I do have a good idea what their grips strength were, the US armed forces do such studies all of the time, sometimes they publish them. The statistics around this are well known. Grip strength is used as it's a good proxy and easy to do in an informal setting.
I'm very interested in health and resistance training is a part of that. I'm also interested in the social phenomena of certain ideological groupings of thought, such as 'healthy at any size' and 'women are exactly equal to men'.
The US failures in Iraq and Afghanistan are no more due to women than the US failure in Vietnam was due to men.
If grip strength is so important, then test for that. The military can easily do that at the recuitment center.
Otherwise it's the social phenomena known as sexism. That means rejecting a professional lumberjack simply because she's a woman, while accepting a less capable man because you've got a recuitment quota to meet.