Marine Females To Join Infantry Units

In an attempt to help Infantry units adjust to having female leaders and unit members, the Marine Corps has begun the process of putting current, albeit non-infantry, female officers and staff NCO's in to grunt units.

Female Marine officers and staff noncommissioned officers will soon be assigned to infantry battalions.With all combat arms jobs now open to women, qualified enlisted Marines could soon be moving into infantry battalions. Since no female officer has graduated from Infantry Officer Course, though, there currently are no women to lead them.To begin building that cadre of women leaders, Marine officials will soon assign female officers and staff NCOs to infantry battalions where they will serve in support roles, officials said.These female Marines or sailors will help male infantrymen adjust to the changes in their units before female grunts join their battalions, said Col. Anne Weinberg, deputy director of manpower integration.

“I think there’s a ‘you gotta see it to believe it’ aspect in some of these units,” Weinberg said at a Thursday media roundtable.The female leaders’ main responsibility will be to assist the entire unit, not just the women grunts, Weinberg said.“We really didn’t look at them as helping the junior female Marines,” she said. “We really looked at helping the unit writ large — as a resource to the commander, as a sounding board.”

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