No combat jobs under the Navy Department, including Marine Corps infantry and Navy SEALs, will be allowed to claim gender-neutral exemptions when the Navy changes its hiring policies by the end of this year. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus gave a lengthy address explaining why the Navy would not grant any exemptions that prevent women from taking combat jobs, even in the face of a recent Marine Corps study that suggested women were not fit for infantry roles.

The study concluded that women were on average more likely to suffer physical injury while performing infantry tasks. All-male units also performed better on 69 percent of tasks. Of the 100 or so women who started the training, only a scarce through saw the study to the end without dropping out or getting hurt.

The Marine Corps’ assessment that women shouldn’t be in the infantry has met much criticism. Military officials like Mabus believe that focusing on averages skews the entire study and erases top-performing women who could keep up with the men.

Here’s a passage from his speech where Mabus discusses the study and why he would not request any exemptions for the Marine Corps:

“Every occupational specialty in the military is open unless you request an exemption, and if you request an exemption both the chairman (of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and the Secretary of Defense have to sign off on it. Nobody is asking for an exemption in Navy.”

“The Marines did a very long study, about six months, looking at women in things like infantry, armor, artillery. And at the end, they came out — and I’ve read the study pretty carefully a couple times — in a different place than I do, because they talk about averages, and the average woman is slower, the average woman can’t carry as much, the average woman isn’t quite as quick on some jobs or some tasks. The other way to look at it is, we’re not looking for average. There were women that met this standard, and a lot of the things there that women fell a little short in can be remedied by two things — training and leadership.

“And so I’ve been pretty clear, and I’ve been pretty clear about this for a while — I’m not going to ask for an exemption for the Marines. It’s not going to make them any less fighting effective. In fact, I think they will be a stronger force, because a more diverse force is a stronger force. And it will not make them any less lethal. And those are the two things you have to protect in the Marine Corps.”