The present world war has called women to tasks totally unsuited to the accepted standards of women's physical strength and capacities. At the present time, therefore, when our nation needs to mobilize every particle of woman power as well as man power, it is well to determine with as much definiteness as possible what that power may be. In the case of woman particularly, it is useful to know whether these unprecedented demands on her strength and activities are liable to make her racially less efficient, and whether many of the handicaps are real or only traditional.
In hope of gaining more exact information concerning the muscular strength of woman, this study was undertaken.
Dr. Martin's method of testing muscular strength,1 originally devised for the study of cases of anterior poliomyelitis, was used. Forty-five average healthy college women, most of whom had always been physically active, although, in the