Integrating Women Into the Marine Corps Infantry: Costs, Representation, and Lessons from Earlier Integration Efforts

While women have been present on battlefields through history, their roles have expanded considerably in recent decades. The lifting of remaining restrictions fits into the pattern of expansion over time. Here, we focus on the Marine Corps infantry. We model the entry of women into infantry positions over time, but we also provide context for the current changes based on previous U.S. experience, and the experiences of other countries. Previous experiences opening closed occupations to women suggest that a variety of specific strategies are likely to be helpful to the Marines’ integration efforts. Both our cost model and previous experiences suggest that the proportion of women in the Marine Corps infantry is likely to grow very slowly; rates at which women complete training and remain in the Marine Corps will have a substantial impact on this growth. Mostly because growth is expected to be slow, the personnel-related costs of integration are predicted to be modest.