Originally Posted by
chollie
If the requirement for promotion is to spend 'x' amount of time in each of several functions, then why would women get denied promotion because they've been forced to spend time groping instead of screening checked baggage? Why wouldn't men be equally penalized because they're not doing their fair share of groping?
You've answered the question yourself, without realizing it.
It appears that the requirement for promotion isn't that you do your "fair share" of pat-downs, but that you complete so many fixed hours of it, along with so many fixed hours of other duties. If TSA imposes its rules regarding who may and may not perform pat-downs, it seems clear that female TSOs are being pulled away from other duties to perform pat-downs --- making it hard from them to accumulate enough hours at those other duties. I suspect that the hour requirements are easy enough for male TSOs to satisfy even with the lesser demand for male TSOs for pat-downs.
If TSA rules require as many or more pat-downs to be performed by females than males, and simultaneously TSA hires twice as many males as females as TSOs, it's easy to see how those females are at a disadvantage when it comes to promotion.
This is hardly unique to TSA, of course. Women serving in the US armed forces have historically had difficulty being promoted because of the great value placed upon actual combat experience, combined with the restrictive rules regarding women in combat that were (are?) in place.