What should the Army do about this? Should they go back to different standards for (realizing I might be stepping into a quagmire with this next word, but unsure how else to phrase it) each gender? Should the test be changed? The event the women seem to be struggling the most with is the “leg tuck”. The Army’s website describes it like this:
Are things like “the strength of the Soldiers grip, arm, shoulder and trunk muscles” rightfully important to the Army and this is just a bad way of measuring them? Is there a way to measure “the strength of the Soldiers grip, arm, shoulder and trunk muscles” that would be more favorable to female soldiers? Or should the Army be working on ways to fight a war that don’t involve soldiers carrying loads and / or injuring their backs?
I don’t know what the Army was thinking - no test involving upper body strength is going to have gender-neutral results. Men are way stronger than women, particularly in the upper body, and training increases the gap.
The short answer is No. Any measurement of arm or shoulder strength is going to disfavor female soldiers. That was why they used to test women with the bent arm hang, and men with pullups.
Yes, they should, and they are. But there are still lots of ways of fighting wars that do involve carrying loads, and that cannot be eliminated.
You will always need boots on the ground, and boots on the ground always mean packs on the back. And rifles and rations and radios and ammunition and all the things we give the Army to kill people and break things.
The Army could make the test easier. Then more of the 30% of men would pass as well as more of the 84% of the women who failed.
Is the Army making its recruiting goals? If they aren’t, maybe look into why. If they are, I don’t see a problem.
The only significant measure of an army that is best, vs. second-best, is how good are they at killing people and breaking things. Whether they are 50% female, 5% female, or 100% male, is irrelevant.
I don’t think so. The test results have been described as a “leak”. I doubt you’ll get some official acknowledgement of the results in the public domain. You’re doubting that they’re authentic or accurate? I think it’s pretty obvious that what Shodan said is true:
and that reality is being reflected in the results of the ACFT.
This reality that is supposed to be pretty obvious to you, me and Shodan but has somehow slipped by the US Army? Maybe it hasn’t and there’s a reason that the first recorded ACFT is at least a year out still. I’m not going to work myself into a lather about something posted on facebook by someone who uses sPonGeMOcK tEXt.
Regardless of your garrison job, every soldier receives basic combat training and has the potential to require use of the Basic Training every soldier receives. Even a desk clerk might find him/herself in a position to carry a wounded comrade back to the truck, etc.
I don’t have any hard figures to cite, but I’d be surprised if the % of “selected Soldiers with permanent profiles that prevent full participation in the 6-event test” is very high.
You could say the same thing about me, a 39-year-old Air Force veteran and current reservist. At no point in my 17 year career would I ever have been able to drag a 200lb soldier with gear out of a firefight, and I (a male) would have no problem passing the Army’s fitness test. I know the Air Force is not the Army, but the Army is not the Army infantry, and the Army infantry isn’t Delta Force.
Gender neutral requirements for specific jobs are fine, but if 84% of all female soldiers are failing a baseline fitness test, the test is too hard. If these stats are true, and I’m skeptical, then someone seriously fucked up in setting the standards.
Yes, we should be careful not to go from an “unequal outcome” to “discrimination”. Unequal outcome is a red flag, not evidence of discrimination.
Work ability tests can be fairly too approximative. I remember push-ups being a big deal in the Canadian military but, even though I was quite good at them, I’m not sure that helped me out much aside from having an easier time during punishments.
It seems to me pretty clear that they’re quietly / tacitly acknowledging that the numbers are accurate, but with a couple of caveats:
this is only a subset of all the battalions taking the new test
this test is new, and they expect that soldiers will train and prepare for it over the next year so that when it becomes the test of record, more of them will pass
I agree, and the Army certainly seems to think that the new ACFT is relevant to the job of being a soldier in the US Army: https://www.army.mil/acft/#faq-section-1
Very well then. Yes, the Army has lots of rules. And it’s almost a trope that good people fuck off to the civilian world because they can make more money without all the hassle, and the upper ranks are filled with lazy deadbeats who can’t hack it elsewhere but know how not to get kicked out until they can retire.
Now imagine you’re not a US Army policy maker, you’re a 45-year-old US Army Intel squadron commander. Your best troop, like your 100% go-to soldier for getting-shit-done to complete the mission and win the war, is constantly stressed out because she’s worried she won’t be able to do enough leg tucks. Or worse, she actually does get kicked out, against your say-so, because big Army is worried that she won’t be able to drag a soldier out of convoy ambush that she’ll never be in. That sucks. Or just imagine your favorite, hardest working coworker at whatever job you work gets fired for making personal copies or some other dumb rule violation that you don’t really care about because it doesn’t affect you in any way.
It’s true that the standards aren’t that tough, and if people really wanted to stay in the military they’d find a way to pass. Rules are rules, after all, and we all have to follow them. But that’s of little consolation when you’re losing good people to a fitness test that will 99.99% of the time never apply to them.
(This opinions are my own, and do not reflect my professional views as a senior NCO, nor the views of the US Air Force. Others in my position can and do disagree with my feelings).
The article said 64% passed overall - 70% of males, and 16% of females.
So 70% of men could pass the test without much or any preparation. 84% of women couldn’t. Thus, if you want soldiers who can pass a fitness test, women need more time to prepare, more training, and are more likely to decondition to the point where they fail the test without special maintenance. Meanwhile, 70% of men can do it cold and can be off getting trained on something else.
My wife’s 2nd cousin posted about the ACFT on Facebook and it was dizzying just looking at it and all of its events. She’s been on active duty for a couple years now but she put herself through college in the reserves and through ROTC and she’s a hard charger. I don’t know how useful the new PT test will be but I didn’t think 2 minutes of pushups, 2 minutes of sit-ups, and a 2 mile run was bad either. At least soldiers will look good now when they all finally get switched over to the pinks and greens.
Back in the dark ages (early 1970s) there were a lot of complaints about women applicants failing to pass some physical tests on the grounds that they would not be able to successfully use the “fireman’s carry” to remove injured or unconscious people from burning buildings. Then someone realized that a standing firefighter holding an injured person up above the ground where the most smoke and toxic air existed was dangerous to both the firefighter and the victim. Tests were changed to use dragging to remove victims and the number of successful women applicant went up. It had nothing to do with “lowering standards” but happened roughly contemporaneously.
How have women been performing in actual combat? If they have been failing, then they should not be permitted in combat roles when they fail the ACFT. On the other hand, if women have not been failing in combat, the ACFT should be redesigned to test realistic conditions, not hypothetical ones.