How equal do we have to be?

It's my first entry. I haven't event gotten around to posting a complete profile or picture yet.
I'm no oil painting, so that's probably a good thing!

I love to read the newspapers, watch the news, and generally observe what's going on in the world. I'm constantly amazed at how we think, how we stick to our views regardless of all the evidence that we're being stupid.

Case in point: equality of the sexes. I'm all for it; equal pay for equal work, complete respect for a person regardless of race, gender, intellectual ability, and anything else that makes us different.
But why do we have to go to extremes? Why have people doing unsuitable jobs just to prove how much we believe that all are equal?

Last week in our town a diminutive female police officer was severely beaten when she tried to arrest a 6’4” (1.93m for the rest of the world), violent man!

She was eventually rescued by a couple of bystanders (men!) who were injured themselves.

Why? Did she feel she had something to prove? Why not call for backup? I admire her bravery, but I don’t think she’s very smart! Or was it just the pressure to be “equal” to her male colleagues?
Or, even scarier, do her superiors expect her to be equal to the guys in any situation?

Don’t even get me started that she apparently wasn’t allowed to use any weapons! All you Taser opponents: what do you think about that?