[Handsome Creepy Eel]

"New York Times Wrote:

WASHINGTON — How many pull-ups does it take to make a female Marine?

The answer, starting next January: a minimum of three, the same number required of male Marines. But even for the pull-ups, the Marines are still making some exceptions. To get a perfect grade, women will have to do only 8, compared with the 20 required for men.

But the new Marine Corps regulations are just part of a sweeping re-examination of fitness standards in the military that Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta’s announcement last week ending the ban on women in combat only accelerated.

As it stands now, service members face a gantlet of overlapping fitness tests throughout the vast sprawl of the American military, from initial ones that recruits have to pass to annual fitness (and weight) tests to specific physical requirements that must be met for combat jobs.

The Pentagon says it will not lower standards for women, but is nonetheless reviewing the requirements for hundreds of what are called military occupational specialties to see if they actually match up with the demands of each job.

Some combat jobs that might open to women may require them to meet only specific requirements rather than a wide range of fitness standards.

“We’re going to ensure that our tank crewmen are fully capable of removing 50-pound projectiles from the ammunition rack and loading them into the main gun in a sustained manner in a combat situation,” said George Wright, an Army spokesman.
---------------
Mr. Jacob, now the policy director for the Service Women’s Action Network, an advocacy group that worked to end the female combat ban, acknowledged the physiological differences between men and women, but said they were overstated. “There are lots of men who don’t have the same muscle mass as other men,” he said. “There is physical diversity regardless of gender.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/02/us/pol...-home&_r=0