The FBI engaged in gender discrimination by using a physical fitness test for prospective agents that is biased against men, a federal judge has ruled.
In a written opinion, a federal judge in Virginia found that a test that required Jay A. Bauer, 40, to complete 30 pushups — while requiring women to do only a minimum of 14 — violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
If this is not reversed it will either lower the fitness standards in FBI and other agencies that require them, or will result in a lot fewer women employed there. Either way - Title VII strikes back.
I don’t see why it’s important in something like the FBI, where you might be a deskbound analyst. But I am all in favor of identical standards for jobs like firefighters, where carrying someone out of a building is part of the job description.
I’m fine with that so long as it can be proven that meeting every single standard is absolutely necessary for a firefighter to be competent at his or her job.
like for FBI if you worked in the field you would have one set of standards. if you would be doing a desk job you might have another fitness standard but you you would never get moved away from a desk job or get promotions that required broader experience.
Seems to me there’s a difference between a test for general physical fitness and a test for a specific job’s physical requirements. Aren’t there physiological reasons that women and men, in general, can’t do the exact same things to the exact same level? I’m reaching back in my memory, but, for example, women can’t run as fast as men because of skeletal differences, or so I was told. And that’s why standards for passing PT tests in the military are different based on sex (and age.) I don’t see that as discrimination - it’s an acknowledgment of reality.
But as mentioned above, if a job requires a minimum performance standard, like carrying an unconscious person out of a burning building within a certain amount of time, your plumbing is not a factor. You can either do it, or you can’t. And social engineering shouldn’t enter into the picture.
Why not acknowledge reality by giving people with worse “skeletal differences” a lower score? How come I have to have the same run time as a tall man to get the same score, but women get a bonus for their physical differences? Seems to me, no matter which way you look at it, I’m being discriminated against in one way and “acknowledging reality” in the other.
I agree with ** FairyChatMom** that there is a difference between being able to perform a specific task, which should be the same for everybody, and being fit, which is different for different types of bodies. Men and women have rather different types of bodies,and equally fit men and women may not be able to perform tasks at the same level. It’s a binary with only a very small gray area (trans* people), so it’s easy to make sex-based categories. You can’t have everything personalized because it would get too complicated, but it seems like adding height categories for running would be reasonable as well.
Sorry, that was in response to Chessic Sense’s comment that short people have to run the same as tall people. If the test is all about how fit the individual is, it seems like having height divisions within the sex divisions would be reasonable. This is all assuming that the purpose is to have the most fit people, not the fastest and the strongest.