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For decades the Marine Corps has tolerated, even encouraged, lower performance from the young women who enlist in its ranks, an insidious gender bias that begins with the way women are treated immediately after they sign up and continues through their training at boot camp. The results are predictable – female Marines risk being less confident and less fully accepted than their male counterparts, because the Corps has failed them from the outset.

That is the position of Lt. Col. Kate Germano, an active-duty Marine officer who commanded both a Marine recruiting station in San Diego and a segregated all-female training battalion at Parris Island, the Corps’ boot camp in South Carolina. Colonel Germano presented this argument in a draft article, “When Did It Become an Insult to Train Like a Girl?” that she wrote early this year and in which she argued for tougher standards and higher expectations, or, in her words, a movement toward “radical change.”

The article, which does not address full integration into combat roles but details institutional patterns that Colonel Germano suggests ensure female Marines will not be fully respected by their male peers, had been slated for publication in September in the monthly Marine Corps Gazette, a private publication that serves as the Corps’ de facto professional journal. Then matters grew complicated.

Colonel Germano was relieved of command at Parris Island in June under circumstances that remain contentious, setting off a controversy about whether she was being punished for what the Corps calls an abusive leadership style, or for forcefully expressing her views about the how the Corps trains and integrates women into its male-dominated ranks.

Soon after she was relieved, the editor of the Gazette, John Keenan, who is also a former Marine colonel, dropped Colonel Germano’s article from the journal’s publication lineup. Her arguments taking the Corps to task for what she depicted as a record of double standards and complacency stood not to reach Marines’ eyes, including such passages as this:

The performance double standard extends to virtually every aspect of recruit training. Over the past decade, female recruits have consistently scored below their male counterparts in every quantifiable category minus the gender-normed physical fitness test. Yet despite the statistics, historical records do not indicate that anyone has ever seriously considered why females have consistently been outperformed at boot camp. Acceptance of the status quo has simply become the norm. Ironically, notwithstanding the delta in female-male performance, a greater percentage of female recruits are promoted by contract to private first class upon graduation, meaning they are also more swiftly promoted to lance corporal in spite of potentially being less qualified. This is essentially where the Marine Corps meritocracy cart goes off the rails.

The relief of Colonel Germano has been widely covered in the news media; criticism of the Corps surrounding her dismissal has at times been unsparing. The Gazette’s decision raised a new question: Had the Corps exerted pressure on the journal’s editor to pull Colonel Germano’s article, and thereby squelch her voice?

Mr. Keenan’s answer was an emphatic no. “I have never, ever, in my nine years as editor, been given any editorial direction from the official Marine Corps,” he said by telephone Monday morning. He added: “Not printing that article is solely my decision.” (The Marine Corps seconded Mr. Keenan’s statement. Headquarters-Marine Corps “does not have any vote on what the editors at Gazette decide to publish, and we respect the contributions submitted by our fellow Marines,” wrote Maj. Christian Devine, a spokesman.)

For the Gazette’s part, the reasons behind the decision to pull the article were simple, Mr. Keenan said. Colonel Germano’s relief complicated prospects for publication in the journal not just because it had damaged her professional credibility but also because some readers might see publication as an implicit endorsement of her position in her dispute with the Corps about being fired.

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“You could argue that running that article would bolster her argument” surrounding her dismissal, he said. “And I’m not going to bolster that argument – on either side.”

Mr. Keenan also said, however, that whatever the perceptions about Colonel Germano’s dismissal, her article contained valuable insights. “Personally, I feel there is a lot of validity to what she is saying about, ‘Don’t hold women to lower standards,’ ” he said.

Late last week, after hearing of the Gazette’s decision to kill her article, Colonel Germano provided the draft to The New York Times, with permission to publish it on this blog. In a phone call on Monday, she said she did not want to focus on her relief from command, but to use this moment as a chance to acknowledge the shortfalls in how female Marines are made, with hope of reforming the Corps in a way that will be more combat effective – and respectful and fair – for men and women alike.

Do you agree with Colonel Germano’s article arguing that women who enlist in the Marine Corps should not face lower expectations for accountability and performance than their male peers? Why or why not? What can be done to improve gender integration? Share your views in the comments section below. A selection of responses will be posted later this week.



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