As an old cone-head I am delighted to see that there are a healthy number of female officers who have chosen the "path of the cone" over the past few years. They have seen the light, decided to get a professional qualification which is highly valued both in the service and in civvy street - so much so that our own Institution of Royal Engineers is, quite rightly, making moves to emulate the professional accreditation systems established by the civilian engineering institutions.
My question is this; Why is it that there are at least 6 serving regular female PQE Majors who are apparently, repeatedly avoiding serving at 170 Infrastructure Support Engineer Group? Not one of them has done their bit at Chilwell during living memory!
Our highly valued volunteers in 65 have bucked the trend and lead the way when it comes to deploying female CEng officers to war zones - so why not the regular serving CEng officers?
Is there an APC policy not to post female PQEs to Chilwell?
Do APC lack the backbone required to post a female officer to one of the busiest and most operationally committed units in the British Army?
A cynic might say that female regular PQEs were war-dodging - Not I though.

You had TA PQE Officers from 65 deployed on Ops? The only ones I saw on ops apart from a couple of gleaming JNCO's were normally working for the contractors as civvies. Including one delightful individual who on arrival introduced himself to all the heads of sheds of the resident units by saying "Hi, I'm Major XXXXXXX RE". He didn't get away with that buffoonery for long Quite disappointing when you bear in mind he was also an OC of a STRE(V) and should have known better if he thought that would gain him any leverage with us.

Acceptable to work for a contractor on lots of dosh, not acceptable to use a TA rank whilst doing so after the STRE out there was very short of manpower and a trawl of 65 produced no Officer volunteers, again.

Edited to add: Beats me why there are no female OC's/2IC's at Chilwell? Never even crossed my mind but its a valid point.

OldCone said:

As an old cone-head I am delighted to see that there are a healthy number of female officers who have chosen the "path of the cone" over the past few years. They have seen the light, decided to get a professional qualification which is highly valued both in the service and in civvy street - so much so that our own Institution of Royal Engineers is, quite rightly, making moves to emulate the professional accreditation systems established by the civilian engineering institutions.
My question is this; Why is it that there are at least 6 serving regular female PQE Majors who are apparently, repeatedly avoiding serving at 170 Infrastructure Support Engineer Group? Not one of them has done their bit at Chilwell during living memory!Our highly valued volunteers in 65 have bucked the trend and lead the way when it comes to deploying female CEng officers to war zones - so why not the regular serving CEng officers?
Is there an APC policy not to post female PQEs to Chilwell?
Do APC lack the backbone required to post a female officer to one of the busiest and most operationally committed units in the British Army?
A cynic might say that female regular PQEs were war-dodging - Not I though.

Ask Older By The Day or Pantsoff, they were in the same Sqn as me when she was OC and have a similar opinion of her.

Any way back on track. What doesn't help is that a two year post as an OC of an STRE only counts as one years command when the promotion board sits for Lt Col so they need to do 2 OC posts. It's a bit strange, I know an STRE OC only has a tenth of the manpower however he/she is the project officer for over $300 million or so dollars woth of work in Afghanistan. You don't get many OCs of field/armoured etc sqns managing that kind of budget.

This thread has gone totally over my head....I did my time in The Corps, 10 yrs 185 days, according to my red book, inc JL's service, but I haven't got a clue about what any of you are talking about ,have I led a sheltered life, or am I missing something...LOL!?