THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 11, 1994 TAG: 9407110022
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOHN BRINKLEY, SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: QUANTICO, VA. LENGTH: Long : 127 lines
Above the front door of a dreary-looking red brick building at the Quantico Marine base in Northern Virginia hangs a plain red flag with two white stars.
This notifies visitors and passers-by that the building houses the headquarters of a two-star general. What it doesn't tell them is that this particular two-star is Maj. Gen. Carol Mutter, the highest ranking woman in the United States military, the first woman to get two stars from the Marine Corps.
That Mutter has managed to reach this lofty position in the Marine Corps, rather than the Army or the Air Force, is particularly impressive; the Marines, traditionally, have been ``looking for a few good men,'' not women.
Moreover, female generals throughout the military have heretofore come from administrative positions in the personnel field.
Mutter is the first woman in any service to make general after having toiled in ``the hard-core technical field,'' said retired Army Gen. Wilma Vaught. Mutter's background is in logistics and technology.
In that sense, ``Carol Mutter's promotion is just extraordinarily significant,'' Vaught said.
``It's both an honor and a responsibility,'' Mutter said of her status. ``Certainly, you can't get by the fact of the honor of the thing.''
Also, ``it gives me opportunities, I think, to have some influence in some areas where there might need to be some more changes'' benefiting women.
Mutter, 48, is the lone woman among the Marines' 68 generals. She also is one of only 639 female Marine officers out of a total of 18,430.
Nonetheless, she doesn't think women have it all that bad in the Marine Corps, at least not compared to 27 years ago, when she was commissioned.
``You could not have children and stay on active duty at that time. You couldn't even marry a man who had children and stay on active duty,'' she said. ``That was in 1967. And shortly after that was when the women's liberation movement really took off in the country. And we saw the results in the military. A lot of things changed as society changed.''
She cites as progress the fact that the corps was 1 percent women in 1967 and 4.5 percent today.
Mutter says she hadn't been very active in military women's issues ``until recent years, when I became more senior and a little bit more visible, and so I've gotten more involved.''
She said her involvement consists of trying to ``keep current'' with military women's concerns, and of trying to be ``kind of a conduit for information.''
Linda Bird Francke, a New York writer who is working on a book about women in the military, met Mutter in 1991 and ``was startled'' by the experience.
``I introduced her to a young lance corporal, female, who was in the throes of a sexual harassment case against the Marines, in which she was successful. And they talked to each other in that absolutely stilted military way, in which no one says anything. You get these heraldic phrases: `I know this is tough for you and this is a tough world and this is what we were assigned to do.' They just talk that way. It's just so incredibly impersonal.''
If Mutter felt any empathy for the corporal, she didn't show it, Francke says.
But that's the thin line that female military officers have to walk, because ``they have nothing to fall back on, except their professionalism.''
Mutter said the Marines ``continue to improve things all the time'' for women, and being the top woman in the military ``gives me the opportunity to try to influence some of those changes.''
They include the placement of women on board ships, in combat support positions and, of course, the continuing debate over whether women should be allowed in combat units.
``Those seem to be moving in the right direction,'' Mutter said.
She does not believe, though, that women belong in combat.
``I don't think we're ready as a nation to have women in front-line units with rifles and fixed bayonets,'' she said.
However, ``I think the face of combat may change to an extent as we evolve through this process. If you look at the science fiction and Star Wars types of weapons systems, it's a different kind of combat that we might get into in the future.''
Also, ``I think if we had to fight on our own home soil as other countries have had to do, we might look at the women's role a lot differently, by necessity.''
Although Mutter said she tries to ``keep plugged in with what (military) women are thinking, what their concerns are,'' that is not her job.
She is the corps' chief of research and development, for everything from entrenching tools to tanks.
``The Systems Command mission is to do the research and development and acquisition on all new systems for the Marine Corps except aircraft. That includes individual equipment, rifles, tanks, trucks, sleeping bags, tents, anything that a Marine might need deployed in a combat environment,'' she said.
Mutter, who grew up on a farm near Eaton, Colo., graduated from Northern Colorado University in Greeley in 1967 and entered the Marine Corps as a second lieutenant. In 1967, most newly commissioned Marine officers were headed for Vietnam, but not Mutter.
The Marines sent her to Quantico to attend the ``Woman Officer Basic Course,'' then to work in data processing in Quantico and at Camp Pendleton near San Diego.
In those days, ``there was a feeling that you were looked at twice, that you had to prove yourself a little more than your male counterparts,'' she says. ``But I really kind of expected that.
``I just always kind of took it as though I belonged there as much as they (the men) did, and I acted that way. And that's the way I was treated, and people did not make me feel like I didn't belong, in general.''
Mutter has made a lot of stops along the way to Quantico - or, more accurately, back to Quantico. This is her sixth posting there.
Mutter is married to a retired Marine colonel, who, she said, is a driving force in her life.
As her career has progressed, ``If I ever said, `No, I don't want to do that,' he'd say, `No, you have to.' It's a role, frankly, that I don't think very many men could handle.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Maj. Gen. Carol Mutter
KEYWORDS: U.S. MARINE CORPS
WOMEN MILITARY
by CNB