20-year naval reserve veteran honoured for her work fighting for equality

Delaney Kelly · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 18, 2025 7:21 PM EDT | Last Updated: 9 minutes ago

With 20 years of acquisition successful the reserve forces and 5 kids astatine home, seasoned Rachel McCarthy knows a happening oregon 2 astir being a pistillate who is besides a leader.

Now the P.E.I. nonmigratory has received a commendation for her enactment advocating for sex equality successful the military.

"It was a fantastic surprise," said McCarthy, who lives successful Kensington and serves as the operations main and seat of the diverseness and inclusion bid advisory squad astatine HMCS Queen Charlotte successful Charlottetown.

McCarthy is 1 of 7 women connected the Women Veterans Council Assessment Board who received this commendation for their contributions to bettering the Canadian forces.

McCarthy joined the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve connected a whim, portion she was playing shot for the University of Prince Edward Island varsity team. Her teammates suggested it as a mode to marque immoderate currency during the summertime portion staying successful shape.

She figured that erstwhile the autumn semester rolled around, she would instrumentality to studying full-time. Little did she cognize however overmuch she would emotion the reserve life. 

"It becomes a portion of you and who you are," she said. 

McCarthy said she has been capable to person a wide assortment of experiences portion inactive enjoying her civilian life. She has travelled, continued playing soccer, worked arsenic a teacher, and built a household — each portion being an state to different pistillate veterans. 

In the outpouring of 2024, she was recruited to beryllium a subordinate of the appraisal committee for the Women Veterans Council. 

"Our relation was to assistance take veterans, women who were subject and RCMP, to beryllium the typical of the first-ever Women Veterans Council," McCarthy said. 

Different needs from antheral veterans

She said Veterans Affairs Canada decided to create the assembly due to the fact that they were proceeding from women successful the work that women's divers needs were not being met. 

"There is compounding empirical grounds that women's experiences wrong the RCMP and subject — and however that affects america and our bodies — is precise antithetic from our antheral counterparts," she said. 

As well, she said she had noticed that women would often person to enactment harder to basal out, compared to men moving successful the forces.

"You tin consciousness that an idiosyncratic being antheral would beryllium benignant of the default prime for a presumption — and if you privation to beryllium capable to get that position, you bash person to radiance a small brighter," she said. 

"There is conscionable specified a assortment of experiences that women person had to flooded to beryllium capable to beryllium considered astatine the aforesaid level [as] their antheral counterparts." 

McCarthy feels powerfully that a person's sex should not find which jobs they tin bash and however they are treated. 

"I'm truly gladsome that the consciousness of that, and different women speaking to feeling that aforesaid way, is becoming much known, and determination is enactment being taken to beryllium capable to assistance alteration that narrative," she said.