US Female Marine Officers

[Gregory Matthews]

In this forum, some have argued that military standards have been lowered, below what is needed for combat readiness, in order to accommodate the entry of females into the military.  In these arguments the Marine Corps has been a subject of this thinking.  Here are some recent facts:

In 2012 the Marines opened the Infantry Officer Course to women, in an attempt to research issues related to female infantry officers.  This is a 13 week course in which typically 25% of the male candidates fail to pass the course.  It should be noted that this is after a rigorous selection process to even get selected for the course.  By 2015, when this experiment ended, some 32 women had attempted the course.  None of them completed the course.

Since 2015, four (4) additional women have attempted to take the course.  Two failed the pass the course.  One other woman was admitted to the course twice and failed to pass.  [NOTE:  While I do not know the circumstances of this, a person may be dropped from one course and admitted again for reasons which include an injury that prevented the person from continuing on the first time.]  The 4th woman completed the course requirements this past Wednesday and will graduate this next Monday.  She will be the 1st female to graduate from that course.

Following graduation, she will likely be assigned to an infantry platoon.

This does not seem to me to be a lowering of the standards.

NOTE:  The information for the above, which I have worded myself, came from an article by Dan Lamothe, of the  Washington Post and was published in the September 21 edition of the Sacramento Bee, on page 4A.