Cop Out

Yesterday I was packing some things away in the attic which is how there came to be a pile of old newspapers in my bedroom.  They were acquired newspapers so when a headline caught my eye as I was getting ready for work this morning I stopped to have a read.
The newspaper in question was The Daily Telegraph of Monday, September 9, 2013.  The headline read: Your test favours fat men over fit women, police told.
What it came down to was this; "ninety three per cent of men passed the test, despite half of all male candidates being overweight.  Just 60 per cent of women finished within the time limit, though only a third were overweight."
Well, first allow me to address the absurd assumption that fitness and weight are synonymous.  That.  Is.  Absurd.
I was first told I was overweight at the age of 11:

Yeah, cos I look so fat there...goodness, I'd kill to be anywhere near that skinny again!  Anyway, eventually I did get very heavy indeed hitting my all time worst in April this year and yet I'm fitter than you'd expect.
Five years ago I found myself, a morbidly obese asthmatic, comfortably able to out-swim a 'healthy weight' friend; two years ago my GP recommended I get less exercise as my 25,000 steps per day work pattern was ruining my feet; a year and a half ago I busted my right knee trying to beat my then thirteen year old daughter at limbo...  Muscle weighs more than fat and weight does not equal fitness.
But what really gets me about this article is the sexism.
Not from the allegations that "male officers gather around while the female recruits bounce and jiggle and run around, and they're wolf whistling and clapping" (if a police candidate of either gender can't hack a bit of harassment they have no business being in the job) but from the assumption that women deserve special treatment.
And I quote:

• It is "clearly" biased to expect women to finish within the same time as men
• The gates were not wide enough [for women], so men with slinky snake hips could weave through quite easily
• Women also made almost twice as many errors on the "body drag" task, which relies on upper body strength

What the fuck?!  Not so long ago women were fighting to prove themselves equal to men, to be allowed to do a 'man's job' and now some dumb-ass behavioural scientist (yes, I mean YOU Professor Craig Jackson) thinks women deserve extra time and modifications to tasks which are based on the job successful applicants will be required to do.  Excuse me?!  Is the real world going to give a female police officer more time to chase a suspect or provide more space between obstacles for her hips???  Of course not!
It's unfashionable to say so but men and women are NOT equal.  Women are not, on average, as strong or as fast as male counterparts...just look at the Olympic and world records for things such as 100m and weightlifting.  It's not the police fitness test that is inherently unfair but biology.
The test itself is called the Gender-Neutral Timed Obstacle Course (GeNTOC) and the clue is in the name...gender is not a factor in this test.  Gender should not be a factor in your ability to do your job either - the 60% of women who pass the test are equal to the 93% of men who pass as both can do the job they're training to do.