Quote from: JeremyR;790029A lot of the supposed "evidence" showing female fighters in history is misleading.

http://www.missedinhistory.com/blog/raining-on-your-parade-about-those-women-viking-warriors/

Generally speaking, it can't be a common occurrence. Not if you want your civilization/culture/country to survive in the long run.

You need women to have babies. You can't afford to use them as soldiers. Men's role in the reproductive process isn't nearly as important or as involved.

Beyond that, what happens when your army needs to go on maternity leave? Thanks to birth control we can have mixed armies today, but what would it be like before that?

That said, some of these things go away in fantasy. I would imagine there would be an easy magical form of birth control.

I would imagine there would be a lot of half-orc women in armies, since they probably don't have a lot of marriage prospects and they would be big/strong enough to fight well.

From what we've seen in the 20th century, mixed-sex combat units don't work well - arguably* more for the effect the women have on the men than vice versa. Segregated female units can work, but most women aren't terribly keen on fighting even where they (as a sex) are rather good at certain speciailties, sniper for instance. Thinking about half-orcs, lone female warriors certainly seem plausible for many settings. If half-orcs are common then units composed entirely of female half-orcs might show up in organised armies. Cultural norms may be able to overcome the problems of integrated units - treating women as honorary men, say, so that the male soldiers no longer 'see' them as female. And of course in hierarchic states, top-down political commandments can force integration regardless of effectiveness...

*Van Creveld,  The Transformation of War, 1991.

Quote from: Catelf;790074You really mean there were no females at all in Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Persian armies back then?

There certainly were no (openly female) women in Greek or Roman armies, no. I can't speak to Egypt or Persia but I've not seen any claims of female warriors in Egypt, it seems unlikely. The early Persians may have had some female fighters; like the Scythians they were originally Aryan nomads and their culture was probably more egalitarian than the Greeks & Romans. We certainly know that Queen Artemisia commanded her own ship in battle at Salamis.

I can imagine the notably-egalitarian Etruscans allowing female fighters, but there is no evidence that I know of of this; the Roman tales of Horatio & co fighting the Etruscans (which predate actual written Roman history) don't mention any. Generally you have to go to northern and eastern Europe to find any women who fight, and then only rarely.

Quote from: S'mon;790218In 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.

You miss the point more than once.

Monogamous societies don't flourish where there are too few men; the minds must be born before culture can inhabit them! Women in agricultural societies bore 8 children to get 3 who lived. "Depopulation of Europe"  means squat to people, less to genes. It's reduction of your kin that counts, when that's likely to be followed by the remainder getting killed (perhaps eaten) by a more numerous neighboring tribe.

It's not, "hey, some of these are alive, too." It's which ones are more often alive to reproduce. And not just in the blink of an eye that is history (never mind recent history), but generations spanning millions of years.

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

There's no evidence that she personally hit anyone with a weapon. She did lead soldiers in battle.

Quote from: Phillip;790228You miss the point more than once.

Monogamous societies don't flourish where there are too few men; the minds must be born before culture can inhabit them! Women in agricultural societies bore 8 children to get 3 who lived.

I could talk about disease burden, fertility limitation, and famine. Greg Clark has some good stuff in A Farewell to Alms if you're interested. But you don't seem very bright so I'll leave it.

Quote from: S'mon;790233I could talk about disease burden, fertility limitation, and famine. Greg Clark has some good stuff in A Farewell to Alms if you're interested. But you don't seem very bright so I'll leave it.

I'm not very bright, eh? Put up or shut up, genius who has no actual argument and so must resort to poo-flinging. Are you smart enough actually to learn and think, or just enough to drop titles of books?

Quote from: S'mon;790221From what we've seen in the 20th century, mixed-sex combat units don't work well - arguably* more for the effect the women have on the men than vice versa.

Could you elaborate on this?

