Marines Gear Up For Women In Combat, But Will They Sign Up- Eleni Loving p.1

Starting in June, the Marines will allow the first women ever to train for ground combat jobs. There have been calls to open up ground combat positions to women for years, but so far those jobs have only been available to men in the military. Military leaders were concerned that women would not be able to meet the harsh physical demands of ground combat, but many people felt that was discriminating against the women based on their  sex . However, they ran an experiment that gave 200 women Marines a chance to demonstrate their abilities by going through ground combat training last year. After that experiment, about half of the women had been taken out by injuries,  but enough women were successful so that they decided to open the positions to some women who qualified.

Even though women are now able to apply for ground combat jobs, and even though there have been those one hundred women who completed the training and are considered eligible to apply, not one woman has signed up yet to switch career tracks to ground combat position. A Marine Corps spokesperson said that they expect there will be some to sign up, and that they still believe there are women who are interested, but that some may have other reasons for not wanting to change their current career track of doing other kinds of jobs. They also believe some of the new female recruits to the Marines will be interested in attempting to go into ground combat training. In the meantime, they are working on developing better training for the females to help prevent injuries, and on changing the mindset of the men in the Marines, to make women more accepted in these positions.

 http://www.npr.org/2016/03/28/472105527/marines-gear-up-for-women-in-combat-but-will-they-sign-up