Six ladies — a file excessive — graduated from the grueling Marine Infantry Officer Course in fiscal yr 2022, the Marine Corps has confirmed.
A complete of 12 ladies have now accomplished the course out of 39 feminine Marines who’ve tried it, in line with knowledge supplied to Marine Corps Occasions by Capt. Phil Parker, a Coaching Command spokesman, in November.
The notoriously rigorous 13-week coaching primarily based in Quantico, Virginia, prepares officers to steer in infantry and floor intelligence items. Officers who work in reconnaissance, sniper and light-weight armored reconnaissance items additionally take the course to achieve infantry information.
The Marine Corps opened floor fight jobs to ladies in 2016, however Marines in these billets have remained overwhelmingly male, with solely a few hundred ladies in fight arms as of the tip of 2019, in line with knowledge from the Heart for a New American Safety.
In early 2020, in his first yr as commandant, Gen. David Berger said that certainly one of his objectives was to have extra ladies attending the difficult Infantry Officer Course.
The first three ladies who tried the course in 2014 on an experimental foundation had been dropped after being unable to maintain up with the hikes, Marine Corps Occasions beforehand reported, which contain carrying heavy tools over lengthy distances.
In September 2017, then-1st Lt. Marina A. Hierl grew to become the first lady to graduate from the Infantry Officer Course, Marine Corps Occasions beforehand reported. She went on to steer an infantry platoon.
A second lady graduated from the Infantry Officer Course in June 2018.
No ladies accomplished the course in fiscal years 2019 or 2020, in line with the Coaching Command knowledge.
In fiscal yr 2021, 4 out of seven ladies who tried the Infantry Officer Course accomplished it. The completion charge for girls in fiscal yr 2022 was six out of eight.
Of fiscal yr 2022′s six feminine Infantry Workplace Course graduates, there are 4 within the 0302, or infantry officer, army occupational specialty, in line with Manpower and Reserve Affairs spokeswoman Yvonne Carlock.
Three of these Marines are actually infantry officers within the 1st Marine Division, which is predicated at Camp Pendleton, California. The fourth is a platoon commander assigned to the 2nd Marine Division, primarily based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
The opposite two current feminine graduates have the 0203 army occupational specialty, or floor intelligence officer, in line with Carlock.
One is an intelligence ways teacher on the 1st Marine Division. The opposite is assigned to the 4th Marine Division, a Reserve division; details about her billet wasn’t instantly accessible.
Irene Loewenson is a employees reporter for Marine Corps Occasions. She joined Army Occasions as an editorial fellow in August 2022. She is a graduate of Williams Faculty, the place she was the editor-in-chief of the coed newspaper.
