The tale that women are the weaker sex, is as old as time. The idea that a woman's job is to bear and raise children has dominated the ideology of the majority in this country. However, as time passes, women have fought to change this misguided perception; and as a result of this fight, major change has ascended. Change in women's athletics began in 1972 when Congress enacted a law known as Title IX. This law made it illegal for federally funded schools to spend more money on men's athletics than women's. And since then, women have continued to show more improvement in events such as marathon running and pole vaulting by as much as 24 percent. This improvement shows the potential women have for upper body and cardiovascular strength and endurance. Sports scientists have proven that women can run 90 percent as fast as the average man, and is about two thirds as strong as men in upper body strength when using the traditional military method of measuring physical fitness. Women's weightlifting records are around 78 percent of the men's records in the most comparable weight classes as. Also, when other measures of strength are used, such as strength relative to cross-sectional area of muscle, the strength of men and women is nearly equal. Men's strength is just as variable as women's. Men, on average, are bigger than women, with a higher lean body mass-to-fat ratio. But women generate the same force per unit of muscle as men. That is, muscle pound to muscle pound, women and men are similar in strength. When measured in speed, as in size or strength, men score above women on average but men's and women's bell-curves overlap, meaning that well trained women do possess and have the potential to perform as well men. "The more important strength to have is mental toughness and neither gender have a monopoly on that" (Lt. Timothy Kudo). .
Present day wars differ immensely than those we Americans have fought in the past.
