Is Fox's Fitness Challenge Unfair to Females?

WASHINGTON - Oct. 9, 2025 - PRLog -- Four Trump ladies - Pam Bondi, Tulsi Gabbard, Karoline Leavitt, and Lara Trump - tackle the Pete & Bobby Physical Fitness Challenge (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/healthcare/3760010/rfk-jr-hegseth-work-out-pete-bobby-challenge-latest-maha-push/) popularized by Pete Hegseth and Bobby Kennedy Jr., and later also accepted (https://www.foxnews.com/video/6377153106112) by Will Cain and Sean Duffy, on a program to be shown on Fox News (https://www.instagram.com/p/DPj2levibG-/) this Saturday at 9:00 PM Eastern time.  It challenges Americans to perform 50 pull-up and 100 push-ups within no more than ten minutes.

But many may wonder if it is fair to women, especially since the need for separate women's and men's categories in virtually all sports is widely accepted as necessary because of physical differences, and the military academies among other institutions have accepted the need for different standards of physical fitness based upon sex as well as age (except for combat), notes public interest law professor John Banzhaf, who has studied and written frequently on the topic.

He notes that although women as well as men can be very strong and physically fit, fit women in general have far less upper body strength than fit men.  More specifically, female upper body strength is reportedly (https://www.google.com/url?esrc=s&q=&rct=j&sa...) only 50 to 60 percent that of men.

So, even with the advantages afforded to them by the square-cube law (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SquareCubeLaw), women generally have a harder time than men to perform exercises which primarily depend upon and test upper body strength, argues Banzhaf.

For example, even VMI - which originally insisted that its female military cadets had to meet the same fitness standards as males - has now recognized that this is unfair and unrealistic.  For example (https://www.vmi.edu/admissions-and-aid/appointed-students/physical-preparation/)
. .

In other words, the difference in this one fitness standard criteria for comparing upper-body strength - which, unlike lifting barbells and other weights, provides a significant advantage for those who weigh less and takes advantage of the square-cube law (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SquareCubeLaw) - is far greater between men and women of the same age than between men who are young and those who are less fit because they are older.

As another example of the differences in upper body strength between male and female athletes, power lifter Avi Silverberg claimed to identify as a woman to gain entry into a lifting contest. He won a women's competition (https://nypost.com/2023/03/30/male-powerlifter-enters-womens-event-breaks-record/) by easily breaking the female record by nearly 100 pounds; lifting an unheard of 35% more weight than the woman's record.

So it would seem reasonable for there to be different expectations for the Pete & Bobby Physical Fitness Challenge when performed by even very fit women as compared with their male counterparts.

http://banzhaf.net/ jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com @profbanzhaf