A 16-year-old student wrote in a forum letter to Straits Times, saying that Singapore should make National Service compulsory for women, to serve alongside men”.
The Secondary School student wrote the letter, titled “Voices of Youth: Let women serve National Service to help raise birth rates”.
She reasoned that doing so would help to raise Singapore’s birth rates because the women would interact with men during their service and forge relationships, resulting in marriages and children and thus helping to raise birth rates.
She also said that women serving NS would help increase the size of our defence force.
The idea of women serving NS isn’t new; in Lee Kuan Yew’s The Singapore Story, he shared that he was keen to have Singaporean women serve NS like Israel’s women, but Goh Keng Swee didn’t want the new ministry to carry this extra burden.
Lee Kuan Yew also shared that because the other ministers in the Defence Council were also not anxious to draft the women, he didn’t press his point.
Image source: Ministry of Defence Singapore Youtube Channel (Into The Fray – The Making of a Female Soldier)