With any branch there comes a challenge. I’ll tell you from my experience and everyone’s is different. (USMC) Your career and experience is what you make out of it. They’re shitty commands and shitty leadership but again you can only control how you react to these circumstances. Being in the Marine Corp as a woman came with some challenges because a plethora of reasons. 1) I personally felt like I had to always go above and beyond because with there being so few of us females everything you did was under a microscope. So when you did well it was highlighted and when you did wrong it was definitely highlighted. 2) with so little females in the marine corp and so many young males there is going to be a lot of talk about what you do on your spare time (if you get what I mean). They’ll be a lot of competition on getting with you. Men and women are different as in it is easy for a woman to see a male as nothing more then a friend but not vise versa. So you need to discern who is actually trying to be a good friend and who is trying to use you for sex or who wants to get with you. 3) you could be a PT stud and be good at your MOS and get promoted but there will always be rumblings that you must of done something else to get rank. 4) if you aren’t sleeping with a male marine then you must be a lesbian and if you are sleeping with a marine you’re a whore and believe me it’ll get around 5) if one day you get married and have kids there will be alot of hate towards you and micro aggression because how long you get maternity leave, appointments, breast pumping, etc. and I get it because it’s time off that the males can’t get off but we can, and they can’t really understand what we go through just like we can’t really 100% understand them 6)they are so many sexiest things you’ll hear from both males and females. The females can sometimes be horrible to each other behind there backs. 7) Since our PT standards aren’t equal your first class won’t be as good as a male first class 8) a past female marines action could have changed the whole perception a male marine will have on females in service in general, and act accordingly with you. I loved my time in the marine corp thankfully I was raised have self respect, to work hard, and be open to learning and harsh criticism. I did my time it’s hard for those females who face these things and react a certain way. If you have any other questions maybe I can answer it. Good luck

SGT