Women as 100% fighting regular part of any army, middle ages onward ?

About the pregnancy, doesn't it make the men more expendable than the women ? Because if your female soldier became pregnant, I don't think it's a good idea to send her to the front, so you lost one soldier. Beside, better to have the women at home, ready to make other babies, or bearing a new child, to replace the men dead on the battlefield.

I don't want to appear sexist, but it's seems more logical to me than sending a lot of uterus getting killed, thus endangering your capacity to recover from the war.
 
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.

I recall that the Taiping had women military units, but they rigidly enforced celibacy on everyone during that period. I believe that the African polity that had female warriors also kept them celibate until they had advanced in rank or something.
 
About the pregnancy, doesn't it make the men more expendable than the women ? Because if your female soldier became pregnant, I don't think it's a good idea to send her to the front, so you lost one soldier. Beside, better to have the women at home, ready to make other babies, or bearing a new child, to replace the men dead on the battlefield.

I don't want to appear sexist, but it's seems more logical to me than sending a lot of uterus getting killed, thus endangering your capacity to recover from the war.
Well, yes, loosing 10 000 women in their twenties is a far bigger demographic catastrophe than losing 10 000 men of the same age. (well, strict monogamy does limit the differences:p)

Then why the comments on how enlisting women will inherently make a weaker force?...
... the average women is physically weaker than the average man...What you can do, is to allow the small percentage of women who are strong enough into the army.

What I said before the "What you can do..." was assuming entire armies, where it would be nigh impossible to find enough as-strong-as-average-men women. So a hundred longbowwomen is indeed possible, 4000 of them probably isn't.
 
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.

Assuming that your phalanx or your English archers are a randomly selected cross sample of the male population. But they probably aren't. They are most likely generally drawn from the more fit and strong males.

And *why* would you take the trouble of finding the upper 1% of women who are as physically strong as the upper 50% of men? What's your motive, why go to all the extra bother?
 
Assuming that your phalanx or your English archers are a randomly selected cross sample of the male population. But they probably aren't. They are most likely generally drawn from the more fit and strong males.

And *why* would you take the trouble of finding the upper 1% of women who are as physically strong as the upper 50% of men? What's your motive, why go to all the extra bother?

I'm going to look at this for military units where individuals were specifically picked, instead of phalanx formations (formed from the able bodied citizens, not selected individual by individual) or archers (not sure how it was determined what part of the yeomanry went off):

Why would I specifically reject women if Alice is stronger than Bob who I did let in?
 
Women warriors are only really really possible in one setting: nomad horse archer armies. Where they did reoccur pretty regularly.

Even then, men are more expendable, and the less harsh the living conditions of the nomads, the more, ironically, the women spend time in camp being pregnant.
 
Is a situation possible where orphans ( of both genders ) may be raised in the military from a young age by way of legalised street snatching to initially bolster numbers, then perhaps a permanent effort of recruitment, such a case would compensate massively for the apparent strength issue persistently discussed since training from a young age would develop women of incredible strength, stamina and endurance. Thus for whatever country it would rid the streets of homeless orphans and create units trained from childhood akin to Ottoman Jannisaries, said country over time may then expand these units intake by absorbing orphaned children from conquered territories.

Presumably whatever country may do this would create tradition and ceremony around said units of women, who I assume over time would create the building blocks of a proffesional standing army alongside their male orphaned counterparts. If these women come to be respected and feared within their country perhaps its possible that it will become acceptable for any woman to join the army, although this is even less likely.

Its likely such country would employ these elite units of women as Light Cavalry.


Anyway, just a thought.
 
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