she did better on her PT than most of the people her son's age in her basic training company.
You guys realize that this never happened don't you? That this is fake?
The woman did not meet the standard of the young male soldiers, she was not " treated just like every other Soldier-in-training" as any real soldiers know about.
If she did better than most of the young men on the test—and they passed—then she did meet the same standard as the young men.
Have the standards in general been changed in order to make more women pass? I suspect so and I suspect this is not a good thing. If the only upper-body strength test was pushups, it is easy to see how that would enable more women to pass.
It appears to me the basic army boot camp standards aren’t that high, and she was appropriately routed off to an appropriate role anyway—reservist paralegal.
But for anything approaching combat, I don’t see why either age or sex should factor into the physical fitness standards at all: you are either sufficiently fit and strong or you aren’t.