For years, the Marine Corps gave women the option of doing an embarrassingly easy “flexed-arm hang” rather than the traditional pullups expected of men on the force-wide physical fitness test.

That ended in January when the Corps changed the PFT rules.

And the results? Women are doing a lot of pullups. More than half of the women who did pullups maxed out their PFT test score (meaning they did at least seven pullups).

After all the hand wringing over the past several years about the role of women in the military, it’s worth taking a moment to applaud what the Marines have done with their fitness test — and how female Marines are performing.

It‘s only going to add momentum to the argument that women’s fitness standards should be identical to men’s.

Many women are the strongest advocates for that, saying that meeting the same standards as men will lead to equal treatment.