Discrimination against women
"ETHNOS" Newspaper Column: "The Third View"	13.5.2003

 

I am grieved to report that discrimination against women continues to occur, and that new, indirect methods are applied to exclude women from the Police Force. In particular, the equation of the minimum height for both sexes and its setting at 1.70 m. clearly constitutes discrimination - very few Greek women are taller than that. At the same time, the minimum height level for entry in other Security and Armed Forced is 1.65 m. for men and 1.55 m. for women.

Similarly, setting the same performance limits for men and women in sports and physical endurance tests can only be seen as discrimination against women. According to international and Greek practice, the biological differences of the sexes are taken into consideration in all kinds of physical testing. Otherwise, young women would mostly be unable to outperform their male competitors, and would be unfairly excluded. The absurdity of the Police Force physical tests is seen at its extreme in setting the weight of the shot at 7.272 kg., when according to IAAF rules it is 4 kg.

 

The attempt to give a veneer of equal treatment by instituting the same physical qualifications for both sexes fails to conceal that the rules discriminate against women by ignoring their biological differences. Women and men are equal, but they are not the same.