Someone on Quora recently asked the question “Is there a real reason why ancient armies didn’t have female soldiers, or was it just sexism?” This question immediately triggered a whole flurry of defensive replies from various male military history buffs proclaiming all the reasons why women are supposedly naturally unsuited for ancient warfare and why it was supposedly perfectly logical for ancient militaries to exclude women.
The most upvoted answer to the question is this one, written by a man named Alex Mann, arguing that women are naturally physically shorter, weaker, and smaller than men, that pregnancy and menstruation would hinder them from fighting, and that they would be an overall detriment to any ancient army. The answer currently has 2,722 upvotes and hundreds of comments, many of them showering praise on the author for his supposed clarity and perceptiveness.
Other men have provided answers drawing similar conclusions. The arguments that these men present, however, are demonstrably quite shoddy. In this essay, I intend to demonstrate that there is, in fact, no logical reason for an army to have a rule categorically excluding all women and that the real reason why women were excluded from ancient militaries is indeed simply sexism.
An important caveat about war
Before I explain why the putative justifications given by Alex Mann and others for why women were not allowed to fight in the ancient world don’t hold up to scrutiny, I want to make an important caveat. Much of the conversation concerning ancient warfare is, unfortunately, intertwined with notions of “great warriors” and “glory in battle.” That’s not what I’m here to talk about.
I personally believe that all wars are inherently destructive, unjust, and harmful, especially to the people who are the most vulnerable. Practically speaking, though, if there are going to be wars, there are going to be people fighting those wars. My purpose in this essay is not to argue that war is good or that it brings any kind of glory to those who partake in it. My purpose is merely to argue that the prevailing notion that all women were naturally unsuited to participate in ancient warfare for inherent physical and biological reasons doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
ABOVE: The Apotheosis of War, painted in 1871 by the Russian painter Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin
Evidence for the existence of female warriors in the pre-modern world
With that important caveat out of the way, I want to take a moment to note that female warriors actually did exist in the pre-modern world. It’s true that, in most pre-modern cultures, women were generally forbidden from fighting in battle. For instance, as far as I am currently aware, apart from a few notable cases of female leaders like Artemisia I of Karia, Kratesipolis of Makedonia, and Cleopatra VII of Egypt commanding their own forces, there is essentially no evidence that women ever physically went into battle as combatants in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, or Rome. Even in cultures where women were allowed to fight, the vast majority of those who fought were still men.
Nonetheless, in some cultures during some periods of pre-modern history, female warriors were actually a real thing; they are not entirely a product of modern fantasy. Perhaps most famously, as I discuss in this article I wrote back in June 2019, there is fairly extensive evidence for the existence of female warriors among the various Skythian and Sauromatian tribes, who lived in the steppe lands north of the Black Sea between roughly the sixth century BCE and the second century CE.
The Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos (lived c. 484 – c. 425 BCE) records in his Histories 4.116 that Sauromatian women sometimes fought in battle like Amazons. The archaeological evidence only seems to confirm this. Since the late nineteenth century, archaeologists have unearthed countless examples of ancient Skythian and Sauromatian women who were buried with the kinds of weapons and rich grave goods that one would normally expect from a male chieftain.
It’s true that, even among the Sauromatians, burials identified as belonging to male warriors outnumber burials identified as belonging to female warriors by a considerable margin. Nonetheless, the number of female warrior burials is significant.
ABOVE: Detail from an Attic red-figure lekythos dating to around c. 420 BC depicting Amazons fighting
There is also evidence that, during the High Middle Ages, some women may have fought in battle for the Kievan Rus’. The Roman historian Ioannes Skylitzes (lived c. 1040s – after c. 1101 CE) records in his Synopsis of Roman History 15.14 that, after the Romans defeated the Kievan Rus’ in the Siege of Dorostolon in 971 CE, Roman soldiers stripped the corpses of the Rus’ soldiers who had perished in the battle. He says that they were shocked to discover that, underneath their armor, a few of these warriors were female. Ioannes writes, as translated by John Wortley:
“When the Romans were robbing the corpses of the barbarians of their spoils, they found women lying among the fallen, equipped like men; women who had fought against the Romans together with the men.”
Meanwhile, as I discuss in this article from November 2020, during this same time period, there is compelling evidence that female warriors may have existed in some Scandinavian societies. The Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus (lived c. 1160 – c. 1220 CE) famously writes in his Gesta Danorum 7.6, as translated by Peter Fisher:
“In case anyone is marveling that this sex should have sweated in warfare, let me digress briefly to explain the character and behavior of such females. There were once women in Denmark who dressed themselves to look like men and spent almost every minute cultivating soldiers’ skills; they did not want the sinews of their valour to lose tautness and be infected by self-indulgence.”
