In lieu of this, the Marine Corps created four diversity task forces in 2013 and each was led by a general officer and the goal was to develop ways to “remove potential barriers for Marines to compete on merit for leadership positions”. The percentage of black officers in the services has remained fairly steady since 1995; about 5%-7% in the Navy, Air Force and Marines, and 10%-15% in the Army (Zoroya, 2014). With these findings, one can be led to believe that there are certain differences between race and gender when it comes to success in the military. However, this study reveals that even though some races or a specific gender may do better in certain areas, other races and gender tend to find greater success in other areas.
Research
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Mackenzie (2012), states that the 1948 Women’s Armed Services Integration Act created a permanent corps of women in all the military departments. This was considered a step forward at the time, but it is also the origin of what was known as the combat for ban for women. This formally excluded women from combat duties. Even with this ban in place, the number of women in the U.S. armed forces increased in the 1980s and 1990s, from 8.5 percent to 11.1 percent. This was a direct result of the transition to an all-volunteer force in 1973 and high demand for troops. Today, there have been great strides made to include women in virtually all programs in the military, even those that were completely closed to women such as combat deployments and the submarine forces. There are more than 214,000 women serving in the U.S. military, representing 14.6 percent of total service members. Around 280,000 women have worn American uniforms in Afghanistan and Iraq, where 144 have died and over 600 have been injured. Hundreds of female soldiers have received a Combat Action Badge, awarded for actively engaging with a hostile enemy (Mackenzie, 2012). For the past 10 years women have been fighting side by side with their male counterparts in Iraq and Afghanistan. This puts women at every level and numerous positions of the military. It ensures you have the best person in the leadership positions regardless of their sex (Goudreau, 2013). There will always be subtle differences between men and women in the military, but in today’s military all are seen as equals and only separated by their abilities to lead and perform the task when