begun giving women some form of combat training in boot camp. While opening new roles, the
Marines put a 50 percent ceiling on the number of women who could enter any of the fields open
to them—a quota which never applied to men—including those fields which women tend to
dominate in civilian employment. By the end of the 1980s, the proportion of women in the
Marines had inched up to five percent (ibid.:415-418).
The legal and policy changes of the early 1990s opened thousands of new positions on
ships, in aviation, and in ground units to women in the Marine Corps. The rescinding of the
“risk rule” made women eligible to fill 48,000 new positions in the Marines (Women’s Research
and Education Institute, 2003). In a 1994 Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee
Military Forces and Personnel Subcommittee, Assignment of Army and Marine Corp Women
under the New Definition of Ground Combat, Lt. Gen. George R. Christmas testified that at that
time (October, 1994), the Marine Corp included 7,713 women—613 officers and 7,100 enlisted
—out of 174,000 Marines. While the policy changes would lead to new assignments for women,
the Marines would proceed slowly and deliberately. Gen. Christmas expected that the number
would rise to 10,400 women, or about six percent of enlisted Marines and seven percent of
officers, over the next fifteen to twenty years. Women were a small part of the Marine Corps,
and the Marines expected that to remain unchanged, even as new roles were opened to women.
In terms of the recruiting materials, over the course of the AVF, there have been some
shifts in the Marines’ approach, and the look of the ads has changed over the years. At the
beginning of the AVF period, Marine Corps ads worked to differentiate the Marines from the
other services, noting that all of the services provide benefits and job training, but the Marine
Corps offers a special challenge and a sense of pride. These ads were often heavy on text, and
some of them showed Marines at work, repairing equipment or working on an airplane’s ground
crew. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Marines are frequently posed in dress uniforms, and
when they aren’t, they are shown in battle dress uniforms in a specifically martial context, like
dangling out of a helicopter or crawling up a riverbank with a rifle. In a series of ads from the
late 1990s and early 2000s, a shaved-headed recruit struggles through some portion of an
obstacle course. Despite any changes in the look of the ads or shifts in emphasis, overall, Marine
Corps advertising has remained remarkably consistent in terms of its message. Throughout the
entire period of the AVF, the Marine Corp has emphasized its elitism. The main message is that
the Marines will demand that a recruit prove his worth, but once he has met the challenge, he’ll
know he’s one of the best and feel the pride that’s a Marine tradition.
35
Convention