“Loathing a dainty style of living, they would harden body and mind with toil and endurance, spirits to act with a virile ruthlessness. They courted military celebrity so earnestly that you would have guessed they had unsexed themselves. Those especially who had forceful personalities or were tall and elegant embarked on this way of life.”
“As if they were forgetful of their true selves they put toughness before allure, aimed at conflicts instead of kisses, tasted blood, not lips, sought the clash of arms rather than the arm’s embrace, fitted to weapons hands which should have been weaving, desired not the couch but the kill, and those they could have appeased with looks they attacked with lances.”
For centuries, scholars dismissed reports like this one of female warriors in medieval Scandinavia as nothing more than implausible fables told by gullible medieval writers, but now archaeological evidence seems to support the argument that there may very well have been female Norse warriors.
In 1889, archaeologists in Birka, Sweden, excavated a grave dating to the tenth century CE belonging to a person whom the archaeologists initially identified as an elite male warrior. The grave goods included a battle knife, a sword, a spear, a battle ax, two shields, a set of arrows designed for piercing armor, and the skeletal remains of two horses. Whoever the owner of this burial was, they clearly intended to go into the afterlife armed to the teeth. The archaeologists numbered this grave Bj 581.
Then, nearly a hundred years after the grave was originally excavated, in the 1970s, anatomists re-analyzed the bones and concluded that the Birka warrior may have actually been biologically a woman. In 2017, researchers conducted a series of comprehensive osteological and genetic analyses of the skeleton. All the tests indicated that the Birka warrior was indeed biologically female. This predictably set off an enormous controversy among scholars who study medieval Scandinavia.
Some scholars are convinced that the woman whose skeleton was discovered in Bj 581 was, in fact, a female warrior like the ones described by Ioannes Skylitzes in his Synopsis of Roman History and Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum. Other scholars maintain that women couldn’t have possibly been warriors in medieval Scandinavia. These scholars argue that the weapons found in Bj 581 may have belonged to the woman’s family and that she may have been buried with them simply as a marker of status. Personally, I think that the most parsimonious interpretation is that the woman buried in Bj 581 was a warrior, but I recognize that other interpretations are possible.
ABOVE: Illustration of the grave of the Birka female warrior, published in 1889
Height, strength, and bulk?
Now that we’ve clearly established that female warriors did exist in some pre-modern cultures, let’s look at the first three reasons Alex Mann gives for why women are supposedly naturally unfit for pre-modern warfare:
- “Men on average are taller than women”
- “Men on average are stronger than women, having more muscle mass and the ability to more easily gain muscle mass”
- “Men are wider than woman- having shoulders that are broader”
This is really more like one explanation divided into three parts. All the same, this is by far the most common explanation that people give for why women were supposedly not allowed to take part in ancient warfare. The explanation, however, doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
For one thing, men may be taller, stronger, and bulkier than women on average, but that doesn’t mean that all men are taller, stronger, and bulkier than all women. There are some women who are taller, stronger, and bulkier than most men and there are some men who are shorter, weaker, and thinner than most women.
I’m more than happy to use myself as an example here. I am a twenty-one-year-old biological man, but I am extremely tiny. When I last measured and weighed myself a couple weeks ago, I was only five feet and 2.5 inches (i.e., 158.75 centimeters) and I only weighed 110 pounds (i.e., 50 kilograms). I’m also almost comically physically weak, all things considered. Sometimes I honestly struggle just to open apple sauce jars. I’m certain that a woman of even average height and strength would easily beat me in a fight.
Meanwhile, there are some women who are extremely large and physically imposing. For instance, the character Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones was played by the English actress Gwendoline Christie, who is six feet and three inches tall (i.e., 191 centimeters) in real life. That means she is more than a whole foot taller than I am!
If a hypothetical ancient state were merely interested in ensuring that the people serving in its army were the tallest, strongest, and bulkiest, they wouldn’t make a rule that only men are allowed to serve; instead, they would make a more efficient rule that only people above a certain height and weight who have a certain level of strength are allowed to serve. Mostly men would qualify, but some women would qualify as well.
That’s not what ancient states usually did, though. In fact, although most ancient states categorically banned women from joining their armies, they did not ban physically weaker men (such as myself) from joining those armies. On the contrary, in most ancient societies, physically weaker men were routinely drafted to fight in armed combat. Ancient states generally had very few qualms about doing this.
