in Navika Sagar Parikrama namely Lt Cdr Vartika Joshi, Lt Cdr P Swathi, Lt Cdr Pratibha Jamwal, Lt Payal Gupta, Lt Aishwarya Boddapati, and Lt Shourgrakpam Vijaya Devi were conferred Nari Shakti Puraskar for outstanding contribution towards women empowerment. The award was received by Lieutenant S Vijaya Devi, who is Northeast India's first woman sailor on behalf of team.

On 2 December 2019, Sub-lieutenant Shubhangi Swaroop became the first woman pilot for the Indian Navy. She will be flying the Dornier survelliance aircraft.

As of 2020, Women are not yet allowed as combatant in the combat specialist forces, such as Ghatak Force, Garud Commando Force, MARCOS, para commandos, etc.

Dr. Seema Rao, also known as "India's Wonder Woman",is India's first woman commando trainer,having trained over 15,000 Special Forces of India(including the NSG Black Cats, MARCOS, GARUD)as full-time guest trainer for 20 years without compensationas a pioneer in close quarter battle (CQB). 

Indian Coast Guard

Women can join the Indian Coast Guard in officer ranks as general duty, pilot or law officers.In January 2017, Indian Coast Guard became the first force to deploy four female officers, assistant commandants Anuradha Shukla, Sneha Kathyat, Shirin Chandran and Vasundhara Chouksey, in combat roles on board KV Kuber hovercraft ship patrolling the Indian maritime zone bordering Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Assam RiflesEdit

In April 2016, Assam Rifles inducted a first batch of 100 female soldiers who had undergone year-long training programme and graduated in the passing-out parade at the Assam Rifles Training Centre and School in Shokhuvi in Dimapur district of Nagaland. They will be deployed at Cordon And Search Operation (CASO), Mobile Check Posts (MCP) and road opening operations in various battalions for search, frisking and interrogation of women, crowd control and dispersal of female agitators. 

All three women, to be the first ones to be promoted to three-star rank in the Indian Armed Forces, are from the Medical Corps and graduate medical doctors of the Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC).

In 2004, Punita Arora was the first woman to be elevated to the rank of Lieutenant General in the Indian Army. In 2005, she moved from the Army to the Navy as the Armed Forces Medical Services (AFMS) has a common pool which allows officers to move from one service to another depending on the requirement. In the Indian Navy, she also held the rank of Vice Admiral.

In late 2004, Padma Bandopadhyay became the first woman to be promoted to the rank of Air Marshal in the Indian Air Force's Medical Services. She was the second woman officer to be promoted to a Three Star rank.

In early 2020, Madhuri Kanitkar was elevated to the rank of Lieutenant General in Indian Army's Medical Corp.

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