It would be possible, but how difficult would it be? I presume that the stated kingdom's armies would be prone to Europe wide ridicule at first, rate of sexual abuses would be sky high if not for a rigid discipline ( centuries too early for anything Prussian like but still...). Maybe as a strict gender divided fighting units with equally strict rules about spending some time together.
Women as 100% fighting regular part of any army, middle ages onward ?
- Thread starter Grumpy young Man
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This happened in West Africa - the trick may be to have a group of women associated with some quasi-martial skill, such as hunting.
In an age of hand-weapons, women as a group are hopelessly outclassed. This gets more physically feasible once you get into the fire-arms era.
You can't ignore, even though today some militaries stupidly try to, that the average women is physically weaker than the average man. IOW, a female phalanx? Slaughtered by the all-male phalanx. A mixed-gender phalanx then? Like a chain, a phalanx is only as strong as it's weakest link... Female archers perhaps? Outranged by male archers, who will also maintain a higher rate of fire, ...
What you can do, is to allow the small percentage of women who are strong enough into the army. Another option is to use women as auxiliary forces to swell your numbers. But this is only an advantage if you use them in addition to the all-male main army, replacing a single male unit with a female unit will weaken your force. So this can only be done if you are capable of supporting a larger force in the field than you have men to field. Lastly, there are militias, city militias in particular, during a siege every warm body with eyes, feet and two arms can help in the fight...
What you can do, is to allow the small percentage of women who are strong enough into the army. Another option is to use women as auxiliary forces to swell your numbers. But this is only an advantage if you use them in addition to the all-male main army, replacing a single male unit with a female unit will weaken your force. So this can only be done if you are capable of supporting a larger force in the field than you have men to field. Lastly, there are militias, city militias in particular, during a siege every warm body with eyes, feet and two arms can help in the fight...
Xavier: Replacing a unit of male archers with female archers who are just as strong isn't going to weaken your force at all.
And for something like a phalanx (also true of archers, but picked as something dependent on the weak link not giving way), not all members are equally strong anyway, so if you have the same mix of stronger and weaker, it doesn't matter.
Still impractical to be all-female, but you're practically arguing that all females are weaker than all males.
And for something like a phalanx (also true of archers, but picked as something dependent on the weak link not giving way), not all members are equally strong anyway, so if you have the same mix of stronger and weaker, it doesn't matter.
Still impractical to be all-female, but you're practically arguing that all females are weaker than all males.
Upper arm strength, still. Rewinding a crossbow is tough. Pulling levers with the more primitive variants is tougher.
Have early personal firearms get derided as "woman's weapons" when they first appear in Europe. Then have someone take that seriously and start recruiting women into arquebusier units (or alternately, have a country that's desperately short on military manpower start recruiting women in addition to men, arming them with firearms). Once the pattern's established and pike-and-shot armies develop, it would make a lot of sense to form armies with male pikemen and female musketeers. Perhaps even recruiting married couples into paired pike and musket units.
Once ring bayonets and relatively fast-firing paper-cartridge flintlocks make pikemen obsolete, the men can go home or get relegated to support units, leaving the infantry 100% female.
Once ring bayonets and relatively fast-firing paper-cartridge flintlocks make pikemen obsolete, the men can go home or get relegated to support units, leaving the infantry 100% female.
Thande
Donor
Actually this is not possible, just for social and medical issues. Prior to the late 19th century, due to high infant mortality and consequently big families (and lack of contraception), most women were permanently engaged in either pregnancy or childrearing: apparently one reason why spinsters were accused of witchcraft or otherwise found 'weird' in the Middle Ages is because they menstruated and this was not a common thing among women at the time--they were always either pregnant or lactating. The only way you can get women into the armed forces is make it an elite celibate group, perhaps sort of like the WH40K paradigm where it's nuns with guns.
True, but they will be a small part of the army still.
No, I am not.
Might be possible to some extent, but once they get into bayonet fights the average female unit is going to lose to the average male unit. So seeing armies using only/mostly women as arquebusiers/musketeers is, to put it mildly, improbable.
True, this alone will severely limit the available pool of women.
Well, not all, but, as an average, they are. And since armies are based on having large numbers, averages matter. Also, in the middle ages, there is simply no time to send women to exercise to increase their strength. They need to be pregnant most of the time, due the incredible high child mortality (added to the fact child labour was common, so kids were producing their own income) or trying to keep as many kids as they could alive.
Unless some side is desperate, it doesn't make sense.
You need a huge amount of female archers just as strong as men. That's not going to be the case.
You won't have the same mix. You'll have an all male phalanx with a stronger mix and a mixed phalanx with a weaker mix.
Strength matters for physical work.
Yeah, that's a problem. It's not until roughly the ACW era that guns and artillery eclipse melee combat. Other problems with my idea:
- Early firearms were big and unwieldy, often requiring a firing stand for an average man to handle effectively. The number of women strong enough to handle a full-size arquebus would be pretty small, and an army fighting with mini-arquebusses would be at a significant disadvantage.
- Even after fire eclipses melee, physical size and strength stay significant factors well into the modern era. An infantry soldier needs to be able to pack a certain amount of supplies, provisions, ammo, and personal effects, and an average man can carry more than an average woman. This would be offset somewhat by the average woman needing less food per day than the average man (2400/day for an active woman vs. 3000/day for an active man), but probably not enough.
I think you might have better luck putting women in roles less important for strength but still important for military purposes. Clerks/secretaries come to mind. Of course you're going to need to do some impressive state building to be able to create an army that requires a lot of clerks/secretaries and can afford them, but it's not totally impossible.
Not for infantry, artillerists or tank crews, they still need a lot of strength. IIRC women do have some advantage in piloting over men, something with their smaller size making them more resistant to G forces. (at least, I'm pretty sure I once heard something like that, somewhere)
Which is also why Belgium f.e. is a bad example to follow, not because all military occupations are open to women, that's a good thing, but because women have lower physical standards than men, which completely ignores the fact that warfare isn't nicely separated like sports competitions are...
Bottom line is that for those occupations where strength is really important you will never see more than ~10% women, probably less for heavy stuff like infantry, even with 100% equality. Which doesn't mean that a modern army couldn't be 50/50 men/women though, it would just have most men doing infantry, artillery, engineering etc, with women dominating the jobs involving a console (say, radar operator) or sitting in a cockpit.
Then why the comments on how enlisting women will inherently make a weaker force?
juanml82: No one is disputing the pregnancy part.
As for a huge amount of archers: Let's take the English army at Agincourt, okay?
That's what, four thousand archers?
Finding a hundred women in England capable of being as strong as the average man or stronger shouldn't be that hard.
As for the phalanx: And why not? Again, assuming you pick the stronger women here.
I don't think having a stronger-than-average woman in a phalanx alongside a weaker-than-average-man is going to weaken the formation more than an average strength man alongside the weaker-than-average-man.