I knew my recruits could do better.
In fact, I thought if we integrated the men and the women at Parris Island, that would already serve as a big push toward ensuring our women—and men—perform and behave better. Several RAND studies had already demonstrated that integration not only improved the PT scores of women but also resulted in better scores for men as well.1
Did I mention that the Marine Corps is the only service to maintain segregated boot camp?
In my eyes, it wasn't just about ensuring that women were physically and mentally capable of joining the infantry. It was about making women in every job stronger, faster, and tougher. I knew that doing so would make the entire Marine Corps better.
I had been looking at our PT scores, and I brought everyone in together to say, “How do we do this better? Why aren't men and women running together?” And some of my Marines who were serving their second tour at Parris Island or who had gone through boot camp there themselves said, “You know, ma'am? When we were here the first time, that's what we were doing. The men and the women did PT and hiked together.”
My reaction? Holy hell. You're telling me we're moving backward?
As it turns out, integration itself wasn't new. In fact, people way before me saw integration as a positive, beneficial thing, and it had already been done.
You could feel a history lesson coming on, couldn't you?
With women, there's always a history, and it's never easy.
Nothing in the Marine Corps is easy, and the “Southern Service,” so-called because of the high percentage of Southern men who make up the branch, was decidedly against opening doors for women.
Many people don't know that 350,000 women served as pilots and clerks and drivers and medics during World War II. The US Army had the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps—the WAAC, which eventually became the Women's Army Corps (WAC). The US Navy had the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services—the WAVES. There were lots of restrictions: women could not lead men; they could only fill a limited number of officer slots; and they could not serve in combat. If you had children or a venereal disease—no lie—you couldn't serve.
Women served in the Korean War and the Vietnam War, and then they began joining the military in peacetime during the 1970s.
After the draft ended, the all-volunteer force needed women to fill the ranks.
And it's possible that some people saw women as a necessary addition to a modern military.
According to the RAND Corporation, the services thought that the Equal Rights Amendment would be ratified in the late 1970s. Conservative activist and lawyer Phyllis Schlafly led a successful charge against the ERA, claiming that women would be drafted into the military. Today, that doesn't seem that crazy a proposition. After all, women can vote for war without having any skin in the game.
In any case, because everyone thought the amendment would go through, the Army and Navy wanted to increase the number of women serving by two times, and the Air Force wanted to increase their number by three times. The Marine Corps opted for a one-fifth increase. That was when President Jimmy Carter was in office: During his time, the WAC became part of the regular Army, and the services allowed women to go to their service academies, including West Point and the Air Force Academy. Through the years, more and more positions became open to women, and they were excluded only from combat units or missions that exposed them to risk of “direct combat, hostile fire or capture”—or the Defense Department's Risk Rule—that was higher than what they were already exposed to in support roles.2
During Desert Storm, women began to fly combat missions.
(Get some, Martha McSally!)
Then, Congress created a new law reinstating the combat aviation ban they had just repealed. Thank goodness that in 1993, President Bill Clinton ordered the services to let women fly in combat aviation roles.
In the meantime, the Army, Navy, and Air Force started integrating boot camp and basic training.
And then Congress got involved.
The Nancy Kassebaum Baker study took place in 1996 in response to the Aberdeen and Tailhook scandals. In the latter scandal, Navy and Marine Corps officers were at a conference in Vegas in 1991 and, by the end of it, more than one hundred of them were accused of sexually assaulting eighty-something women and a handful of men. Most infamously, women trying to get through a hallway to their hotel rooms were forced to “walk the gauntlet,” where they were grabbed and pinched, and worse, by two rows of officers as they walked through them.
And the bosses? The flag officers? They knew and didn't do anything. In fact, they blamed it on the enlisted folks.
Anyway.
Lots of people lost their jobs; President Clinton appointed the first female service secretary; and Congress decided they should look at whether men and women should work together.
My two cents? Yes. They should work together. And everyone should be held accountable to act like adults, just as they are at well-functioning civilian organizations.
What happened at Aberdeen? Twelve male drill sergeants assaulted female recruits at the Army's advanced job-training base in Maryland. Four went to prison, accused of rape and harassment and cruelty. This left Congress wondering if men could be trusted to train and supervise women, instead of asking why there was no supervision to ensure the drill sergeants were acting appropriately.
So the Kassebaum Baker study's “Report of the Federal Advisory Committee on Gender Integrated Training and Related Issues” (catchy, isn't it?), came out, and then Congress had a bunch of hearings. It was as you would expect in the late 1990s: The Republican House disagreed with the Democratic Senate on basically everything. It was also peacetime, for the most part, so the questions arose in a vacuum: How would men
