The Army Combat Fitness Test may not be gender neutral in the future- at least in how it is treated for promotions. Of course not- it would have severely limited the military careers of women under the original plan.
Army's Revamped ACFT Would Create 'Gender-Specific' Promotion Evaluation Categories
And get this!The U.S. Army is evaluating a new version of its gender-neutral Army Combat Fitness Test, one that would likely create "gender-specific" evaluation categories for men and women when it comes time for promotion.
No $#@!?! This is not new information except the specific gender differences on this test.The move would back away from the Army's original plan to have the new six-event test be gender-neutral in all aspects. It's in recognition of data showing that physiological differences between men and women cause individual scores to differ by 100 points on average by gender, according to an Army official familiar with the effort.
But instead of judging men and women's raw scores against the same rubric, the Army is proposing separate percentile bands for men and women that would be gender-blind when soldiers go before a promotion board.
"We are not going to artificially inflate the raw score for women, but we have to figure out a way to make it fair to both genders," the Army official said. "We need a fair way that accounts for physiological differences."
The proposed solution involves the creation of "gender-specific" percentile bands broken into levels such as Top 1%, Top 10%, Top 25% and Top 50%, according to an Army briefing slide circulating on social media.
To maintain fairness, promotion boards would only see a gender-blind percentile band rating, the Army official said.
"All they are going to see for evaluation is which percentile the soldier falls into," the Army official said. "The gender identity will not be included in that information. If anything, it's a more gender-neutral assessment process because it doesn't show the raw scores."