Quote from: S'mon;790225There certainly were no (openly female) women in Greek or Roman armies, no. I can't speak to Egypt or Persia but I've not seen any claims of female warriors in Egypt, it seems unlikely. The early Persians may have had some female fighters; like the Scythians they were originally Aryan nomads and their culture was probably more egalitarian than the Greeks & Romans. We certainly know that Queen Artemisia commanded her own ship in battle at Salamis.

I can imagine the notably-egalitarian Etruscans allowing female fighters, but there is no evidence that I know of of this; the Roman tales of Horatio & co fighting the Etruscans (which predate actual written Roman history) don't mention any. Generally you have to go to northern and eastern Europe to find any women who fight, and then only rarely.

I've heard of harem guards who were women in the Persian empire, with every indication they weren't just an affectation but real warriors.

Wasn't Artemisia a Carian (native of southern Anatolia), rather than Persian?

I was thinking about the Etruscans too, I wouldn't have been surprised if there were female sea captains amongst them.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;790247Could you elaborate on this?

There's a good discussion of the Israeli experience in The Transformation of War by Van Creveld (one of the leading modern military thinkers). Basically the problem is that male warriors typically want to form male-only Bruderbonds/Brotherhoods, and have sex with women. Putting women in the combat unit disrupts the Bruderbond and damages cohesion. The men also try to protect the women (connected to wanting to have sex with them, at least abstractly), which damages combat effectiveness directly and was the main reason given for the Israelis taking women out of integrated combat units.
However, it seems there is a notable exception re guerilla armies, from the French Resistance to FARC. It seems that when fighting much more powerful enemies, male psychology operates differently. Normally, having female combat soldiers threatens the male warrior's self-conception of heroic manliness. But when the threat is sufficiently overwhelming this self-conception becomes unshakable. Likewise in existential war, it may work to put women in combat (eg the Soviets using women in WW2, or again the early Israeli experience), but when the war is over the demand is to kick the women out again. The implication is that if the FARC were ever to defeat the Columbian government and become the new Columbian State, its female fighters would be disarmed/relegated.

Quote from: Kiero;790294Wasn't Artemisia a Carian (native of southern Anatolia), rather than Persian?

Yeah, she was a vassal monarch of the Persian empire.

We should also face the uncomfortable truth that until the predominance of firearms women are less effective warriors than men.
Exceptional women are just that, exceptional.

I'm not sure I trust the argument that the main reason women weren't soldiers because they mostly weren't good at it, history is full of armies of absolutely crap soldiers but very few made up of many women.

And in any case there are plenty of roles in which women would at least in theory be superior cavalry scouts for example (lower body weight = less burden on the horse, no real need for much upper body strength) but you still don't find women in those positions or other positions in which eating less due to being smaller should be an advantage (with how supply-constrained pre-modern armies generally were).

In my mind (as I've said in previous threads) it's what a massive time sink child bearing is. With modern birth rates we don't think about it much but if you have, say, six kids that takes an ENORMOUS bite out of your productive life and leaves you with little time for everything else when you're of military age. Then that allows men to dominate a lot of things since they simple have more time for everything else and that feeds into itself and gets self-reinforcing as male dominance establishes itself in so many fields. Sure upper body strength is important to, but I really don't think it's the whole story.

The hilarious thing about this thread is the people who know something about history are pointing out how oppressively patriarchal most pre-modern societies were, and the Womyn Warriors crowd are trying to deny it.

Quote from: Daztur;790413I'm not sure I trust the argument that the main reason women weren't soldiers because they mostly weren't good at it, history is full of armies of absolutely crap soldiers but very few made up of many women.

And in any case there are plenty of roles in which women would at least in theory be superior cavalry scouts for example (lower body weight = less burden on the horse, no real need for much upper body strength) but you still don't find women in those positions or other positions in which eating less due to being smaller should be an advantage (with how supply-constrained pre-modern armies generally were).

