ALTERING THE GENDER COMPOSITION IN THE MARINE CORPS: RECRUITING AND READINESS IMPLICATIONS

Abstract

As of January 2016, all military occupations opened to women across all branches of military service. The opening of previously closed occupations to women has initiated conversations regarding how the quality of the force may be affected by the integration. This study explores the implications of altering the gender composition in the Marine Corps on recruiting and readiness. To address recruiting implications, we examine the differences in the predicted probabilities of the average male and female civilian graduating from the Infantry Training Battalion. We find that the average male civilian is 5.2 times more likely to graduate from the Infantry Training Battalion than the average female civilian. To address readiness implications, we examine the differences in average availability between males and females during their first term of service, and we also analyze the differences between availability in females across different occupational fields. We find that on average, females are less deployable than males during the first four years of service, with the differences peaking during months 25–36, with the major cause of a female's unavailability being pregnancy. We further find that the density of females does not have a significant effect on the overall readiness of the female population.