ABOVE: Screenshot of Gwendoline Christie as Brienne of Tarth in the HBO television series Game of Thrones
Furthermore, while it is true that, on average, women generally tend to be at a significant disadvantage when fighting against men in any kind of combat, armor and weapons actually act as equalizers, making it possible for smaller, physically weaker people to overcome their deficiencies in size and strength through proficiencies in skill.
It is a proven fact that women can defeat men in armed combat. It’s true that, in many modern sports, women struggle to compete successfully with men, but one sport in which some women have managed to successfully compete with men is Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA). There are HEMA tournaments that are open to both men and women. Women have competed in these tournaments and, in many cases, managed to hold their own against male opponents.
In fact, there are cases where women have outright won entire HEMA tournaments. For instance, in 2016, HEMA United announced that a woman named Lauren Hanson had won the open steel longsword tournament at Fechtschule Frisbee. According to the announcement, it was a very competitive, medium-sized tournament and she had to fight a large number of male opponents, but she still managed to win. That’s pretty significant, and it really goes against the idea that women are physically incapable of winning in combat against men.
ABOVE: Photograph retrieved from Wikimedia Commons showing a fencing match between a man and a woman in Berlin in May 1930
“All swords, shields, spears, and armor”?
If we leave that whole matter aside, it is important to emphasize that ancient militaries included more people than just heavy infantry fighters. There were other positions in ancient militaries that involved attacking from a distance. Unfortunately, Alex Mann doesn’t seem to realize this; he says in his answer:
“In ancient warfare, is [sic] was all swords, shields, spears, and armor. It was extremely physical. You would need to swing heavy chunks of metal in desperate fights for your life while wearing tons of metal armor.”
“It was brutal, violent, aggressive, and long. Many battles would last days.”
“A female facing a male would be a quick fight. This always is a quick fight. That’s why women are overwhelmingly the victims of sexual assault and domestic violence- men can physically overpower them at all.”
“An army of women facing an army of men would be a very quick and very violent battle.”
This characterization of ancient warfare has some basis in truth, but it is not entirely accurate. Ancient warfare virtually always involved a lot more than just a bunch of extremely burly men wearing heavy armor fighting with spears and shields at close range.
For instance, it’s often forgotten that ancient armies normally included archers, sling-throwers, and javelin-throwers, who generally wore light armor and attacked enemy troops from a distance. It is certainly true that it requires some degree of strength to pull back a bowstring, sling a stone, or throw a javelin, but you don’t generally need to be a burly, six-foot-tall man to do it. There’s no reason why a strong woman couldn’t be a successful archer, sling-thrower, or javelin-thrower. In modern times, there are highly skilled female archers and javelin-throwers who are far better at what they do than the vast majority of men.
Now, it’s true that archers, sling-throwers, and javelin-throwers didn’t always get quite as much respect as the people who fought with spears and shields, but these kinds of long-distance projectile fighters were still an essential part of just about any ancient army. As I mention in this article from May 2020, in ancient Greece, these kinds of fighters were known as ψιλοί (psiloí), which means “light troops,” and they were quite a force to be reckoned with. In 391 BCE, in the Battle of Lechaion, an Athenian force composed almost entirely of light troops utterly vanquished a Spartan force of roughly six hundred hoplites.
ABOVE: Roman mosaic from Spain depicting Herakles driving off the Stymphalian birds with his bow and arrows
Some people in the ancient world also had crossbows. The earliest known crossbow in Europe was the gastraphetes, or “belly-releaser,” a kind of handheld crossbow that was invented in Greece in around the fifth century BCE. A description of the gastraphetes by the Greek inventor Heron of Alexandria (lived c. 10 – c. 70 CE), based on an earlier description by the Greek engineer Ktesibios of Alexandria (lived c. 285 – c. 222 BCE), has survived in Heron’s Belopoeika, a treatise on military devices.
The gastraphetes had a partially mechanized draw-back process that allowed the user to pull the string back using their body weight by pressing it against their stomach. You can watch a video of a man loading and firing a gastraphetes here. It is highly unlikely that it would taken more than ninety pounds of pressure to pull an ancient Greek gastraphetes back to its maximum extent, meaning pretty much anyone with any level of strength could use one, as long as they had two good arms and they weighed more than ninety pounds. Most women weigh significantly more than that. It’s fair to say that even I could probably use one.
I don’t see how anyone could argue that a woman couldn’t be effective with such a weapon. It’s true that we have no record of ancient Greek or Roman women fighting in battle using bows or crossbows, but there’s really no inherent physical reason why they couldn’t have. All that prevented them from using these weapons was social convention.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a modern reconstruction of an ancient Greek gastraphetes, a kind of early crossbow
Pregnancy
Alex Mann goes on in his answer to argue that women are additionally naturally less suitable for ancient warfare than men because women can get pregnant, while men cannot. Mann writes:
“Say you have an army of 50,000. These people live together, eat together, and fight together. Imagine now half are men and half are women- what do you think happens? That’s right, lots of sex.”
