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Gwen Hunnicutt, writing on our Ideas front yesterday, offered arguments against underrepresentation in public institutions.

"Exclusionary practices may still be perpetrated in the present by standards and screenings that may seem fair but may be beset with conscious or unconscious biases," she wrote.

It's impossible to disagree, or with her subsequent statement that, "Equalizing opportunity is fraught with paradoxes and dilemmas, no doubt."

The immediate focus of Hunnicutt's essay, and the earlier column by Charles Davenport Jr., which she answered, is gender representation in the Winston-Salem Police Department.

The fact that far fewer than half of officers there are female indicates possible discrimination to some, apparently including Hunnicutt.

She raises valid questions, such as: "Is it really necessary to bench press your own weight to be a good police officer?"

The clear answer is no. Even if that's required for a young recruit, the standard surely no longer applies to a veteran officer whose contributions to law enforcement are much more cerebral than physical.

Valuable assets for police officers are intelligence, integrity and people skills.

Nevertheless, there are significant physical demands involved in many police jobs, and it would be foolish to brush aside all fitness standards. This is where Hunnicutt's "paradoxes and dilemmas" come in.

You can look at the military to see some examples. Women's roles are expanding rapidly there, to the point were many women are engaged in combat.

On Memorial Day, especially, we must acknowledge that women are placing themselves in harm's way on the battleground, and many have been killed and wounded in the line of duty along with their male comrades-in-arms.

Yet the military still enforces exclusionary policies.

Just a few weeks ago, we had reason to applaud the Navy SEALS, who saved an American merchant ship captain from Somali pirates. SEALS are the best of the best in the U.S. military. Basic training is virtually a survival course, and they steel themselves to undertake assignments in the most dangerous and demanding circumstances. As we saw, they carry out their work with deadly efficiency.

There has never been a woman accepted into the Navy SEALS. Women are specifically prohibited.

(Army Rangers, somewhat less elite, state no gender restriction. However, the physical requirements are so daunting that the net effect may be the same.)

This is clearly discriminatory. Is it also a matter of reasonable, even necessary, discrimination? The military thinks so.

We've come to regard "discrimination" as a negative quality, synonymous with bias, prejudice, unfairness, denial of equal opportunity.

Yet to be discriminating can also mean to apply sound judgment to situations when such discernment is important.

We might wish, for instance, that George W. Bush had been more discriminating at times when choosing which advisers to heed.

I'm not suggesting that the underrepresentation of women on the Winston-Salem police force, or any other, is entirely a product of good judgment. It's doubtful in the extreme that's true. But to assume the reverse, that's the numbers make a case for bias and nothing else would be just as prone to error.

Statistics may be a place to start, but not a place to end. If women are grossly underrepresented, there's reason to examine hiring policies. If the goal is to match the percentage of women on the force with their numbers in the general population, by whatever means it takes, there would be reason to question the possible cost of achieving such a result.