If we couldn't expect the female recruits to complete a nine-mile hike without needing a row of chairs to sit down in because they got tired, why would we expect them to not fall out during a parade?
But they always did. Like bowling pins.
There was always a corpsman—a Navy medic—back there with his little go cart to pick them up after they fainted.
My peers would look at me and shake their heads.
Fourth Dimension.
I came to Parris Island excited about the successes we'd had at my recruiting station. In spite of my initial issues with Colonel Haas, I still hoped we could replicate my previous successes at Fourth Battalion. And to replicate those successes, I knew I had to look at the data.
This time, I wasn't afraid of the math. I wanted pie charts, bar graphs, and Venn diagrams, and I wanted them all to eventually show improvement. I wanted research and documentation and history. I craved statistics.
What I found shocked me.
Even though women had to do less to earn higher scores on the physical-fitness test, they consistently came in after First, Second, and Third battalions—the male battalions. They could run slower and at the time only had to do the flexed arm hang, while the men had to run faster and do pull-ups.
The combat-fitness test, where they also had to perform fewer ammo lifts, low-crawl under fire more slowly, and dash 880 yards less quickly, also showed the women coming in dead last. In drill, where you basically have to know your left foot from your right foot, and turn when the DI says turn, the women typically tied for third. Academics? Last. We had more recruits with a college background, but lower academic scores. Shooting? We always came in last on the rifle range.
In fact, in any given decade, we found that female recruits never performed better at a single graduation requirement than the men—ever.
You might have a month in which the women had better academic scores than the men, but for the year—for the decade—women always underperformed. And no one ever said, “This isn't right.”
I couldn't believe how poorly we had been doing for so many decades—in areas that didn't make any sense for us to be doing poorly. Close-order drill?
For heaven's sake. Women have been walking for centuries.
And academics? Well. We have a Marine who will cross that parade deck at graduation, and she's a private first class because she has college credits, so she outranks the majority of the men, but she can't run three miles in less than twenty-six minutes, she barely passed her basic knowledge tests (despite having more college training than the men), and she's terrified of her weapon. And we wonder why male Marines lack respect for female Marines.
In my view, we're doing both genders a disservice. We should have high expectations for the women, and those high expectations should lead to better scores, and those better scores should lead to more respect from the men, more self-confidence for the women, and a better Marine Corps with Marines capable of taking care of each other and doing their jobs to defend the nation's interests.
To me, it was just like recruiting duty: We had to figure out what the problems were, and then, we had to not only communicate that to the Marines but also ask them for ideas. Then, we needed a plan.
I laid it out for my Marines, and, straight-up, they were just as horrified as I was—90 percent couldn't believe that the women had been doing so poorly for so long. They were mortified. No one had shown them the data before.
It wasn't just worse: It was far worse.
In 2014, at least 33 percent of the men qualified expert at the range. For the women, it was 20 percent.
We were last in written tests.
Most of the drill instructors felt that it was a poor reflection on them—and it was. For too long, their priority had been constantly screaming at recruits for thirteen weeks straight, rather than ensuring that when they crossed the parade deck on graduation day, they could compete with the men—their peers.
I came in wondering what was different for the women that would cause them to be last in categories for which gender should make no difference at all.
I talked earlier about how far behind the women were when they arrived because their recruiters didn't hold them accountable for physical fitness. They failed that initial PT test at an average rate eight times greater than the men.
After boot camp, the recruits all head to Marine Combat Training (MCT), if they aren't in ground-combat jobs. Support Marines, who comprise the majority of the Marine Corps, spend twenty-nine days in the field, training in basic combat skills, before they go to their job-training school. The Marines learn how to shoot a grenade launcher and a machine gun, and look for improvised explosive devices (bombs). They learn what to do if bad guys attack a convoy. But they also complete obstacle courses and hike and run.
My colleague Rob Hancock was the commanding officer of MCT, so he'd send me the attrition data for women.
As a recruit, you can basically quit at any point until you graduate from boot camp. After that, you're going to fulfill your contract. If you sign up for four years, and you make it through boot camp, you're doing four years unless you screw up.
So everyone who starts MCT should finish it. But Rob had women quitting and saying they no longer wanted to be Marines.
If the women refused to train, the school would just administratively separate them—clear the decks for more Marines to train.
Holy crap. No.
Occasionally, there were one or two men who didn't make it. But every cycle, women dropped out or were unable to complete the basic requirements.
It was too tough for them.
I think it is important to note that MCT is the first time the men and women are
