Essay contest

The Women Marines Association is sponsoring an essay contest, the subject of the essays being "Women in the Marine Corps". I ended up volunteering to write one, because Sergeant Major Spadaro (yeah, I know I've written about him more than once) kept bugging me about it. Here it is, for your reading pleasure. (This is not necessarily the final draft, but it shouldn't change much. As if you really care.) Most of it is sort of party line, but some parts are what I really think. Y'all probably know me well enough to be able to tell the difference.

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Whose World Is It, Anyway?

“Are you getting out because it’s a man’s world?”

The question came from the same man who had told me repeatedly that he had “no idea how to work with a woman.”

“Is it a man’s world?” I wanted to ask in reply. “What makes it one—chauvinists like you?” In reality, I had no response: I was too indignant that the question had even crossed my Staff Sergeant’s lips. This was a Marine who was supposed to be responsible, in some part, for my own development as a Marine, and as a leader of Marines. How could he think that it mattered at all that I am a woman?

My first exposure to the specific challenge of being a woman in the Marine Corps happened when I was an aircrew student at Marine Helicopter Training Squadron 302, in the fall of 2004. One of my instructors was Staff Sergeant—then Sergeant—Jennifer Wiese. Sergeant Wiese was everything I wanted to be as a crew chief: smart, tough, and a combat veteran. In fact, she was one of the first female CH-53 crew chiefs to fly in a combat zone. She never mentioned that in front of our class at all; we learned it from the other instructors. She sometimes spoke of her experience, but when she did it was a matter-of-fact description of events. She told us about crew chiefs she respected. And she was hard on us. She held us to the highest of standards. If we couldn’t perform for her, she said, then how could we expect to perform in an operating squadron, or in combat?

I was awed by Sergeant Wiese, but I always had the impression that she was tougher on me than on the men in my class. She never told me I had done a good job when I aced a test; instead, she would ask me why my classmates had failed. The first task I had to complete when I arrived at HMT-302 was to close a cowling on the aircraft. It is a particularly heavy cowling, the cover for the auxiliary engine, and I was told that if I couldn’t close it without help, I would fail the course. I closed it. The next task was to stow our single-point external hook, which weighs around eighty pounds, and which is nearly always moved by two people. I stowed it. Sergeant Wiese was unimpressed. If I was going to be a crew chief, it was expected that I be able to perform these simple jobs unaided.

During my second deployment, long after I had graduated from the training squadron, I sent Staff Sergeant Wiese a note to tell her that I had been promoted to Corporal and would be attending the Weapons and Tactics Instructor course—the premier training event for aviation weapons and tactics in the Marine Corps. She wrote back to tell me that she was proud of me, and that she had known since day one that I would excel in my chosen Military Occupational Specialty (MOS). It was only then that I understood why she had been so tough on me. She had known from experience how I would be received, and she had inoculated me against the negative reactions of my future squadron. She had known that, as a woman, I would not survive in my job if I couldn’t do all the same things the men could do. She toughened me up so that I could make it in a “man’s world”.

I didn’t drive to the recruiting station with the desire to “make it in a man’s world”, though. I wanted to be a Marine--not a female Marine, not a “WM”, the widely used abbreviation for “woman Marine”. Of course I was aware of the disparity in the numbers, and of course I knew I would have to prove myself. I just had no idea how big a deal my being female would become.

I still don’t think it should be such a big deal, though. When I am crewing a mission, whether it is the most routine cargo run or the most tactically significant raid, the only thing that matters is that I am an expert at my job. When I am training a gunner on the newest weapons system on the CH-53E Super Stallion, my being female is not a consideration. The fact that I was the first female to be designated a Tail Gunnery Instructor for the CH-53E is not a consideration. The only thing that matters is that I hold the qualification, and that I train that Marine to the best of my ability.

Each day when I show up to work, I expect to perform the same tasks as any other Marine who holds my MOS and my billet. When I achieved the rank of Sergeant, my promotion warrant said to “lead [my] Marines with firmness, fairness, and dignity.” It said nothing about performing any better or worse due to my gender. I strive, like any other Sergeant of Marines, to live up to that standard. I crew helicopters. I train aircrewmen. I try my hardest to be the best crew chief, and the best Marine, I can be.

Every girl who raised her right hand and swore to defend the Constitution had her own reasons. Some wanted to serve America, to do their duty to their country. Others wanted to continue a family tradition. I wanted to do a specific job that I couldn’t do anywhere else. And I wanted to be a Marine, for the same reasons we all wanted to be Marines: pride, brotherhood, challenge, and everything else that goes with our uniform.

Women are resetting the bar every day, in every branch of the service. Army Sergeant Leigh Ann Hester became the first woman since World War II to receive the Silver Star when she was awarded the medal in 2005 for heroism in combat. Another soldier, Specialist Monica Brown, recently received the same award for her heroic actions while serving in combat in Afghanistan. Women are taking the same actions that men take, and dying in the same conflicts in which men die—not to earn medals, not to make history, and not because they are women trying to make it in a man’s world, but because they are doing what is asked of them.

Women are making history in the American military, just as we have been since the American Revolution. We fight for what we believe in, not because we are women, and not because we have something to prove. Maybe it is still a man’s world. I don’t know how to effect policy to change that culture. One thing is clear, though: If we, the women in it, don’t start seeing ourselves as just Marines instead of female Marines or women Marines, we will never be anything else.


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Yeah.

See you tomorrow.