PENTAGON MAY REVERSE GENDER-NEUTRAL PHYSICAL FITNESS TEST FOR US ARMY SOLDIERS. A new test has been scoring men and women on the same basis — but more than half of women are failing.
The US Army is considering a reversal of its new gender-neutral physical test to instead include different evaluation categories for men and women.
Research showed that the Army Combat Fitness Test [ACFT], which is the same for male and female soldiers, was leading to lower results for women with a knock-on effect for promotions.
An early Pentagon study showed that women were failing the ACFT at a rate of 65 per cent, while only 10 percent of men did.
Congress has halted implementation of the new test and the Army has launched an independent review into whether it is fair.
In the ACFT there are six events – the maximum deadlift, a standing power throw, hand-release push-ups, a sprint, drag and carry, leg tuck, and a two-mile run.
To pass the test those taking it must score at least 360 points out of a possible 600, and those who achieve higher scores are more likely to be promoted.
However, average sores for women so far are said to have been 100 points lower.
Congress has now declared that the test in its current form should not be a factor in deciding whether someone gets promoted.
As David Frum wrote in his 2000 book, How We Got Here: The 70’s: The Decade that Brought You Modern Life (For Better or Worse):
Unlike the racial divide, the sexual divide corresponded to something deep and real about men and women. “Feminists have to question, not just all of Western culture, but the organization of culture itself, and further, even the very organization of nature,” the radical feminist Shulamith Firestone audaciously argued in 1970. And questioning nature was exactly what the new civil rights law of disparate impact did.
Americans over a certain age are often surprised to see diminutive women patrolling their city’s meanest streets. The policemen of their childhood were tall, commanding figures. Have the cops shrunk? Well, yes. In March 1973, the federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration issued an order forbidding any local police department that received federal funds (that is, all of them) to maintain minimum height requirements—the rules disqualified too many women. In 1977, the Supreme Court seconded LEAA by striking down Alabama’s minimum height requirement as a violation of the 1964 act. The federal government lived up to its own principles. In 1971 it waived size and strength requirements for its own police forces. In 1977, New York City acceded to a judicial order and permitted women to apply for fire-fighting jobs. None of the applicants passed the department’s strength test so the judge ordered the strength test made easier until sufficient numbers of women could pass.
Well, better dead than rude, right?