Women on battlefields of the past

The Dacians did have cavalry units called 'The Virgin Warriors' who were indeed women. These units wielded small axes and they proved ideal against light infantry units like archers etc. However, these units were used almost exclusivly in a harrasing role and were withdrawn when facing heavy infantry or cavarly. Another instance of women in battle are the ssoviet night witches who flew the Po-2 in harrasing night raids on the german lines.

 

GP: who said the men and women in a unit have to be attracted to each other? I'm quite sure I didn't use that word.

 

The USA had "Molly Pitcher". She was the wife of an artilleryman during the Revolutionary War. At one battle, she was carrying water to the battery her husband was in. When became injured, she took his spot and helped crew the cannon.

There are other women who would disguise themselves as men and fight in the Revolution, War of 1812 and the War Between The States (US Civil War).

 

Wasn't Molly Pitcher the one whose skirt was shot off by an English cannonball?

The Britsh Infantry (and Marines) in the 18th Century had several women disguised as men among the ranks.

Light cavalry are always withdrawn when facing heavy infantry or enemy cavalry

I would like to repeat:

Through the ages, fighting females have been a very small minority.
However, they have been there. This we can prove.
They also led armies, sometimes with great success - Boudicca, for example, or as Charley pointed out, Lady Aethelflaed of the Mercians, who did a better job as a war-leader than her dad...
(wasn't it Aethelfrith?)

However, yes, always they are the minority.

 

Interestingly enough, an entire unit of segregated homosexuals can achieve a level of unit cohesiveness (no pun intended) even greater than heterosexual men. I point to the Sacred Band in particular who fought to the death rather than desert their partners.
I say "can" have not "will "have, because there is reason to beleive that the Sacred Band was an exceptional unit, rather than representative of the norm.
In modern military forces subject to social restrictions no such segregation is possible and anecdotal data(all you will get on a PC subject like this) suggests that mixing of genders or sexual orientations in military units has a negative effect on unit cohesiveness and effectiveness.

One can point to instances in history where women disquised themselves as men, and in exceptional cases distinquished themselves militarily. Far from contradicting the point I'm making it reinforces it since they only were able to function effectively so long as their gender was concealed..i.e. they were treated as male comrades.
The tendency of at least some males to fantasize about powerful ruthless amazon warriors is strong IMO and I have frequently encountered that apparent attitude in various military discussion forums. Invariably they insist, despite a total lack of credible data to support such a thesis ,that female warriors are not only the equal of their male counterparts but indeed their superiors.
Far be it from me to suggest that some psychological need of their own is being serviced by their zeal on this subject, but I would be interested in seeing any reasonably realiable data to support that position.
The Russians and the Israelis have made the most extensive use of females in combat roles in recent history.
Both discontinued the practice.

 

Hi Grieg,

No real problems with what you posted.

Aside from 1 little niggle...

Both enrolled females in combat units out of necessity - the Soviets in the 'Great Patriotic War', and the Israelis because they are very very much smaller than the surrounding nations who wish to wipe them out.
Both discontinued the practice when it was no longer necessary - WW2 finished, and the Arab World stopped trying to eradicate Israel by military means.

 

Actually I see this as entirely consistent with what I'm saying. It was exigent circumstances in both cases that prompted such extreme measures and as soon as those circumstances changed they reverted.
There are reports of the Russians using women in direct combat, how reliable the accounts are varies, AFAIK despite placing women in combat "units" the Israelis did not intentionally place women in direct combat.
If, as some maintain, women excelled to such a degree in combat I don't see why they would have reverted back to their former position after the crisis was over since the Russians in particular profess to having no philosophical objections to the practice.

 

Hi Grieg,

again, no real argument. Possibly one could argue that women are not kept in the front line more because deep down few men like the idea of women getting blown to pieces in war, rather than the fact they they are not as good as men, but hey. I stand by the assertion that most women are not suited to being a soldier. At any period of history. Sorry feminists, but it is true. Similarly, most men are not suited for childbirth (yes, a silly comparison, but hey, I've had a brain-reducing 2-hour meeting today! ).

Ok, just to continue the debate ( ) - surely after the war is over, the Army is reduced in size, and the nation needs to return to a peace-time economy. Which means (in realistic terms) as many women as possible out there working and having babies. Plus, if your army is reduced, why deliberately keep soldiers who have no extrordinary skills in the army, but are dang useful outside the army? Waste of good resources.

btw - how about the female fighter pilots the Soviets had?