“Lots of sex means lots of babies. Women who are pregnant cannot do much active- they certainly cannot fight in battle. It’s not that this lasts a few days or hours, it lasts for months.”
This assumption that any women fighting in an ancient military would necessarily have sexual relations with their male comrades and thereby become pregnant is most likely incorrect.
Women are intelligent enough to realize that sex often leads to pregnancy and that being pregnant would most likely prevent them from fighting. Therefore, it stands to reason that any women who are really determined to fight would most likely avoid sex altogether. It’s probably no accident that Saxo Grammaticus explicitly tells us that warrior women in Scandinavia shunned all sexual relations with men.
Moreover, a highly organized military could hypothetically impose strict rules prohibiting sexual relations among soldiers. They could say that anyone—male or female—who is determined to have engaged in sexual conduct with a fellow soldier will be immediately expelled from the military without pay. I’m sure that a few women would probably still become pregnant, but I don’t think that this would be an especially common occurrence. I certainly don’t think that the majority of women would become pregnant, as Mann seems to assume.
Menstruation
Mann goes on to argue that the fact that women menstruate makes them additionally inherently less suitable for combat than men. He writes:
“Then you have periods. Periods can last about 5 days a month meaning for 60 days of the year women are struggling with health issues like cramps, irritability, and there are sanitary issues.”
“Do periods make women unfunctional? Not at all. It’s actually a really minor thing. But in warfare, even a minor thing can have serious consequences. If this factor slows or weakens your army even 1% why would you bother with it?”
I cannot say that I have ever personally experienced a period, but I am reasonably confident that Alex Mann has never experienced one either and I happen to be aware that many women are capable of doing all kinds of things perfectly well while they are menstruating. Mann’s whole contention that menstruation makes women inferior at fighting is really just based on his own assumption from a position of inexperience about what menstruation is like and what menstruating women are capable of doing.
Would menstruation be a handicap for women fighting in the ancient world? Maybe it would be for some. Maybe it wouldn’t be for others. The women themselves are ones who are in the best position to judge their own capabilities in this regard. If a woman who is menstruating feels like she can’t fight as well as she would be able to do otherwise, that should be her own decision—not a decision that a man makes for her. It certainly doesn’t make sense to preemptively ban all women just because menstruation might be an impediment for some.
They’re just “unnecessary”?
Mann concludes his answer with one final argument, which is that women are just “unnecessary.” He writes:
“This all compounds when you again realize you don’t need women. It’s unnecessary. Since you can only mobilize a small part of your population you have more than enough men so why add women? Why add people that are shorter and weaker and who get pregnant and have persistent constant health issues (even though they are minor).”
I have already pointed out that, although it is true that women generally tend to be physically shorter and weaker than men, this doesn’t mean that all women are shorter and weaker than all men. I have likewise already pointed out that women do not become pregnant if they aren’t having sex and that it is most reasonable for women to decide for themselves on an individual basis whether their menstruation is an impediment to their fighting abilities. All of the reasons Mann gives in his answer for why women are supposedly unsuited for ancient warfare are rooted far more in his own assumptions about women than in demonstrable facts or logic.
Mann’s argument that women are simply “unnecessary” is therefore almost a case study in missing the point. Yes, it’s true that it is possible to create a sizeable army that is entirely composed of men, but does the mere possibility of making such an army actually justify having a rule that women are categorically not allowed to join under any circumstances?
Someone might just as well point out that it is possible to create a sizeable army that is entirely composed of women. After all, men aren’t militarily necessary and they have those soft dangly things between their legs that are just so easy for them to injure and that need special protection. Plus, all that icky testosterone makes men prone to engage in reckless glory-seeking, which might put themselves and their comrades in unnecessary danger, which might put the fighting force’s mission into jeopardy.
I think that most people will recognize that this argument I have just made is based on nothing but a bunch of sexist assumptions about men. For some reason, though, most people don’t seem to mind the fact that Alex Mann’s original argument is based on exactly the same kinds of sexist assumptions about women. All I’ve done is apply the exact same line of argumentation in reverse.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Roman soldiers depicted on the Column of Marcus Aurelius, dating to the late second century CE. They’re all men, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t make an army of all women.
“Replenishing the population”?
Now, of course, Alex Mann is far from the only man on Quora who has tried to come up with a “rational” justification for why most ancient cultures did not allow women to fight. Another man named Michael Bass argues in his own answer that women weren’t allowed to fight in ancient societies because they are “the limiting factor on how fast you can replenish your population.”
