The Pentagon this week ordered the elimination of lower physical fitness standards for women in combat units, a move that is likely to hinder the recruitment and retention of women in particularly dangerous military jobs.
An order by Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, dated Sunday and announced on Monday, mandated that all physical fitness requirements for combat arms positions — units likely to see significant fighting in wartime — be “sex-neutral,” which is likely to significantly reduce the number of women who meet the requirements. The order directs military leadership to implement the new fitness standards by the end of October.
The U.S. military has fiercely debated the issue of how to fairly grade women’s physical fitness in testing to determine their placement into physically demanding combat jobs and their advancement in leadership roles.
After years of internal deliberation over new annual fitness tests, the Army eased the grading standards for women and older service members in 2022. A study by the RAND research corporation published that year found that women and older troops were failing the new test at significantly higher rates than men and younger troops.
Other branches of the military have also had different fitness test standards for men and women. For example, the Marines have a strength test for all recruits: Men must complete three pull-ups or 34 push-ups in under two minutes. Women must complete one pull-up or 15 push-ups in the same time frame.
Those gender-specific standards will remain for some military jobs, Mr. Hegseth said in a statement accompanying the order. But he argued that women should not be allowed in combat units if they could not meet the same fitness standards as men.
Mr. Hegseth has previously opposed the inclusion of women in combat jobs like the infantry, artillery, tank crews and special forces, writing in a recent book that “women cannot physically meet the same standards as men.” He later backtracked on that stance, saying in December that “if we have the right standard and women meet that standard, roger, let’s go.”
The struggle over the fitness tests began after the military removed some of the last barriers segregating the genders in the armed forces, opening all combat jobs to women in 2015.
As women pushed to break new ground and advance into elite combat roles, such as the infantry officer corps and special forces, questions arose over whether women should be held to a different fitness standard to ensure the roles were accessible to them. The most elite jobs, such as the Army Rangers and Navy SEALS, have always mandated equal standards for men and women.
In an early, limited rollout of the Army’s new fitness test, 65 percent of a small set of women failed, while 10 percent of men did. The later independent review by RAND produced similar results: Nearly half of enlisted women in the Army failed the test, while less than 10 percent of their male counterparts did.
Maj. Kristen Griest, the first woman Army infantry officer and one of the first two women to graduate from Army Ranger School, wrote an opinion article published in 2021 by The Modern War Institute at West Point that called for gender-neutral fitness testing standards. She argued that lower standards for women “reinforce the belief that women cannot perform the same job as men, therefore making it difficult for women to earn the trust and confidence of their teammates.”
