Hei! I’m a Norwegian woman in my early 20s and I’m seriously considering doing military service, but I still have a lot of questions and mixed feelings. I figured Reddit might be the best place to get honest answers instead of recruitment brochures.
I’ve grown up hearing that the Norwegian military is pretty gender-equal and more relaxed compared to other countries, which is honestly part of what attracts me. At the same time, I’m trying to understand what that actually means day to day, especially during rekruttskolen.
I keep seeing people online say things like men and women sharing rooms or showering together, and I’m not sure how true that really is versus exaggeration. Are the living spaces actually mixed? Or is it more like same-gender rooms but mixed units? And what about showers. Are they fully open, or are there some privacy options?
I’ve even seen video clips where male and female soldiers do a skinny-dipping exercise togetherand I’ve read articles that mention soldiers continuing to bathe together even after basic training.That sounds so wild to me (in a respectful way!) since it’s so different from what I’m used to.
I’d really love to hear from anyone who’s served, especially other women. How was it in reality versus what you expected? What was the hardest part to adjust to, socially and mentally? Did the mixed-gender environment feel normal after a while, or did it always feel a bit strange?
Tusen takk 💙 Just genuinely curious and trying to decide if this is the right path for me 🇳🇴
What is basic training like in the Norwegian Armed Forces? (especially for women)
byu/IcyClerk97 inNorway
Posted by IcyClerk97
7 Comments
Nice try, Putin
Shared rooms. Not sharing showers. If bathrooms are shared there are stalls(IE unisex) and no urinals.
Physical requirements are significantly more relaxed for women.
Done my service over several years, not a woman.
Most of the camps I have been to there was gender rooms, not mixed. Out in the field we had to get by with what we had, like tents with everyone inside. Our group/patrole was also mixed.
Do the service now while still young and healthy, its much harder starting at 25+ It will give you both memories and learned lessons for life.
‘Equal’ means being treated differently or better than men. 😉
Join or don’t—military is military, not a place where you should expect to be treated like a queen because you’re a female.
Yes, we bathe together.
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(My apologies if I’m a bit rambly, taking a little trip down memory lane here while writing, and it’s getting late :P)
Holup… sharing rooms and showering together? At basic training as a recruit even?
Now, I haven’t been in the military since 2007, but for some reason I KINDA doubt it. At least some seperator or scheduled use of the facilities…
When we were recruits we barely even saw the female squad (there were only one in our year, think it was like 10-15 of them or something like that), and it looked like they were getting a very… tent trip with the girls experience from where we stood. Of course I were 18 at the time, so my view will have been colored by immaturity and probably more than a bit of stupidity. But never saw them running, doing the drowning thing or anything like that. Saw them get gassed though, and same as us, they did not seem to appreciate it, CS gas is a bitch to most people, my eyes hated me for like a solid week.
The most important part though is that this may have changed since, but I would be shocked to find mixed rooms and showers. That’s a recipe for sexual relations, and that is not great for anyone, especially if it turns toxic (jealousy, couple fights etc a lot of social issues can arise from intimacy between genders.) or results in pregnancy. Allowing that as a norm would be an amazing lack of common sense in leadership.
That being said, after the recruit period, things shifted quite a bit as we were sent throughout the country. I got sent to Oslo, and shared squad with several women, but rooms were still split by gender. Just that amount of proximity led to some sexual relations at the location… somehow (There was NOTHING sexy anywhere there). If we extrapolate that to combining women into rooms with 4-6 men, there’s more than a little chance that something happens.
That being said, people were usually quite polite and respectful to eachother, irregardless of gender, orientation etc, I never personally witnessed anyone being inappropriate (unless it were consentual, in which case the pair may act inappropriate, but you know how it is with teens in a common area). That is all after the recruit period, where idiots and druggies were weeded out over a period of two months.
Word of warning though, in my year, like half quit after the first week, a staggering part of which were there willingly, not by requirement. By the time we completed our time as recruits, only a fraction of those I arrived with were still present (disregarding females, as we were seperated so much that I weren’t really able to take note in either case). Every single person on my troop that came by choice was gone, spare one, and he joined some elite programme. Hearing stories from other troops later, it seems that willing recruits have a surprising failure rate… which is interesting.
