A Few Good Women Want to Travel : Edict Stirs Marines’ Hopes for Foreign Vistas

When Naomi Shoemate dropped out of college and joined the Marine Corps, she did so for the same reason generations of young Americans have signed up for hitches in the military: She wanted to see the world.

But after eight years of Marine duty, Shoemate is still yearning to travel.

“The only place I’ve been is Japan,” she said this week. “I’ve been there three times. It gets tired.”

Shoemate, a sergeant stationed at the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station, said she wasn’t complaining about an isolated case of bad luck. She was referring to circumstances that she and other women Marines in Orange County contend, in effect, severely limit their overseas duty opportunities.

They are hoping that situation will improve after implementation of a new Defense Department order announced earlier this week.

The order, in addition to directing all branches of the military to improve conditions and facilities for women members and create more effective means of combating sexual harassment, directs them to open up to women about 4,000 jobs in the Navy and Marines that traditionally have been held by men.

Among the jobs specifically cited are those in the Marine Corps security guard battalion, made up mostly of elite Marine Corps embassy guards. The guards are stationed all over the world in one of the corps’ most coveted assignments.

Marines assigned to the battalion stand watch and provide other security services. Women now are barred from such jobs because they were considered too hazardous.

Capt. Joanne Schilling, a Marine spokeswoman at Marine Corps headquarters at Arlington, Va., said Friday that details of the Defense Department plan--the number of women who will get security guard duty and where they will be assigned--have not been determined. The Marines now have 1,383 men assigned to security guard posts in 140 countries.

No Restrictions Exist

Schilling said there are no blanket restrictions on women getting foreign assignments, other than rules barring them from combat areas and from countries such as Saudi Arabia, where relations between men and women are strictly regulated.

But the women Marines who were interviewed said that, in reality, most women go only to Okinawa, where the corps operates its only permanent overseas installation. And most agreed that they were shocked upon learning how seldom women Marines get to travel overseas.

“Some women come in just for the opportunity to travel,” said Lance Cpl. Christine Reyes of Texas, a unit diary clerk stationed at El Toro. “Then they find out there’s not that much for them.”

In addition to travel, Lt. Jennifer Wellman said, the opening of embassy jobs to women would be an opportunity for other changes.

“I think offensive (combat) training is necessary for women if they go into the embassies,” said Wellman, a Gary, Ind., native who is second in command of the MPs at the Tustin base. “You just have to have some confidence in yourself.”

Women Marines now receive some combat and weapons instruction, but it is all in defensive tactics. And even that is a fairly recent development in a branch of the service that tells the world it is looking for “a few good men.”

Although the Marines still are referred to as the most macho of the country’s armed forces, women have been serving in the corps since World War I, when 305 enlisted. They were called Marinettes and worked exclusively in clerical jobs to free men for combat. The auxiliary was abolished in 1922.

Women again enlisted in the Marines during World War II, and at one point numbered 19,000. Again their role was to free men for combat, but some worked as aircraft mechanics or ran motor pools.

After the war, all women Marines except for about 100 who became Marine reservists were released from active duty. In 1948, the Women Marines Company was established as part of the regular Marines, but women again were limited to clerical jobs and their numbers were not allowed to exceed 2% of the male force.

It was not until 1973 that the women’s company was disbanded and attempts at integration began.

Women Marines, who now make up about 5% of the 200,000-member corps, live in the same buildings (but not rooms) with men, get nearly the same basic training and hold many jobs--such as aircraft mechanic and military police--that were previously closed to them. Still, according to many, problems of unfair treatment and sexual harassment remain, not only in the Marines but in all the nation’s military forces.

This week’s Defense Department order was a direct result of a highly publicized report issued last year that said sexual harassment of women in the Marines and the Navy was widespread and “morally repugnant.” Similar charges had been made against the Air Force and the Army in an earlier report.

The women Marines interviewed in Orange County this week said sexual harassment and unfair treatment on the job is no worse in the military than in civilian life, but that combating it is more difficult because of the military command structure.

“You’re supposed to report (sexual harassment) to your boss,” said Cpl. Sheryl DeLong, a driver from North Carolina, “but sometimes the person doing the harassing is your boss.”

Shoemate added: “This is not like civilian life, where you can just quit your job or say, ‘I’m not going to go work today.’ When you wake up in the morning, you are going to work.”