Essentially, to paraphrase a little bit, Bass’s argument goes that, if nearly all the men die in warfare except for a few and there is still a large number of fertile women left at home, then the few men who survive can impregnate all those women and thereby produce a full new generation for the society.
If, on the other hand, nearly all the women die in warfare except for a few and there is still a large number of fertile men left at home, then the society is doomed, because each woman can only produce a small number of offspring, meaning the next generation will be tiny, if it exists at all. Thus, according to Bass, from a population perspective, men are more expendable than women.
At first this argument sounds fairly reasonable, but it doesn’t take long to spot the holes in it. One fairly obvious flaw in Bass’s argument is that allowing some women who have a desire to fight and who are especially well-suited for the task of fighting to fight in your military doesn’t mean sacrificing your entire female population—or even necessarily a significantly large portion of it.
Furthermore, Bass’s argument is not practically applicable for the vast majority of ancient societies. Bass’s argument only applies to a society in which all male citizens are legally and practically capable of producing offspring with an unlimited number of women and all offspring those male citizens produce with those women automatically inherit full citizenship.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of an ancient Sumerian terra-cotta plaque depicting a marriage between a man and a woman
Most ancient societies were at least de facto monogamous, since, even in societies where it was legal for a man to marry more than one woman, wives and offspring were very expensive. Consequently, only a tiny segment of extremely wealthy, elite men could actually afford to take more than one wife. Even most of the men who did take more than one wife did not take more than two or three wives.
Many ancient societies, including most ancient Greek and Roman societies, were monogamous by law. In most ancient Greek and Roman societies, a male citizen might have sexual relations with many women—including prostitutes and enslaved concubines—but he was only permitted to have one wife and only the offspring he produced with his legal wife could inherit his status.
As I discuss in this article I wrote about Athenian democracy in January 2021, in 451 BCE, the Athenian Assembly passed a law restricting Athenian citizenship to only those individuals who could prove that all their ancestors on both sides of their family had been citizens. This means that, in classical Athens, in order for a male citizen’s offspring to qualify as citizens, not only did they need to be offspring of his sole legal wife, but that wife also specifically needed to be a citizen herself. It is likely that other Greek poleis had similar laws.
ABOVE: Detail from a late fourth-century CE Roman marble sarcophagus depicting a husband and wife holding hands
In cases where ancient societies actually faced problems of depopulation, the problem wasn’t simply that the number of people overall was too small, but rather that the number of people of a certain status was too small. The classic example of this is ancient Sparta. Sparta’s decline over the course of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE is usually attributed in part to the drastic decline in the number of Spartiates (i.e., full Spartan citizens).
There were, however, plenty of people living in Sparta who were not Spartiates. The vast majority of people living in Spartan territory were helots (i.e., members of a class of brutally enslaved serfs). In addition to the helots, there were also perioikoi (i.e., free people whose families had never held Spartan citizenship), hypomeiones (i.e., free people whose families had once held Spartan citizenship, but who had lost that citizenship because they couldn’t afford to maintain it), and mothakes (i.e., free people who had Spartiate fathers and helot mothers who therefore lacked Spartan citizenship).
A major contributing factor in the decline of Sparta was the fact that, once a Spartiate family lost so much wealth that they could no longer contribute satisfactorily to the syssitia (i.e., mess halls), they were permanently stripped of their citizenship status and became hypomeiones. There was no way for them to regain citizenship. To make matters worse, kleroi (i.e., familial plots of land) were usually divided up between siblings, meaning that, when Spartiates who were not extremely wealthy had large families, the number of Spartiates paradoxically declined, due to the land and wealth being divided up among more people, resulting in fewer people being able to contribute satisfactorily to the syssitia.
Thus, the decrease in the number of Spartiates was partly caused by Spartiates dying in battle and partly caused by former Spartiates being stripped of their Spartiate status. Sparta arguably could have fixed its problem of population decline simply by granting Spartan citizenship to all the perioikoi, hypomeiones, and mothakes, or even just a fraction of the helots, but they evidently decided that maintaining their rigid caste system was more important.
I should note that, according to some ancient sources, Sparta had a very unusual system in which Spartiate men were allowed to “loan” their wives to other Spartiate men for the purpose of procreation. This system did not exist in any other ancient Greek polis and there is very little information about how it worked in Sparta. It’s even quite possible that the system never actually existed and that it was simply made up by the non-Spartan romanticists who are our main sources of information. If the system did exist, I’m not convinced that it was widely used and it certainly did very little to avert Sparta’s decline.
