strength and gender

Q – who do you want to carry you from a burning bldg?

my personal experience

From the time I was 16-25 years of age, I worked as a nurse’s aide in nursing and retirement homes for the aged. Our day was spent obv caring for them. Which included lifting them from pillar to post. Chair to bed, to toilet, to bath and back. The average patient was 100-150 lbs. At least 3-4 times a shift, we did toileting which took about an hour each. Of every five minutes, two of us lifting this person twice. Average weight we carried for 2-3 steps was 50-75 lbs each. We did have a hoyer lift, but rarely used it. Only for people who exceeded our usual range.
Most of the staff were female. In that time I worked with maybe 3-4 men.
My point is that we all were capable of doing the lifting. For 8-12 hour shifts. Nobody questioned our ability, or hired guys to take over that aspect of our job. On being hired, the charge nurse made sure we knew how to lift right, so we didn’t hurt ourselves or the patient/resident. We were told repeatedly that “you lift with your legs”.
So given that, it really confused me when I heard that people raised a fuss over hiring and gender requirements. I couldn’t imagine what they did that a woman couldn’t do? Given training and practice, I figured we could do anything a man could do. Esp if we did it in a team, where we all had our specific assigned tasks. That we specialized in. They ween’t EVER sending us onto the battlefield, into a fire, or into a gang war alone, or with no back up. It just wouldn’t occur.
I figured that men and women come in different sizes, have different abilities and can endure different things.
And test number one for me is the fact we go thru child birth. No man ever has. We do pain well. And endure it. Since time began.
Plus, in historic times, men and women did fight together for the safety of the village.
Even supposing all this is true, we now live in one of the most advanced times for technology. Why can’t we make tools/equipment for whatever it is they think the individual lacks? Like the hoyer lift we used for overweight patients?
I come from a farming culture where people used mechanical aids all the time to do their work. Mennonites and Amish often have tools that don’t use electricity to deal with large livestock. It’s true it’s usually the men that do it, but still those beasts are huge!! And they just don’t always cooperate. In fact, they rarely do.
Bottomline, there are many things that make someone strong. It’s not just brute strength that the army, fire dept and police need people to have, but also endurance and flexibility. And women have a good ability in the latter two.
So based on my background, and a debate I got into on fetlife, today I went hunting online…. Please let me know what your thoughts are.

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fire dept testing

police dept testing – are skills sought applicable to the job?

armed forces – minor variances in testing

…. variance in gender shown

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age and gender
stress fractures

brute/fast strength men- endurance/slow women – type of muscles

body proportions-height, shape- affect which type of lift you excel at

how strength is measured

strength to weight ratio
strength training in legs- you lift with your legs

diet to gain lean body mass

women can use resistance training to boost testosterone
hGH and muscle growth/recovery
insulin and glycemic index