In my mind (as I've said in previous threads) it's what a massive time sink child bearing is. With modern birth rates we don't think about it much but if you have, say, six kids that takes an ENORMOUS bite out of your productive life and leaves you with little time for everything else when you're of military age. Then that allows men to dominate a lot of things since they simple have more time for everything else and that feeds into itself and gets self-reinforcing as male dominance establishes itself in so many fields. Sure upper body strength is important to, but I really don't think it's the whole story.

Agreed. The physically more powerful thing, while true, is a red herring. Women weren't warriors for the simple reason that their role in society didn't afford them the freedom to be warriors. They pretty much became baby machines as soon as their bodies were capable of bearing children. And the amount of toil involved in raising children, preparing food, etc. was staggering. After their child-bearing years, they were too worn out to do much besides more drudgery. And it's not as though they had any choice in whether they would marry or have children in the first place.

I assume that the handful of women were were warriors in those primitive or unsettled peoples where they have been cited were infertile.

Quote from: Daztur;790413I'm not sure I trust the argument that the main reason women weren't soldiers because they mostly weren't good at it, history is full of armies of absolutely crap soldiers but very few made up of many women.

Well, the physical differences between physically fit men and women are greater than nerds tend to realise, and greater than Liberal nerds want to realise. The upper body strength of men who've gone through physical training is apparently around twice that of women who've done the same, a very big difference. Were it not for females having higher body fat, humans would be the most sexually dimorphous of all the great apes. Firearms make little difference as long as soldiers are expected to carry heavy packs and engage in activity that is physically gruelling and requires a lot of strength - and modern American combat troops are expected to have more, not less, strength and stamina than in the past.

With all that, I think the main difference is psychological, not physical. Most women aren't interested in fighting and don't want to fight. Again this is something that people raised on Hollywood movies of recent decades may have trouble with. It's perhaps particularly hard for nerds to grasp, since nerdish men and women tend to share similar interests in butt-kicking female protagonists* and such. But there is a reason why lots of women like something like Twilight, with its essentially passive heroine - and it's not 'false consciousness' or suchlike.

*I've met a few 'butt-kicking babe' types IRL, in the army & police - I'd have to confess to sharing this interest.

Quote from: Daztur;790413I'm not sure I trust the argument that the main reason women weren't soldiers because they mostly weren't good at it, history is full of armies of absolutely crap soldiers but very few made up of many women.

And in any case there are plenty of roles in which women would at least in theory be superior cavalry scouts for example (lower body weight = less burden on the horse, no real need for much upper body strength) but you still don't find women in those positions or other positions in which eating less due to being smaller should be an advantage (with how supply-constrained pre-modern armies generally were).

In my mind (as I've said in previous threads) it's what a massive time sink child bearing is. With modern birth rates we don't think about it much but if you have, say, six kids that takes an ENORMOUS bite out of your productive life and leaves you with little time for everything else when you're of military age. Then that allows men to dominate a lot of things since they simple have more time for everything else and that feeds into itself and gets self-reinforcing as male dominance establishes itself in so many fields. Sure upper body strength is important to, but I really don't think it's the whole story.

But... you are looking at some quite narrow specific examples.
people talking about 6 or 7 children. That wasn't the state in all societies. Take Japan. So in medieval japan female samurai were taught to fight combine that with the fact that if your husband died you were not allowed to remarry and you would have thought in a warlike kingdom like Japan at this time there would be plenty of well trained non-sexual women who could be used in battle but they never ever were. Women could protect their homes as a last resort but that was it. So you have that sexual imbalance largely due to patriarchy blah blah, but the patriarchy is there because men can physically dominate women.

If you look across the world from societies with low birthrate, to societies with high birth rates. If you look from The American plains to the Deserts of the Sahara, to the Arctic tundra to the land of Nippon women never constituted regular troops. If we accept that in all political systems that homo sapiens have ever devised up to and so far including those that exist after the adoption of firearms as the main way to execute war women have never made up substantial percentages of regular armies perhaps we need to conclude that it's for reasons other than politics. Maybe there is after all some truth in the idea that men solve problems through violence and women solve problems through discussion, maybe men are after all from Mars and women from Venus ?