Women are appealing for more public sensitivity at Anzac Day services
WOMEN are appealing to the public to be more sensitive at Anzac Day services. It follows a national campaign called By the Left, after female veterans found themselves being mistakenly challenged for wearing medals on the wrong side of their chest.
Manly
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THIS year, women and young veterans are appealing to the public to be more sensitive at services.
It follows a national campaign called By the Left, after female veterans found themselves being mistakenly challenged about wearing their husband’s, father’s, or grandfather’s medals on the wrong side of their chest.
In fact, they were wearing their own campaign and service medals, not those of a relative. Veterans pin their medals on the left, while people wearing the medals of their loved ones, must wear them on the right.
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Tamara Sloper-Harding, a vice-president of the Avalon Beach RSL Sub-Branch, and a 19-year Navy veteran, said she was so sick of being challenged about her medals, that she once hid them under her clothing on Anzac Day.
“I didn’t march for quite a long time and when I did, people would come up to me and say ‘you’ve got your medals on the wrong side luv’,” she said.
“On my first Anzac Day back from Timor, I actually wore my medals under my collar. I knew I had them on, but nobody else could see them.”
Ms Sloper-Harding, whose service included a deployment to East Timor, said young male veterans, some of whom risked their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq, often faced the same questioning about their medals.
By The Left was started by the Women Veterans’ Network Australia to encourage women, and younger male veterans, to march together on Anzac Day to raise awareness of their important contribution to the ADF.
Ms Sloper-Harding said the Avalon sub-branch had been identified as a major supporter of By The Left because older veterans were so welcoming of women and young people who served in the ADF.
“It’s assumed by the general public that because I’m a woman, and I don’t look like a veteran a lot of the time, that I’m wearing my husband’s medals,” she said.
“People don’t really understand that if you’re wearing the medals on the left, they belong to you and that you’ve earned them.”