In any case, the bottom line here is that, while the number of women may seem like a more important factor than the number of men in theory, in practice, in most real-life ancient societies, the number of men and the number of women were both almost equally important factors in determining how quickly the society could replenish its population. There were also always other hugely important factors at play, usually including land, wealth, and status.
ABOVE: Detail from Wikimedia Commons of a depiction of a hoplite on the Vix Krater, dating to around 500 BCE
Conclusion
The real reason why women were generally prohibited from joining organized militaries in most ancient societies is not because women are inherently naturally unsuited for ancient warfare or because women are incapable of fighting, but rather because social norms and gender roles in the ancient world dictated that women were not supposed to fight. Women who potentially could have fought if they had been trained to fight were not usually trained to fight; instead, they were taught to weave and manage households.
For better or worse, the vast majority of ancient men—and probably most ancient women—believed the exact same kinds of sexist assumptions about women that the men answering that question on Quora believe and, even when they were confronted with evidence to the contrary, they clung to their assumptions.
The Greek historian Diodoros Sikeliotes (lived c. 90 – c. 30 BCE) describes in his Library of History 19.67.1–2 how the woman Kratesipolis of Makedonia managed to hold her husband’s army together after his assassination in 314 BCE and lead his troops to victory over a group of Sikyonian rebels. Quite revealingly, though, he appends this comment to his narrative:
“ἦν δὲ περὶ αὐτὴν καὶ σύνεσις πραγματικὴ καὶ τόλμα μείζων ἢ κατὰ γυναῖκα:”
This means:
“And there was about her both practical intelligence and courage greater than that of a woman.”
In other words, even when Diodoros Sikeliotes was directly confronted with a clear example of a woman succeeding in warfare, he could find no other way to explain it than to say that she wasn’t really a woman after all.
ABOVE: Nineteenth-century fresco depicting how the artist imagined Diodoros Sikeliotes might have looked
The whole argument based on sexual dimorphism betrays a weird conception of armoured combat. Armour and weapons act as equalisers. There is nothing about reasonably well-crafted and tailored armour that would restrict women who wear it more than it would men. Likewise, two-handed weapons, especially polearms, are particularly suited for anyone with average or even lower than average physical strength or reach, because they provide both leverage and reach themselves.
I agree that it’s really weird. I think that Mann was probably operating under the assumption that armor and weapons would be too heavy for any woman to use—which, of course, is not an accurate assumption.
Love reading your articles.
I don’t normally chime in since, I usually have no experience in the topic. In the case of physical combat, I have a bit, having wrestled, boxed and boxed for 16 years and more recently gotten in to historical fencing.
Firstly, I agree with your point that sexist gender roles are the #1 factor in the lack of women in combat roles but you greatly downplay the importance of strength for a soldier, and the disparity in the sexes.
As I mentioned, I’ve wrestled and fought for most of my life, training with both men and women. The strength difference is tremendous. Even at the same weight as me, the strength gap is huge. And I was never considered a particularly strong man. Higher levels of testosterone in males is a huge advantage, for speed, strength, stamina and the ability to build muscle. That is why supplementing with testosterone is banned in most professional sports.
So while, there will be some outlier women, if I were recruiting for a Roman legion for example, it seems more expedient to just take the men, because we know, even if they aren’t strong today, their biology will allow them to adapt to the rigors of soldiering much more quickly.
Especially considering, in soldiering (particularly in the medieval and ancient world) only a small part of your day-to-day was fighting. The Roman legions would often build an entire fort every evening while on the march. So while a slinger may not need the strength of a centurion on the battlefield, they must be strong for the additional duties a soldier has.
As for weapons being the great equalizer…they just aren’t. Skill is very important when using a weapon but skill levels being equal, the stronger fighter will win. Hell, even skill levels not being equal, the stronger fighter will often win. And it’s easier to make someone strong than it is to make them skilled.
Finally, I feel you cherry picked a bit mentioning the gastraphetes. It was not a particularly common weapon (judging from the lack of archeological / artistic record), it was harder than a bow to produce, looks heavy as hell, and even in the video you shared, the man says, “the heavier you are, in essence, the more powerful a bow you can shoot.”
Perhaps the difficulty in construction of more equitable weapons like the gastraphetes could add an economic reason to the lack of women in combat roles…but I doubt it. It’s still probably just sexism.
Thank you again for posting a thought provoking article.
