This month's Marine Corps Gazette touts the essay by Capt. Lauren F. Serrano that won 1st Place in the Maj. Gen. Harold W. Chase Prize Essay Contest. The contest stipulated that entrants "be bold," challenge policy, and propose and argue for a better way of doing business.
Serrano's essay — titled "Why Women Do Not Belong in the U.S. Infantry" — meets none of these stipulations.
Instead, it quite boldly supports current policy: exclusion of women from the infantry based arbitrarily upon their gender. She doesn't argue for a better way to do business, but rather business as usual.
On literary parade are all the old-school arguments for a gender divide: The infantry is a fraternity, and gender-mixing will distract from training for and executing "the mission"; women are physiologically frail and liable to break permanently; and finally, that more sexual assault will occur.
Certainly, the worst aspects of a fraternity environment do nothing to make a case for continuing to sanction its institutional exclusivity. Whether it is as unusual as urinating on corpses in the war zone or as common as denigrating women on social media, such unacceptable behavior thrives only outside the influences of a broader, more diverse and ultimately healthier community.
Serrano's arguments overlook what women have brought to the battlefield over the past decade of irregular warfare, from engaging in firefights, to working intel, to flying combat aircraft and much more. Not long ago, women were considered liabilities in such roles; they have since proven they have the skills, physical strength and mental toughness for such missions.
If Serrano's views are to be considered bold, it would only be in that they challenge the direction in which the Corps and the entire U.S. military is headed —toward greater inclusion of women in infantry and other combat roles. Her award comes on the eve of the Marine Corps' Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force experiment that includes about 500 female volunteersin testing aimed at providing data in response to the directive from the Office of the Secretary of Defense that the services open up infantry roles to women.
The Marine Corps has been ambiguous about to what end this experiment is aimed, whether it's to study the effect of the inevitable lifting of the ban, or whether the results will be used to make a case for exemption from OSD's directive. Such ambiguity gives breathing room to those who believe as Serrano does.
Nothing is lost and everything is gained in giving women the opportunity to try out for all combat-arms roles and in welcoming those who prove they have what it takes. Eventually many will succeed, and the Corps will be better because of their success.