 

From your quote:

On the bond between males within a unit that can be disrupted by the presence of females: note how many historical "elites" and guard corps have been made up of homosexuals. See the Theban Sacred Band, the Persian Immortals, some say the Jannisaries...


By talking about how a bond between males can be disrupted by females and referring to units made up by homosexuals, I assumed you were inferring that there would be some kind of attraction, if that inference was not there then I apologise. From my knowledge the homosexual males within the military tend not to show there feelings and generally tend to be butch rather than effeminate (although I have only known of a few). From the other side of the coin the lesbian element also brings out the butchness of them and many girls have been temped or forced to join them, I have known one squadron and a training regiment that were highly populated with lesbians.

Homosexual men within the military tend (so not all of them) see other men as men and not something to letch at, however, as soon as one woman enters the room, the males will flock around her like flies to sh*t.

This is and the gallantry aspect of males is what will reduce the effective cohesion of a unit.

 

What I meant was the disruption caused by women within a unit because of a basic tendency of men to treat women differently, not necessarily with attraction in play. I then mentioned the homosexual units just to point out that such disruption of unit efficiency apparently does not exist among men even when they are attracted to each other (or possibly so). Of course, we are talking here about units entirely made up of homosexuals, not partly.

 

Again it come down to the difference between men and woman (not in the physical sense).

If a man falls down in the street men will watch, if he doesn't get up some will help, if a woman falls down in the street men will rush to help. This goes for combat if a woman takes a bullet men will instinctively gather to help her, where as with an injured male they are morelikely to go on and let the medics take care of him.

 

Ricky; Molly Pitcher was indeed the one whose skirt was shot by a British cannonball. It went right between her feet while while she was carrying a water bucket to the cannon battery.

 

I can't see why women would be any less effective than men in combat, even in mixed groups. There have been assumptions that men would feel protective towards women soldiers but the lack of any objective evidence leaves this open to question. My view is that if male and female soldiers were thoroughly trained together to be a cohesive fighting unit then it wouldn't be a problem. Part of the difficulty with integration of women in the armed forces may lie in the barrack room matcho culture and regimental traditions but this would not necessarily apply to newly formed units.

Ordinary civilians can be highly trained and motivated to achieve incredible feats of bravery against the odds. It seems reasonable to suggest that suitable training could overcome difficulties integrating mixed sex troops. After all, a lot of what soldiers do and have done in the past could be considered to be counter intuitive or against their usual nature e.g. leaving relatively safe trenches to face hostile fire, volunteering for 'suicide' missions, carrying out apparently nonsensical orders without question, following orders to kill civilians. Surely if peaceful ordinary men can be trained to be killers the same would be true for women? Although most women are lighter and physically weaker than men I don't think the differences would be significant, especially in modern warfare.
In 'Stalingrad' by Anthony Beever (sp?) there is a description of an anti-aircraft battery operated by female students. When attacked by panzers they used the AA guns in the ground role and held out for some time until they ran out of ammo and were wiped out. When the position was over-run the Germans were surprised that such a brave defence had been carried out by young women.
On a personal note, I can attest to the toughness and strength of female Israeli soldiers, but that's another story! :smok:

 

I don't think people here have said they would be less effective, but having mixed units would IMHO and that of all my male and some female colleagues agree with me. Yes, there is no proof either way but that is my opinion.

 

While there is no proof that they "wouldn't" there is also no proof that they "would". It's much more difficult to prove a negative than a positive.
Without proof what we are left with is intuition and common sense.
Aside from a few unverifiable anecdotes there is little or no hard data on the effectiveness of women in combat.

 

But there isn't a whole lot of experience to draw from either. The predominance of males in armed forces, though logical from an evolutional or demographical point of view, might (and I say might) give us a wholly distorted view of the ability of females to fight.

That said, personally I don't think women would make better soldiers than men simply because they aren't built for it, but that's a subjective view...

 

They couldn't on the whole carry the weight that men could and they couldn't run as fast or as long, hence they couldn't be as efficient as men in special forces, however, bearing in mind that most infantry are now mounted, their equipment is taken to a coy or platoon HQ wehicle bourne (mainly) and that modern weapons don't have the recoil. There is no reason that they can't do the job. Other than media hype of captured women and the thought that men don't like it.

 

We have the Russian female fighter aces from WW2...

The only other example I can think of is Ripey, in 'Alien'

 

I suddenly feel the need to bring up Denise Richards, in a certain movie, that shows us the opposite situation...

 

Ohhh, that's low!

Mind you, in that certain movie the entire military was utterly useless.