@DW: Having lived in Okinawa in the past, I noticed a similar phenomenon there as well.
In earlier posts I discussed the status of the genders in the military, and efforts the Department of the Army has undertaken to introduce females into what is known as the "regular" Army. Perhaps most do not know that in order to do this in a manner which would meet quotas officials on high set for them to meet, the military had to change existing basic physical standards in order to allow more females entrance into the Armed Forces. These standards were changed, however, only in the case of female soldiers. They were not changed for a male soldier.
One form this standard takes: the PT test, or Physical Fitness Test, administered twice yearly to all soldiers in the military. The exact form of the test varies from branch to branch; since I was in the Army, I will deal with the Army's test here, specifically. Failure of this test can result in the discharge of the offending soldier.
The following link will take you to the website of "Army" magazine, a publication maintained by a group of retired Army soldiers, the "Association of the U.S. Army", or AUSA. The page I link to puts you in the midst of some letters to the editor...and within these letters, mention is made of the different standards for male soldiers and female soldiers.
ARMY Magazine
What follows is a link to a website which lists exactly what the US Army's requirements are for the Physical Fitness test, for both genders:
http://www.benning.army.mil/usapfs/Training/APFT/
In order to make sense of those charts, understand that a minimum point total of 60 must be achieved in each event category in order to pass the test.
As one can see, the standards in each event are higher for a male soldier, save in one category: sit-ups. Now...to some of us, the numbers involved might appear non-intimidating...and would be, if it were an unsupervised event. However, each event and each soldier is closely monitored by a PT Test administrator that scores the soldier according to the proper "form"...meaning, each exercise repetition *must* be executed in the proscribed manner, or it will *not* be counted.
Just to give you an idea of how stressful and demanding this can be...on my first PT Test in Basic Training, I executed more than 80 push-ups during the 2 minute period allowed for the event (I stopped keeping count after 70 or so
). However, as I was doing them the Test NCO only counted 44 of those push-ups as being valid "Army" push-ups. Why? On some, I didn't lower myself close enough to the ground...on others, my back sagged slightly...and near the end of the event, as I began to struggle to finish, I lowered my head down. One must execute a push-up as specified by Army standards in order for it to count towards your PT test score. I barely passed my first test as a result....but later on during my time in the military, I did much better.
The Army arrived at these standards based upon study and research conducted over several years, involving countless numbers of both male and female soldiers. I'm happy to say that the PT tests were never much of a problem for me - my best events were push-ups and the 2 mile run - but many people did indeed have some issues with the different standards for males and females. Some felt that the female soldiers should have to meet the same standards as male soldiers...after all, both were on an identical pay scale. A particularly sore point amongst many male soldiers was the fact that female soldiers were given special consideration out in the field, and were exempted from certain kinds of duty.
What are people's thoughts on this?