I **ASSUME** that this is due to the amount of people that come just to shoot guns or something silly like that, but worth noting, provided that females get the same experience as males.
I would love to hear if any females have experiences? Especially if they were in around the same time as me, always been curious as to how it really was.
TLDR
From my POV, **as a male**, it seemed that females were treated with respect, and got another programme than males, though I don’t know the details. Interactions between genders were much more common after the recruit period, but nowhere near “shower together”. Military service does form some amount of “brotherhood” that is not gender exclusive, so depending on the setup of where you’re deployed, you may experience something like skinny-dipping etc, but I haven’t heard anything about pressure to participate, and absolutely never heard about it as a “training exercise”… that sounds like something that would get the commanding officer reassigned xD
If anyones experience is newer, please do confirm if things has changed, I’m genuinely curious. Same thing if any women were in the military around the same time I were, never quite got to know how the female experience was properly during their time as recruits.
Just to repeat, I am male, I have not experienced the female side of the equation until after the recruit period, where it was… well… almost like having a job, so we largely behaved as such. Suits, polished shoes, polite greetings, lots of coffee and whining about shifts.
I will say, I found it a valuable experience on the whole, so would recommend it. But it’s a harsh two months, followed by 10 months or so of office work if you’re lucky/unlucky. What happens after the recruit time kinda depends on where you go.
>I’ve grown up hearing that the Norwegian military is pretty gender-equal and more relaxed compared to other countries, which is honestly part of what attracts me. At the same time, I’m trying to understand what that actually means day to day, especially during rekruttskolen.
For the most part it just means you shouldn’t be discriminated against because of gender. Though obviously sexual harassment is a thing that happens more than it should.
Generally speaking most people I know who have served, including women, seem to think of it fondly.
>I keep seeing people online say things like men and women sharing rooms or showering together, and I’m not sure how true that really is versus exaggeration. Are the living spaces actually mixed? Or is it more like same-gender rooms but mixed units? And what about showers. Are they fully open, or are there some privacy options?
This depends on where you are stationed, but mixed rooms is not uncommon. That’s been a result of a multi-year project which found that mixed rooms led to better integration and less sexual harassment.
The general thing seems to be that it fosters a more sibling type relationship which means less fraternisation (fraternatisation means “no fucking”, which is pretty much the cardinal rule for women who want to be taken seriously in the military. Do not, ever, fuck the other soldiers).
While mixed rooms might in some barracks share a bathroom, that bathroom is room specific for those cases and only has one occupant at a time.
Showers and bathrooms are not mixed gender.
Showers are never mixed gender.
>I’ve even seen video clips [where male and female soldiers do a skinny-dipping exercise together](https://youtu.be/XjD2IQiEsbk?si=D-ByXnpZONnr13de), and I’ve read [articles that mention soldiers continuing to bathe together even after basic training](https://www.thelocal.no/20141103/female-soldier-made-to-bathe-nude-with-30-men.That) sounds so wild to me (in a respectful way!) since it’s so different from what I’m used to.
There are exercises in which being naked might be necessary for the task at hand, and for those exercises you might be in mixed gender company.
For example for passering av vassdrag (crossing a river), in which nuding up and packing your stuff in a water-tight bag might be necessary. But the other option is to keep your clothes on which means your clothes get wet, which is how people get hypothermia, frostbite, skinsores, etc.
Otherwise things like hygiene is quite important, failure to properly wash and maintain yourself injures a lot of soldiers every year. Which if you’re out on an exercise where privacy is limited might actually mean you have to undress entirely or partially where others can see you.
So yes they might make a point of washing together during an exercise, simply so you’ll get over it and not avoid cleaning yourself for multi-week exercises (which is how people end up with infections).
Generally speaking I’d explain it like this.
Would you prefer to get naked around your squadmates or to get frostbite on your genitals because you didn’t want to change your underwear in front of them?
Yes that is an actual thing that has happened.
For women one of the primary concerns is UTIs, which is just very easy to get if you’re rolling 3 weeks in without washing yourself.
Do keep in mind that there is absolutely nothing sexy about any of this.
You’re cold, you’re hungry, you’re tired, you’re sleepy, you are in at least a little bit of pain from some injury you’ve been nursing for the last week.
There is nothing particularly enticing about one of the girls taking a shit over by the trees or going to the river to wash off 8 days worth of grime.