Gender Considerations in Critical Incident Management

Gender and Critical Incident Management

In general, Critical incidents are those situations that have the potential to cause injury or loss of life, property damage, and can threaten the organization's standing, public image, or ability to perform its duties. Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM), is an intervention protocol that is developed for dealing with traumatic events, especial for use with military combat personnel who are typically first responders to stressful and serious situations. Of course, within any military action or organization, there will be situations that are often violent, chaotic, and unpredictable. From a command and control perspective, though, there are four major attributes that any critical incident response plan should have:

Anticipate and outline the means of detecting the emergency, collecting preliminary intelligence, assessing the seriousness of the situation (attack, systems affected, damage, protection, etc.).

Planning must include a means to easily contact all relevant employees and outside resources.

Any plan should provide specific instructions for policies, procedures, and legal requirements, especially concerning non-combatants

Templates are often neglected for any documentation; these should be available, particularly with the vision of transparency and media attention in which military operations are subject (Sterneckert, 2004, 249-51).

Women in Iraq- Like many areas in the Middle East, the role of women in Iraq in the 21st century is one of evolution and social upheaval. Their social status is affected by a number of factors: technology and western incursion, the changing role of Islam in the global environment, debates on Islamic law, increased educational opportunities, and especially the Iraq War and military occupation of the country. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women were widowed, for instance, and their status and role within Iraqi society is tenuous at best. While the gender gap is improving, especially due to education, Iraqi women are far less likely to receive what we would consider a basic Secondary Education and certainly equal rights within society. Most of the holdbacks are based on Sharia Law, which uses the Koran to establish modern rights for women. Of course, the Koran was written in the 6-7th centuries, and does not necessarily fit with modern society (Mohammed, 2004).