Basic Training

The military services are using various approaches to integrate men and women during basic training. These approaches range from using the same program to instruct both sexes and integrating some training units to using different programs of instruction and providing separate training. The costs associated with gender integration have been low. In fact, the Army is the only service that has incurred expenses to accommodate gender-integrated basic training, spending about $67,000 to modify barracks. No staffing or curriculum changes have been made to accommodate integrated basic training. Studies of the impact of gender-integrated units have been done for the Navy and the Army. A 1993 study done for the Navy reported no impact on objective performance measures and improvement in teamwork measures for both men and women training in gender-integrated units. A recent Army study found that the performance of women improved in gender-integrated training units while the performance of men was not degraded. Although the Army introduced limited gender-integrated basic training in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Army has no records from that period to compare with its current program.

GAO found that: (1) the military services use several different approaches to integrate men and women into basic training programs; (2) male and female trainees experience the same type of recruit program outside of having separate berths, medical examinations, hygiene classes, and physical standards; (3) the costs associated with gender-integrated training are low; (4) the Army spent $67,000 to modify its barracks to house gender-integrated basic training units; (5) these modifications included installing partitions between male and female berthing areas and creating separate bathrooms for male and female trainees; (6) the Navy made modifications to its basic training facility in response to base realignment and closure decisions; (7) the performance of military trainees is not harmed by gender-integrated training programs; (8) women performed better in the Army's gender-integrated training units, but male trainees' performance remained the same; and (9) the Army has no record of the gender-integrated training it conducted during the late 1970's and early 1980's to compare with its current program.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Team: Phone: