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For the first time in its history, the Marine Corps will integrate female and male platoons during boot camp.
Unlike the other services, the Marine Corps has not fully integrated women and men during recruit training. Instead, at Recruit Depot Parris Island in South Carolina, the first three battalions are all-male, while the fourth battalion is all-female.
“On January 5, 2019, 3rd Recruit Training Battalion aboard Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, will start their training cycle with one female platoon and five male platoons,” the Marine Corps said in a statement Friday, first reported by ABC News.
While the change is not permanent, a Marine Corps spokesman told ABC News that the service “will certainly look at how the company performs in this model as we continually evaluate how we make Marines.”
The Marine Corps, which has the lowest percentage of women among the services at just under 9 percent, decided to incorporate the 50 female recruits into the historically all-male battalion because the recruiting classes are typically much smaller in the winter months. The integration allowed Parris Island to not activate 4th Recruit Training Battalion staff for a single female platoon.
