...to Know Mulan Could Teach the Marines a Thing or Two

Not the Italian Mama

 

 

 

Remember when shoulder pads dominated women's clothing back in 1980s? My entire business wardrobe in the years after college included shoulder pads in every suit, blouse, and dress that I wore to my first job in a midtown Manhattan advertising agency. And I was surrounded by colleagues dressed in the same "power suits." The decade that saw the largest increase in women's participation in the workforce heralded a new, retro style that echoed the style of the 1940s and was ubiquitous. Women's haircuts got shorter and more angular, and women's clothing concealed feminine curves behind straight, boxy lines that mimicked the silhouettes of men.  Androgyny was in, and the female form was out.

As in the '40s, the 1980s saw record numbers of women in the workforce trying to compete and do business with businessmen. The fashion trends reflected the desire of women to blend into the men's world, to gain an equal footing on foreign terrain, and to break past the secretarial pool into the corner office.

Now that we have 26 women CEOs in the Fortune 500, have had several women serve as Secretary of State, and for the first time have 100 women in Congress, the paradigm has changed. Women are more openly embracing their femininity and beginning to define their roles in the workforce on their own terms. Libby Sartain, director of HR at Yahoo!, Inc. explains  

 

“So much of what it takes to be a leader has been historically defined by men. And while I was determined to be a leader, the last thing in the world I was going to do was to try to be like a man so that I could be taken seriously.”

Like women trying to break into the testosterone-infused corporate world, women in the military are seeking higher paying roles and greater opportunity for advancement in a very male-dominated arena. While women have been officially allowed in combat roles for about two years now, the Army and the Marine Corps still have a large number of specialties from which women are barred. But the military has always been on the leading edge of social change because it recruits from all walks of life and, as an arm of the government, sets standards that reflect the political ideals espoused by its civilian leaders. As a result, the US Marine Corps is spending the next year analyzing the current training standards to answer the question if women are fit for combat roles in the Marines. Along the way, the brass hopes to discover if the current training standards are appropriate for men or women. Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey has said that perhaps the current standards need to be updated for current combat situations.

“If we do decide that a particular standard is so high that a woman couldn’t make it, the burden is now on the service to come back and explain to the secretary why is it that high? Does it really have to be that high?”

The Italian Mama recommends that, as the Marines consider this question, they take a night off, pop up some popcorn and settle in to watch Mulan. Their night at the movies would reveal to them another way they could shift a paradigm and update their standards to include characteristics that women naturally excel in. In Disney's recreation of the ancient Chinese legend of Mulan, our heroine succeeds not because she acts like the men she is training with but precisely because she acts like a woman. Her success in training and in the final showdown results from her agility, quick thinking, and innovative problem solving that employs her female charms rather than disguises them. With new standards in the military, a woman soldier could succeed not so much by trying to act like the guys but by acting like a good soldier, which can and should include criteria that are generally associated with women.

But what can women bring to the battlefield? Hmmm, let's see. Studies show that women executives battling for a business edge exceed their male counterparts in risk taking and demonstrate more creative problem-solving skills because they are not bound by conventions created by men. We can extrapolate that women on the battlefield would act similarly. Social scientists and anyone who knows women can agree that most women surpass their male counterparts in communication skills, agility, multitasking, cleanliness, empathy, and consensus building. Surely these are skills that would serve Marines well in any of the various roles required of them. In these areas, men should be working hard to emulate women. If the Marines were to update their training standards to include such characteristics, more women would qualify for combat roles, and the military would benefit from the enormous contributions women can make to fraught combat situations. A role model for all of society, the Marines could redefine how to be successful in all aspects of society which might finally recognize that women bring unique skills to the executive suite, the drafting table, the writer's studio, the research lab, and the director's chair as well as the battlefield.