I focused on telling the media the story of how the Marine Corps had systematically held women back from greatness through poor recruiting practices, and then by segregating them in training and holding them to lowered expectations for performance. And the funny thing? I didn't tell the story to give the Marine Corps a black eye. As anyone who is committed to an institution, faith, or belief will tell you, those who care most for the success of organizations are often the change agents who create the most friction by rocking the boat. The institution was not the problem—the senior leaders were.
The Marine Corps talks a big game about how it is the service with the highest standards and most stringent qualification requirements for enlistment. Yet, for decades, this has not been true for women. With less than 9 percent of the total force made up of women, historically there has been no real focus to ensure that recruiters work to enlist the highest-caliber women. I knew this from two tours on recruiting duty and my year-long stint at Parris Island. Instead of focusing on recruiting top female high school athletes the way we do for men, we have allowed less-qualified women, with little screening or scrutiny, to join.
While data shows that the most successful recruits in boot camp are those who go to training fresh out of high school, the women who typically join the Marine Corps walk into the recruiting office a few years after high school, when they have failed at college, employment, and relationships. In essence, these women join the Marine Corps as a last resort. That, though not optimal, might be okay. But Marine Corps recruiters further their female recruits’ odds of failure by not properly preparing them mentally for what to expect in recruit training, as indicated by the high rate of mental-health discharges for female recruits. Historically, recruiters have not done a good job of holding their female applicants to improving their physical-fitness ability before going to boot camp, which explains the high rates of failure on the initial strength test and lower-extremity injury rates for women at Parris Island. Female applicants are nothing more to their recruiters than a check in the block—they are quota satisfiers as opposed to people the recruiters actually invest in to the same degree that they do with their male applicants.
There is also a high discomfort factor for many recruiters in working with female applicants. Sadly, this is a reflection of the poor state of gender affairs in the Marine Corps. Because so many recruiters get into trouble for having inappropriate relationships with their female applicants, the perception by many is that they should avoid female applicants for fear that the recruits will raise allegations of impropriety. Just as we are seeing with the backlash against the #MeToo movement today, there are a whole lot of male Marines who think that the only way to protect themselves is to avoid one-on-one interaction with female applicants and Marines at any cost.
I can't tell you the number of times I have heard a male Marine say that he would never have a closed-door counseling session with a female Marine in his charge, because he didn't want to risk his career. We hear men in the corporate sector saying the same thing following the #MeToo movement. To me, this is a cop-out. If male Marines treated women as valued members of the team, just as they do with their male counterparts, there would never be a need to fear allegations of wrongdoing. Here's my proof: As a woman Marine, I was still expected to lead male and female Marines throughout my career. When I was in command on recruiting, I was expected to lead my male and female recruiters and applicants—including one-on-one. Leadership and performance expectations should be no different for women, and I wanted to stress this point with the media.
I also wanted to educate the public about the limitations presented by the very construction of Fourth Battalion itself. Want to know why there aren't more women in the Marine Corps? Look no further than the squad bays on the female recruit compound. I don't think there was some nefarious thinking that went into the design of the battalion to keep the percentage of women at 10 percent or less. It isn't a conspiracy issue—it is reality. If you were to compare a male training-battalion squad bay with a squad bay from Fourth Battalion, you would see right off the bat how much smaller the female squad bays are. There's simply not enough room for more female recruits at Fourth Battalion.
It doesn't take a genius to add up the potential bed spaces at Fourth Battalion and see that the maximum throughput per year is capped at approximately 3,200 female recruits, compared to male recruit throughput of 5,300 per male training battalion each year. When you add that women are trained at only one of two recruit depots in the Marine Corps, you see that there is an enormous difference in the throughput of male and female recruits. By my calculation, a total of approximately 32,000 male recruits are trained at Parris Island and San Diego each year, compared to just 3,200 women.1 Since women make up 51 percent of the US population, it is staggering to consider how much talent the Marine Corps misses out on each year, all because of space limitations and a reluctance by male senior leaders to increase the number of women in the force. And, in my view, for the Marine Corps to solve its sexual assault and harassment issues, increasing the number of women in the service would help change and improve the culture.
Finally, I wanted to ensure that the public was made aware of the major disparities in performance
