Women now make up 20 per cent of Australia's armed forces but ex-servicewomen marching on Anzac Day say they are routinely asked who they are marching for.
Squadron Leader Del Gaudry retired from the Air Force just last week after a career spanning 47 years.
At last year's Anzac Day march in Sydney, she witnessed an elderly woman veteran being challenged.
"She had her medals on and someone asked her who she was marching for and she was quite indignant and she said 'I am marching for myself'," she said.
Ms Gaudry said it was not uncommon for female veterans to be told they're wearing their medals on the wrong side.
"We are still having issues on Anzac Day where women are being asked or sometimes demanded to take their medals off their left-hand chest side."
Military custom dictates medals can only be worn on the left if the person has earnt them themselves.
Women veterans said it's often wrongly assumed that they're wearing medals for their father, husband or son.
"We have a lot of younger women that have joined and some of them have got a number of medals," Ms Gaudry said.
"And particularly some of the older veterans can't understand how someone so young could possibly have those medals, so they are asked or told to move them and put them on the right-hand side.
"Some of the women don't want to march because they don't want to have that confrontation."
Women have been part of the military for generations but female veterans feel they're not given the same recognition as their male colleagues.
"Even though with Air Force and Navy, we represent about 25 per cent, it's still felt by some that we are invisible," Ms Gaudry said.
"It should be normal to be able to see women, no matter what age, with medals on their left-hand side."
Ms Gaudry is the Sydney Coordinator of the Women Veterans Network Australia, which was formed in 2016 to provide support for ex-servicewomen.
"It was really about women who had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and coming back they felt there wasn't a safe place for them to go to have the understanding of some of their experiences.
"Many of the ex-service organisations, they are quite masculine or blokey and not necessarily catering to women who have had a different experience.
"In some cases, the ex-service organisations blatantly told them that wasn't the place for them."
She said a support network specifically for women was needed because females experience life in the military very differently to men.
"While they are not necessarily on the front line with a gun in their hand, sometimes they are involved in decision-making that may lead to the death of others.
For the past two years, the network has held a special Anzac Day service to honour women veterans.
This year's event at Penrith's Memory Park featured a catafalque party made up of young female Air Force cadets, a female bugler from the Navy and a fly-past from a Hercules C-130 military aircraft with an all-female crew.
The guest speaker was veteran Pennie Looker, a former sergeant in the Army's Psychology Corps, who was medically discharged after 19 years' service after suffering a stroke at the age of 34.
She was later diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Unlike their male counterparts, whose struggles with PTSD, depression and suicide have been well-documented, the same can't be said for women.
It's less known that women veterans have suicide rates more than twice those of the general female population.
"I have heard people say 'how could they possibly have PTSD, they haven't been on the frontline?'. They don't have to be on the frontline to get PTSD," Ms Gaudry said.
Ms Gaudry said that women in the military had the added burden of being judged by society in a way that men are not.
"I have a friend who is in the Army and her son is in the Army, they were both deployed at the same time," she said.
"Her son came back a hero and she came back feeling that society had put a demand on her about her being a mother and going overseas and being deployed."
Shirley Delaney joined the Women's Royal Australian Air Force in 1954.
"In those days, it was very hard to be accepted because they didn't believe that we could do the work," she said.
She was made an acting sergeant but had to leave when she got married.
"You weren't allowed to stay in the service if you got married or if you found out you were pregnant."
She remembers how difficult it was to make the adjustment to civilian life.
"It's such a different life, civvy life, than being in the service, it really is. It's very frightening actually to some people."
She's an active member of her local branch of the Women Veterans Network which meets monthly at the Penrith RSL.
"I am very proud of the fact that we do have the Women Veterans to help girls who are getting out of the services.
"There's somebody there for them today which there wasn't before.
"When I got out, even though I was married, I was scared because for nearly four years, it's a roof over your head and it's been taken away."
