So, in February, I wrote an article for the Marine Corps Gazette, boasting about the great progress my women accomplished. I titled it, “When Did It Become an Insult to Train Like a Girl?” The Marine Corps Gazette is basically the Marine Corps’ professional journal, so the audience consisted of my peers and the senior leadership of both the depot and the Marine Corps’ Training and Recruiting Commands.
In my article, I wrote that for decades, women had scored worse than the men in every recruit boot-camp graduation criteria category except the fitness test, and that was only because the requirements were lower for women than they were for men. No one would have been surprised by this. In fact, they assumed it. It was a given. But I also wrote that no one had ever asked the world's most dangerous question, “Why?” And because the notion that women's performance was inferior to men was never challenged, it became the norm.
I dug into that norm with hammers and tongs: Why, if the only thing scored differently was the fitness test, were women performing so much worse than the men?
That's it. That question consumed my hours from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed. This simple question haunted me. It was with me at every turn, and I was determined to do the analysis and find the root causes. I told you I was a data geek.
But I wrote that the repercussions of that performance put both men and women at risk in war zones. It meant that men served under women who outranked them simply because they entered the military with more college courses.
I talked about segregation and silly notions about rifles not being suitable for women's bodies and chairs after the Crucible hike and how women perform just as poorly at MCT as they do at Fourth Battalion.
And I talked about how much ass my female recruits kicked when we held them to higher standards.
I wrote that women underperformed men on the rifle range by a delta of thirty percentage points. For decades, the female pass rate for rifle qualification was between 67 and 78 percent, and the male pass rate was 85 to 93 percent.
I wrote that in a matter of months we were able to bring female passing scores up to the same rate as the men through increased expectations, convincing the mostly male coaches to first assume “chicks CAN shoot” (shocker), and by lowering DI-induced stress at the range.
In one year, Fiscal Year 2015, our rates fell in line with the men's.
I wrote that the same high standards should be expected in every recruit graduation category for all Marines. After all, isn't this exactly what male Marines had complained about when they said that women shouldn't serve in infantry roles? That the women couldn't meet the same standards?
They can.
Tell them they must meet the standards, and they will.
I sent that steaming-hot, well-crafted article off to the Gazette, and you know what? The Gazette's editor, retired Colonel John Keenan, emailed me back and said that he'd publish it in the September edition.
I hated the long lead time for magazine publishing, but I was excited! My thoughts would get an audience in the Corps’ professional journal. I described a systemic problem in recruiting and training women, discussed it, and made rock-solid recommendations for improvement.
I was sure that by September I would have plenty more to brag about. Naively, I thought everyone else would be bragging, too.
Boy, was I wrong.
I also provided the sergeant major at Parris Island with a courtesy copy so she could brief the general. I didn't want to go around Brigadier General Williams, and I knew the sergeant major at Parris Island supported what we were doing.
After I gave it to our sergeant major, the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps (the head enlisted adviser to the Commandant of the Marine Corps) visited Parris Island, and our sergeant major gave him a copy. He took it back to Washington, DC.
That was in March.
At first, I thought that was great. It seemed like a positive thing because I thought he was going to take it back to the commandant. The story of Fourth Battalion was going straight to the top of the chain of command—to the “King Grunt.” I had such hopes that with my article, the scales would fall from his eyes. The commandant will see the great work we were doing, as well as what needs to be fixed, and implement my recommendations for improvement. You'd occasionally see solid Gazette articles change Marine Corps policy after senior leadership read them.
Boom!
Mic drop!
Voilà!
I'll bet it never occurred to you that Pollyanna joined the Marine Corps when she grew up?
General Joseph Dunford had just taken over as commandant in October. Dunford did not want women in the infantry, and the chorus of retired general officers vehemently did not want women to join their club. In September 2015, Dunford recommended that women be banned from some infantry jobs, according to Marine Corps Times.1 The Army, Navy, and Air Force were moving forward, but, as usual, the Marine Corps was going to buck anything that hadn't been in place for at least a century. The Corps has always been the boat anchor historically dragging behind the other services when it comes to social change: desegregation following WWII, the opening of aviation to women, and the repeal of “Don't Ask Don't Tell.”
But the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps took my article to the executive off-site or EOS—a quarterly board meeting of all of the three- and four-star generals. These meetings are a big deal: It's like when the cardinals come together to elect a pope. So what I didn't tell you is that Joe keeps a strong information network. His contacts reported
