That may sound absurd, but if you look at the Fortune 500 ranks, you'll see that women make up about 4 percent of the CEO positions. It's the same dynamic with the good old boys and glass ceiling.
So you would think that women would band together to raise each other up, right? Guess what else never occurred to me until I arrived at Parris Island?
There's no mentoring or professional network for women in the Marine Corps. There are so few of us that it's dog-eat-dog. We're all trying so hard to fit in that we're not about to group together. We're trying to be one of the guys. Our buddies are guys. Is someone having a hard time? That sounds like drama—I'm going to stay away from her. But that's just it—we shouldn't have to fit in, and we shouldn't think twice about checking in with each other and supporting each other when there is drama. “Drama” in the military is often code for sexual harassment or sexual assault or gender discrimination or being looked down upon because you can't get behind the wheel of a Humvee when you're nine months’ pregnant or not being able to pass a physical-fitness test because you're not strong enough. None of those things should qualify as “drama.”
When I was at recruiting command the first time, I was one of two female operations officers in the nation. When I took command on recruiting the second time, I was the only female commanding officer. As I was leaving, I reached out to another woman taking command to let her know I was here for her for whatever she needed. I never got a call back. And I know why. You don't want to be that woman—the one who needs another woman's help. The woman who can't manage to hang tough with a bunch of guys, no matter what. It's my biggest regret that I didn't go out of my way to lift other women as I worked my way up the career ladder. But I was that person who thought, “I don't want to associate with her, because people will think I'm weak.”
Surprisingly, the expectation that women will fail can be strongest among other women.
Of course, it shouldn't be only women who rally to support other women, but it seems like a pretty good place to start.
Instead, we learn the old-school ways, the way the Marine Corps (or the company or the sports club or the family) has always done it. When I was a recruiting-station commanding officer, I shouldn't have felt like I needed to cuss or I needed to yell. I shouldn't have felt like that's what people do to get a point across, but it's everything I had observed my leaders and counterparts doing. It was just normal. It's the way we were raised in the Marine Corps. But it's a double-edged sword for women to be aggressive leaders.
Let's face it: My yelling comes off completely different from when one of my peers yells. If Major Sam Smith called in one of his Marines and said, “Hey! You need to get your head out of your ass!” Lieutenant Jim Jones would be like, “Oh. Okay. I just got my butt chewed.” But if I called someone into my office and said, “Hey! You need to get your head out of your ass!” it's abuse. When I yelled at Marines to hold them accountable for screwing up, they were more likely to complain to my boss that I was mean. And most of my bosses were more likely to feel sorry for them and to lecture me on being nicer rather than to examine the reasons for the counseling to begin with. They would never say this to a guy.
I remember coming home and telling Joe about a counseling session I had with some of my recruiters who hadn't written a single contract in months.
“Well, what did you say?” Joe asked.
“Well, I told these Marines that if they didn't start doing their jobs, I was going to f-ing fire them,” I said.
Joe looked at me thoughtfully.
“You know, if I said that, they'd be saying, ‘That Plenzler is a tough leader,’” he said. (Plenzler is Joe's last name.) “‘Don't get on his bad side.’ But because you said it, you're being mean, or just being a bitch.”
Sometimes, Joe sees things I don't see, because he knows how men treat each other. I could see him sorting out how to tell me what he thought.
“For most men serving in the Corps,” he said, “the thought of a woman as a peer, competitor, or boss is a complete paradigm breaker. They understand women as moms, teachers, sisters, girlfriends, girlfriends that dumped them, and girls they couldn't get, but that's pretty much the extent of it.”
Even so, have I mentioned this was the Marine Corps? No matter how you feel about women, you should, as a Marine, have the ability to have your ass chewed. It's almost innate. It shouldn't matter if the ass-chewer is a man or a woman. We are supposed to be rough and tough, and yet my male Marines were given carte blanche to act as they wished, while I was told to smile more and be nicer—no chewings of asses, because the men couldn't handle it.
My experience as the commanding officer of a recruiting station was the second time I had a boss who understood what I was trying to achieve and the obstacles I faced with gender bias. For my first year, a (rare) female general was in charge of the region, and she served as a mentor for my boss. He respected her even though she was a woman, and it caused him to think a little differently. So, if he heard a Marine complain about me, he would offer a different perspective. Further, he
