The "pushups" that almost every female Soldier I've seen over the past 20 years barely qualify as pushups. They go up and down a few inches and absolutely struggle the entire time. If a male did pushups like that, he'd fail the APFT. I've literally never seen a female do FORTY pushups.
Well, then our experiences seem to be greatly different. The ones I witnessed broke the 90 degree plane while keeping a generally straight profile, just like the men. If they didn’t, the rep wasn’t counted. My sample size is probably much smaller than yours (there were probably no more than 10 female cadets over the two years, as I recall—which may contribute to the median amount being relatively high), but none of the cadets had any difficulty reaching 10 pushups (or even 20) like you reference in your earlier post. Then again, I can’t recall any male cadets having any difficulty reaching the 42 pushup minimum for men either (apart from new cadets experiencing their first APFTs at the beginning of the quarter—where some new cadets of both genders would fail the APFT).