The few, the proud
Women Marines define themselves.
Story by Elizabeth Chang
Published on November 2, 2017
It’s never been easy to be a woman in the Marine Corps, which is the most physically demanding branch of the military and the one with the smallest percentage of female service members: 7.6 percent. Disturbing revelations in March made it even tougher: Male members of the 30,000-strong Marines United Facebook group had been soliciting and posting explicit photos of current and former female Marines without their permission, often accompanied by violent and obscene comments.
The Corps continues to grapple with the fallout. Thus far, it has disciplined 44 Marines, strengthened its policies for addressing social media misconduct and established a task force to look at how it recruits, trains, assigns and mentors service members in an effort to eliminate gender bias. As it was taking these steps, we reached out to current and retired female Marines to find women interested in posing for photographs that would let them define how they were portrayed, as service members, left, and as individuals, right. We also spoke with them about their experiences in and out of the Corps, and about what they hope the photographs convey. (The interviews have been edited and condensed.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/style/2017/11/02/the-few-the-proud-women-marines-define-themselves/?utm_term=.7e9487ada55e&wpisrc=nl_optimist&wpmm=1