Regarding the gastraphetes, I haven’t actually held one, so I can’t speak from first-hand experience of how heavy it is. My impression is that it is indeed a bit heavy, but not prohibitively so. I think it’s probably less heavy than a large modern rifle. I’m reasonably confident that a large number of women could lift it. It’s also important to note that the gastraphetes was an extremely early crossbow and that much lighter crossbows were developed in later eras. By the first century BCE, the Romans were using much smaller, lighter devices.
The man in the video does say that the heavier you are, the more powerful you can shoot—but, later in the same video, he mentions that his gastraphetes has a maximum draw of ninety pounds and that he wouldn’t want to make one that was more powerful than that because it would be impractical.
I’m curious whether your experience with fencing has modified your impression of the importance of strength for warfare at all? I’m far from an expert on historical combat, but boxing and wrestling 1-on-1 competitions are possibly not that good of a guide to mass warfare.
The main reason I ask is that I used to fence for a few years back in the late 80’s early 90’s in L.A. By far the best fencer in our club was a teenage girl. And it wasn’t just that everyone else in our club was terrible (though I wasn’t great). She would clean up when she sparred with guys from any of the other clubs around the city. They were furious. I thought it was hilarious. I think she went on to join the olympic team. She certainly competed at a national level.
To be sure, this was modern sport-fencing (foil). That’s much less comparable to warfare than boxing and wrestling. But it’s physical. Competitions are sex segregated. But being an outlier can make a big difference.
Anyway, just curious. You make fair points. And I agree, it’s a great, thoughtful blogpost (as usual).
Searched for the word “rape” and got zero results in this article.
your point being?
I think you are missing the point here. If a woman joins an army and a male soldier rapes her, then the problem is not the fact that women are in the army, but rather the fact that some of the men in the army are clearly not properly behaved and entirely unfit to be there. When a man rapes a woman, it is never the woman’s fault.
And quite apart from that, of course, rape is commonplace in armies. Since it’s common in modern all-male armies to rape the recruit, it’s inconceivable that that didn’t happen in ancient armies. Doesn’t mean the rapist is gay, of course, they just played a prank by putting a penis, bottle, sword-hilt or whatever in the recruit’s anus. Just a prank! But it’s rape all the same, isn’t it?
So, it’s vanishingly unlikely that the possibility of rape is the reason women aren’t inducted into armies.
Is it common in modern armies?
Yes, it is. See, for instance https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2018/09/12/om-vervolgt-vijf-militairen-voor-misstanden-bij-luchtmobiele-brigade-a1616175
What would be the best way to ensure that the enemy soldiers are properly behaved and fit to serve? Should the US have refused to enter WW2 without assurances from Hitler and Hirohito that German and Japanese soldiers were properly instructed not to rape?
No, it would be a risk. Soldiers are at risk of being killed or tortured by the enemy and they are also at risk of being raped by the enemy. Being a soldier means taking risks (you literally are supposed to put your life at risk). Also men can get raped just as easily as women.
Is this satire? This entire article seems like satire. It’s like something from The Onion.
Another possible source of the bias toward male soldiers was the division of labor between men and women in hunter-gatherer societies. The men were usually the hunters, gaining experience throwing javelins, shooting arrows from bows, etc. while getting physical exercise, building their stamina. Women tended to be the “gatherers” in that they were often stuck with tending the children and were thus limited in the distance from their campsites they could roam. (Try running down a deer with a baby strapped to your back.)
I suggest that male physical dominance of women probably lead to them demanding the “fun” part of the hunting and gathering for themselves and it wasn’t just a matter of skill. The gathering, while less vigorous than the hunting, was demanding as to memory skills as to where to find what and which of the things found were sustaining and not poisonous and so did not favor men over women.
So, for generations, the men did the “war games with the animals” and so probably claimed the war games with the other men as their proper milieu.
I am old-fashioned enough (and sexist, I suppose) that the notion of a woman being hurt or killed in fighting is more appalling to me than that of a man being hurt or killed. I admire women who are willing to fight, and wouldn’t want them to be denied the chance. But a woman’s death is more tragic to me than a man’s, and I won’t pretend otherwise.
It might be evolutionary biology at work; sperm is cheap, eggs are expensive. It might be the natural desire to protect the nest. I don’t know. But I know how I feel about it, and I don’t really plan to have my mind changed.
More sexism coming, I’m afraid: I think you’ve glossed over the WNBA problem. While it doesn’t take much strength or speed to use a sling, all other elements of combat will be very physically demanding. The most physically able women, while above the average man, will not be competitive against the most physically able men. I admire the athletes in the WNBA, but I would not like their chances against even an NCAA basketball team of men. Life is unfair that way.
Speaking of ancient societies, what about the latest findings on whether Hebrews were ever really slaves in Egypt? The Bible says they were, but every archaeologist says nothing corroborates that claim and some things contradict it. At least, the ones of seen I’ve found (not an exhaustive search.
