“Airborne, Air Assault, Ranger, Green Berets, etc all required even tougher standards.”
I have some bad news for you. I went to Airborne school in 1990. Outside every mess hall in the Airborne training area, there is a pull up bar. We had to do a certain number of pull ups before entering for chow. There was a purpose to this - with the T10C parachute, you steered by pulling on the risers with your arms, and it took a lot of upper body strength.
But there were women there. So alongside every pull up bar, there was another one, around 3 feet off the ground. The women would lie down underneath the bar, and do a fake pull up. I guess they didn’t have to steer?
Another story. Before we jumped, the jumpmaster would check your parachute. This involved running his hands along the harness, through the crotch area, to make sure your straps weren’t crossed (crossed straps could slice your private parts in two when the chute opened). Every part of the pre-jump inspection involved physically touching the rigging, and this was no exception...
...until one day our Jumpmaster was a female. She skipped that part of the inspection.
BTW, many women pass Airborne and Air Assault School. Most are cadets, either West Point or ROTC...or members of support units in the 82nd or 101st.
Both schools involve a lot of fear, and Air Assault involved a huge ‘suck factor’...but really they weren’t as demanding as regular Infantry training. We slept indoors every night.
I was in a mech unit in Germany. 1st Bn 52nd Infantry. We had a “hard charging” Ranger get assigned to our unit for his overseas tour. For weeks all we heard was how BA the Rangers were and how they would do this or that in a fight. How they didn’t need “cars” to carry them around.
Our next training was gunnery at Grafenwoehr. Our Ranger buddy got to see the full firepower of a mech platoon. Four M2s, 4 Dragons, 8 M60’s, 8 M203’s, and a dozen or so M-16..... firing the full battle complement of ammunition. After that one platoon finished their live fire, our Ranger buddy turn to us with a rather pale look and said that he was glad that he would never have to attack one of our defended positions.