Marine captain: My Marine Corps doesn’t know how to treat its female members

In case you missed it, Captain Lauren Finch Serrano had an impassioned article in the July issue of the Marine Corps Gazette basically saying that the corps doesn’t have a clue about how to treat — and especially to retain — its female members.

The big awakening for Serrano, a Middle East intelligence specialist, came with having a baby:

I have always assumed that I was a “lifer.” And would stay in the Corps for at least 20 years. On paper I am excelling and “living the dream” but I feel like I am drowning. Why does it feel like the Corps and I are beginning to part ways?

The problem is that the way the Marine Corps handles parental leave, nursing at work, and other issues create a fatal trap, she avers: “If I am excelling at work, I am likely failing at home, and vice versa.”

She recommends that both female and male Marines be offered the option of “taking up to two years of an unpaid sabbatical leave with each child.” Generally, she says, adopt policies that “do not punish Marines who choose to have families.”

She also makes the point that gender neutral doesn’t simply mean adopting the standards males are held to. For example, she points out that she can lactate out more breast milk than any male Marine.

The article kind of runs out of steam. It should have been edited down a bit, I suspect. Still, both the author and the Gazette are to be commended for tackling this difficult subject.

You may disagree with her recommendations. But I think such changes will be made in the private sector, if only for companies to remain competitive with other employers. So, like it or not, the military services will have to consider following suit if only to keep up.

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