At West Point, cadets are evaluated on four pillars: physical, academic, military, character.
There is a physical fitness test unique to West Point called the IOCT: indoor obstacle course test. It's a graduation requirement. Performance on the IOCT figures into a cadet's class standing, which contributes to everything from graduation rank to what branch you get to what job you have in the Corps of Cadets to what cool summer opportunities are available to them.
The IOCT is gender normed and is scored by time. I haven't looked at the specifics in a while, but Wikipedia says a D on the male scale is literally an A+ for females. A time of 3.31 is a fail for men, but is an A- for women.
The Army's latest physical fitness test is similarly skewed in favor of females. For example, a deadlift of 210 pounds is max score for females, 100 points. IT's only worth 74 points for males. So being (or claiming to be, I guess) female gives you a built-in advantage of 26 points out of a 100 point total on that event. More than 25%.
But cadets (and Army Soldiers) aren't evaluated male/male and female/female. They're all lumped in together. So being female at West Point imparts a several-letter-grade advantage in one of the four pillars that all cadets are evaluated on, and in the Army, where we tend to reduce people to numbers when we're considering them for advancement, schooling, positions, etc., women have an enormous gender-based advantage of something like 25%.
I'm totally fine with anyone doing any Army job that they are qualified to do. Women can be highly physically fit. I think I mentioned here on the site that I once watched a female cadet knock out 100 straight pushups during a PT test demonstration we were doing for some Yale students. So stop coddling the women and disadvantaging the men. Are we "equal" in Army green, or aren't we?
