I quickly learned that when you hold women to higher standards, they meet them. If we want to change the way female Marines think about themselves, we have to demand more of them as soon as they walk through the recruiter's door.
In 2015, I decided to make “Train Like a Girl” our battalion mantra.
I had been showing that Always commercial to my drill instructors, working it into my classes with the recruits who were just getting to Parris Island, and showing it to those who were graduating.
I told them there was no reason for us not to perform at the same levels as the men. I told them it was okay to be proud of being women. It's okay to be different—we add something to the fight. We needed to work to convince the Marine Corps of our worth; but, first, we needed to believe it ourselves.
I reminded my recruits and new Marines that they had already kicked ass on the rifle range, and we needed to use that success to build momentum for achievement in our other areas.
How?
We compete.
We hold each other accountable.
We hold recruits accountable.
We strive for better.
And we challenge ourselves and each other.
We should be proud to shoot like girls, fight like girls, train like girls, and win battles like girls.
Mean Girls syndrome is a real thing.
The Marine Corps is the last place I expected to encounter it. But it's not just a millennial problem that shows up in movies with Lindsay Lohan. If I had Tina Fey onboard, I'm pretty sure all of my problems would have been solved.
As it turns out, the only way that you can combat Mean Girls syndrome is if the entire chain of command understands that it is a problem, and they are determined to fix it. Basically, Mean Girls or Queen Bee syndrome is when a woman in charge treats women who work for her worse than she treats men. At Parris Island, you could see it in how some women were unwilling to help other women get ahead. Worse, they bullied other women because they believed that bullying is a more masculine trait that would help them fit in with men. I saw it play out every day, particularly in November and Papa Companies.
The Queen Bee was often a senior drill instructor or company first sergeant. For the women who were subordinate to the Queen Bee, life was miserable. The women favored by the Queen Bee existed on tenterhooks, afraid that, at any time, their status could change. The women who were on the Queen Bee's shit list were hazed, shamed, and ostracized.
So much of it was nonsense.
One of my company commanders told me that before I arrived, several Marines stopped using their chain of command to address problems. All of them had several disciplinary violations, and all of them tended to request mast (i.e., to make counter-complaints to someone higher in the chain of command) or file complaints with the inspector general when they were about to get in trouble or when they were asked to do more work or to report something properly. In other words, they filed a complaint rather than deal with their own bad work ethics.
For example, Marine A was upset that Marine B was allowed time to take care of her child if the child were sick or got out of school for an emergency or any of the normal childcare issues. But Marine A also had a child, and she was allowed off every Wednesday to address the particular needs of her child. Other Marines then had to cover for Marine A, which was fine, except it often included Marine B, whom Marine A resented for being allowed to take care of her own child.
Yes. It's convoluted.
That's mostly because it makes no sense.
In any case, Marine A filed several complaints against Marine B for things she didn't like and that weren't based on fact or reason, but the company's leadership essentially ignored the problem. At the same time, Marine A came up with excuses not to work herself, and she barely did her job when she did work. No one did anything to correct this behavior, because they feared retaliation from a small group of Marines in the company. Peak Mean Girls syndrome.
At one point, Marine A overslept and missed a movement (march) out to the rifle range, leaving the company scrambling to find another drill instructor to supervise the platoon at the last minute. But rather than owning up to oversleeping, Marine A said that she had to take her daughter to an appointment that she hadn't told anyone about in advance.
When Marine A returned to work the same day, she made snide remarks about Marine B. When they got back from the range, the new company commander called Marine A into her office. The company commander asked the Marine why she had missed the movement to the rifle range, and Marine A said she had “no excuse.” The CO tried to see if there were other problems but couldn't get the Marine to talk. The CO tried to see if there were underlying problems, but again she couldn't get an answer. So the CO and her first sergeant counseled Marine A to stop making snide remarks and to let them know how they could help. Marine A said she understood.
It should have ended there.
Instead, Marine A said someone else was gossiping about her and causing the company commander to dislike her.
She simply had not been held accountable before. The CO told me that Marine A and some other Marines did not like being held accountable when I came in as battalion commander, either. “Now some Marines are using request mast and IG complaints as a way to get revenge,” the CO told me. I should have paid more attention to this warning.
Because
