Book Review: Lady Leathernecks: The Enigma of Women in the United States Marine Corps

• Author: William L. Hauser
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X15622282
• Published date: 01 July 2016
• Date: 01 July 2016
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Book Reviews

Brownson, C. L. (2015). Lady Leathernecks: The Enigma of

Women in the United States Marine Corps. Stillwater, OK: New Forums Press. 310 pp. $28.95

(paperback). ISBN 1581072880.

Reviewed by: William L. Hauser, U.S. Army (retired), Reston, VA, USA

DOI: 10.1177/0095327X15622282

This is a book with a chip on its shoulder. That said, it is an impressive work of scho-

larship, well-grounded in sociological and psychological theory and literature, orga-

nized in a form that the layperson as well as the student of civil–military relations

can follow, and—most praiseworthy—interesting to read.

Before reviewing the book’s contents, one might examine its title. An ‘‘enigma,’’

per Webster, being ‘‘something hard to understand or explain,’’ that is where the

author has rendered a valuable service. Through her interviews of 167 female Mar-

ines on active duty (all volunteers and Corps sanctioned) plus four veterans from the

World War II ‘‘Free a Man to Fight’’ era and eight other veterans from subsequent

periods, she provides the reader a colorful variety of experiences that, in total, render

the enigma understandable. That is, how can/do women succeed in what is pro-

claimed and understood, both within and outside the 93%male Marine Corps, to

be the most macho of all the armed services?

The book’s preface relates how the author perceived the need for such a study. In

1991, with her Marine reservist husband deployed to Operation Desert Storm, she

found herself, also a reservist (since enlistment in 1985), as a woman forbidden from

deploying to a combat zone. Frustrated by this perceived denial of professional sta-

tus, she retained a degree of resentment after discharge and resumption of under-

graduate education in 1993 at Texas A&M University. A decade later, during

graduate study at Texas State, she decided to explore, using the experience of

women in the Marine Corps as a vehicle, the universal question of ‘‘Why do humans

socially organize ourselves in the way we do?’’ She now teaches geography at Tar-

leton State, a campus of the Texas A&M University System.

Chapter 1, titled ‘‘The Fewer, the Prouder, the Female Marines,’’ begins with a

startling comparison. It would be unfair, the author rightfully asserts, to compare

female Marines with either of two extremes: the barbaric Abu Ghraib jailer Lynndie

England or the hapless POW-victim Jessica Lynch. Instead, and here the chip on

shoulder first appears, her study will ‘‘strive to explain why sex/gender disconnects

Armed Forces & Society

2016, Vol. 42(3) 626-631

ªThe Author(s) 2016

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