Quote from: Kiero;790081Do you have any idea how chauvinistic and conservative Greek and to an even greater degree Roman mores of the time were? "Proper" Greek and Roman women were expected to be sequestered away from the world, engaged in worthy crafts and outside of the sight of men not of their immediate family.

Ah yes, classical Athens, the "birthplace" of democracy, unless you were a woman, in which case more Taliban than the Taliban.

Quote from: Kiero;790121So what? As a GM I am under no obligation to allow absolutely any character concept a player might come up with. If we're playing a game set in and around the Mediterranean in 300BC, you can play a female combatant or a Greek, not both.

Exactly!
It do not affect how you GM at all, this is about how OP, Nexus, may or may not design his historical setting later if he will do any.

Quote from: Rincewind1;790127Congratulations, this thread made me into an American teenage girl, because after the Red Army drop in this thread, I don't even.

Congratulations indeed, you'll soon notice that wearing a dress do not turn you into a girl, Rincewind.

Quote from: Nexus;789956The topic of gender in ancient armies and fighting classes seems to come up a great deal. The idea that the majority of fighters in a low tech, pre firearms societies are probably male has been labeled everything from a mistake to a practical conspiracy to promote a sexist view of women's role in history. This site for example:

http://aidanmoher.com/blog/featured-article/2013/05/we-have-always-fought-challenging-the-women-cattle-and-slaves-narrative-by-kameron-hurley/

What is the deal on this? Have I been mislead/mistaken? I'm not a major history buff.

Selection pressures have favored mostly-male armies because number of females sets the limit on tribal growth: One male can contribute sperm to many offspring, but a female can bear only so many at a time. That doesn't really matter much to a nation-state in which the army makes up a  tiny fraction of the population, but tradition resists change.

EDIT: Pre-cultural human nature also resists change. Taken in the aggregate,  there are typical differences in  the predispositions of girls  and boys.

Some people have said that  women are too fierce. I can see reasons in principle and some anecdotal evidence that women might tend to be more uncompromising and relentless, but presumably armies are somewhat selective and also indoctrinate; any average sex difference  is probably negligible.  Certainly men  have made a record of atrocities not easily surpassed.

Quote from: Nexus;789956The topic of gender in ancient armies and fighting classes seems to come up a great deal. The idea that the majority of fighters in a low tech, pre firearms societies are probably male has been labeled everything from a mistake to a practical conspiracy to promote a sexist view of women's role in history. This site for example:

http://aidanmoher.com/blog/featured-article/2013/05/we-have-always-fought-challenging-the-women-cattle-and-slaves-narrative-by-kameron-hurley/

What is the deal on this? Have I been mislead/mistaken? I'm not a major history buff.

People have different opinions.

Classical authors wrote about women fighting - the Celts and Scythians had them, for example. Legends and folk tales have examples of women fighting in many different cultures. Sometimes they are unusual but accepted, sometimes they dress up as men to fight. Greek Myth has a number of female deities who were incredibly martial, for example. Turkic legends have examples of female batyrs, or heroes, who were excellent horse bowwomen. Medieval women fought alongside men in sieges, throwing things from the battlements and operating crossbows and siege machinery. When the knights were away, the women often commanded defence of castles.

Actual evidence is probably rarer, but there are a number of women warriors from various nomadic graves on the Eurasian Steppe. Joan of Arc was a good example of a woman who fought.

In more recent times, the Zulus had women soldiers - remember Shaka Zulu or the film The Naked Prey. The Soviets had women fighting alongside men in WWII.

A Google search should throw up even more.

Sure, they were not common, but women have fought in many battles in the past.

Did Joan of Arc literally fight, or was she strictly a leader?

The Dahomey mino regiment was raised in the musket era, which was more gruelling than carrying an assault carbine.

Quote from: Phillip;790184Did Joan of Arc literally fight, or was she strictly a leader?

I think she fought but I'm not sure.

Quote from: Nexus;790187I think she fought but I'm not sure.

Leaders in that time period generally fought.

Quote from: dragoner;790203Leaders in that time period generally fought.

I took the question to mean "Did she engage in battle or was she a figurehead/morale object"

Quote from: Nexus;790205I took the question to mean "Did she engage in battle or was she a figurehead/morale object"

The question means, did she try to do bodily harm to some other soldier who was trying to do unto her? Did she take a whack at anyone with sword or lance? By literal, I am distinguishing the bloody work from command-level activity. I would not say, for instance, that recent American presidents "fought" simply because they were commanders in chief.

Quote from: Phillip;790209The question means, did she try to do bodily harm to some other soldier who was trying to do unto her? Did she take a whack at anyone with sword or lance? By literal, I am distinguishing the bloody work from command-level activity. I would not say, for instance, that recent American presidents "fought" simply because they were commanders in chief.

Yes, that's what I thought.

Quote from: Nexus;790205I took the question to mean "Did she engage in battle or was she a figurehead/morale object"

From my impression, she both engaged in battle and was a figurehead, but I may be wrong.

Quote from: Nexus;790205I took the question to mean "Did she engage in battle or was she a figurehead/morale object"

Yes. Engaged in battle, afaik.

Quote from: soltakss;790182People have different opinions.

Classical authors wrote about women fighting - the Celts and Scythians had them, for example. Legends and folk tales have examples of women fighting in many different cultures. Sometimes they are unusual but accepted, sometimes they dress up as men to fight. Greek Myth has a number of female deities who were incredibly martial, for example. Turkic legends have examples of female batyrs, or heroes, who were excellent horse bowwomen. Medieval women fought alongside men in sieges, throwing things from the battlements and operating crossbows and siege machinery. When the knights were away, the women often commanded defence of castles.

Actual evidence is probably rarer, but there are a number of women warriors from various nomadic graves on the Eurasian Steppe. Joan of Arc was a good example of a woman who fought.

In more recent times, the Zulus had women soldiers - remember Shaka Zulu or the film The Naked Prey. The Soviets had women fighting alongside men in WWII.

A Google search should throw up even more.

Sure, they were not common, but women have fought in many battles in the past.

Greeks certainly had female deities who were warriors, but there was no corresponding tradition of women emulating Athena or Artemis.

Non-Greeks and those on the very periphery of the Greek world did, though. Some very close; I mentioned the Illyrians who were quite Hellenised, but had martial traditions amongst aristocratic women. Alexander the Great's half-sister Kynane was a warrior and general, daughter of a literal warrior-princess who trained her own daughter to fight and lead armies.

Quote from: jhkim;789993Men have almost always been the strong majority of the fighters overall. I don't think this has to do with sexual dimorphism of size so much as reproduction.  A community can lose 50% of its men, and still recover within a generation as long as the women survive and can bear children.  So even if women were bigger and stronger, I think there would be cultural pressure for them to stay out of the front lines.

In a monogamous society men are just as necessary as women. The 1914-1918 war in Europe left millions of women who would never marry. The men who would have married them were dead.

Conversely, women can (and historically often did) typically bear around 8 children each per generation, so if there is a shortage of people the population can recover very rapidly. World War 1 didn't threaten to depopulate Europe. The Black Death killed up to 50% or so indiscriminately, some marginal areas depopulated but populations generally recovered fairly quickly.

The proposition stated in the OP, that the the majority of fighters in ancient armies were male, is beyond reasonable doubt. Even the Dahomey regiment I mentioned  made up at most a third of the army.

That's no reason to deny the historical exceptions. It's bogglingly irrelevant to a world of witches, unicorns and dragons, or one in which as a rule sovereigns are  barbarians from the common or slave class who have come into a pile of gold and a magic mashie with a higher IQ and more charisma than the bearer.