Male and female recruits in the U.S. Marine Corps will continue training in gender-specific units when they arrive at boot camp,
While Mabus has occasionally clashed with Marine Corps leadership over issues related to the topic, he told the Marines he had made a concession to top brass over the boot camp issue.
Mabus initially sent a memo to Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller ordering him to integrate boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina, where men and women have always trained in separate battalions. But the Navy secretary walked back his stance, he said, when Neller and Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Ronald Green met with him and advocated for keeping a status quo in which the genders did not train together until later in the pipeline.
"They made pretty good points," he said Tuesday.
Mabus did not offer additional details about the meeting. But Marine officials have previously defended single-sex training units at boot camp as limiting distractions, providing recruits with a safe environment to learn, and offering same-gender Marine role models with whom to identify.
While the Marine Corps would continue to move in the direction of total training integration, Mabus said, it would not do so all at once.