The Marine Corps should fully integrate women into platoons and institute mixed-gender drill instructor teams at its recruit depots, according to a newly released report by a Pentagon panel focused on women in the military.
The Marine Corps is the only service that is not gender-integrated at the lowest recruit training level, according to the report released Friday, despite efforts by the service over the last several years to desegregate its training units by gender.
After visiting the recruit depots at both San Diego, California, and Parris Island, South Carolina, the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, or DACOWITS, recommended in its report that platoons at those installations include both men and women “to better prepare male and female recruits as they become Marines, to operate within an integrated operational force, and to better align the Marine Corps with its service counterparts.”
Read Next: A Better Way to Give Pay Raises to Junior Enlisted? Key Senator Says It’s Under Consideration This Year.
The committee also recommended that the Corps integrate mixed-gender drill instructor teams as well, something the other branches are already doing, according to the report.
Currently, the Marine Corps has gender-integrated companies at its training depots, which include separate platoons made up of men and women. The committee argued that those platoons — where Marines primarily eat, sleep, train, live and learn…