If it turns out the whole story of Exodus didn’t really happen, that’s a big deal.
No more Jewish slaves in Egypt. No Moses. No Exodus. My impression is, we can solve the for certina now.
Thanks for taking apart the nonsense of Alex Mann and his compatriots.
I would like to add another argument against them, namely that most ancient warfare was siege warfare!
Battles were quite unusual, and most typically fought when one party was on its way to a siege.
Megiddo was fought to allow Thutmose to besiege the walled city on the Via Maris.
Thermopilae was an attempt by the Greeks to prevent a Persian siege of Athens, which the Persians eventually succeeded in doing.
Alexander fought a battle to start or continue a siege several times, at Tyre, Issus and Persian Gates.
Caesar fought Alesia to continue his siege of the city, and Gergovia in a failed attempt to relieve a siege threat.
The Battle of Tours was fought to deny the Umayyads the rich religious centre of Tours.
Now, once one realizes that sieges were the crucial part of pre-modern warfare, most of Mann’s arguments become completely irrelevant for one of the parties.
What mattered to the defending party was not physical strength or absence of pregnancy, but preparation and organization.
Preparation in the form of well-maintained walls and further defensive works, and large stores of food and other necessities.
Organization in the form of alertness towards enemy action.
If there was an actual attack, what mattered was that there were plenty of people to throw projectiles and hot stuff towards the attackers, and that they were willing to stay on the walls. Any attacker that arrived on top of a siege ladder should find very bad odds, of 3-8 defenders, if they were well-organized and maintained cohesion.
Of course women are just as capable of throwing down nasty stuff down a wall as men, even children participated, and the concentration of defenders means individual strength was not relevant.
This is in fact well-recorded for Medieval war, where a large part of any defensive force consisted of the women of the town.
It’s probably not entirely true that “most” ancient warfare was siege warfare, but you do make a very good point, which is that sieges were definitely a major part of ancient warfare and there is good evidence to suggest that, when cities were being besieged or attacked, the women who lived in those cities often aided in defending them in various ways. They didn’t always do this by personally engaging in direct combat with the enemy, but there’s reason to think that they may have fought in some cases.
For instance, here is a medieval manuscript illustration showing people defending a city from attack. You’ll notice that one of the defenders is a woman. We shouldn’t assume that this illustration is a historically accurate depiction of an actual siege, but it does represent something that probably did happen in many cases when a city was being attacked.
Do not underestimate the historical importance of sieges! Medieval campaigns were generally a succession of sieges of castles and cities.
In the classical Roman period, there were more battles, but that was an unusual state of affairs only possible because Rome, Carthage, the Hellenistic kingdoms and the Parthians were unusually large empires able to field and maintain unusually large armies. Nevertheless, besieging cities and fortresses was a part of just about any campaign. Just think of the Jewish war, a fairly typical example of a Roman campaign: the most important parts of Vespasians campaign were sieges of cities, especially Jerusalem, Jaffa en Masada. Several cities were persuaded to switch sides simply by the threat of siege, including Tiberias.
During the ancient period, the most admired engagement of Alexander the Great was the siege of Tyre, not one of the battles.
Sorry, pressed reply to early.
As to the role of women in sieges, one of the most effective methods to stop attackers close to the walls is throwing down boiling water or hot sand, sometimes hot tar if it was available. This was intended to blind the attackers, and during the High and Late Middle ages, it was the responsibility of the woman of the cities. There are financial records of female guild members in the Low Countries providing wood and kettles and operating them during sieges.
Again, all of Mann’s arguments about strength are counterindicated by the historical record of some period, which shows large numbers of women actively engaged in important military tasks during siege.
And I had some fun with Google images:
http://historywallcharts.eu/view/siege-of-a-medieval-castle
Codex Manesse showing 4 defenders of a besieged city: one is a woman throwing a large rock to an attacker.
https://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/.a/6a00d8341c464853ef01b8d15d5d15970c-pi
And a medieval picture of what they thought the ancient Siege of Jerusalem was like – there are several women depicted on the walls.
This article is interesting, but it seems that it skirts around the main issue. To simply say that women were prohibited from fighting simply due to sexist attitudes doesn’t really answer the question. Where did these sexist attitudes come from, and why did they take hold? Why were they so prevalent in so many cultures? This article never really answers that question.
Just found your website while researching a completely different topic, found this interesting and decided I might comment.
For the sake of clarity, you don’t appear to be disputing that the vast majority of women could never have qualified for military service in the ancient world? Are you?
To the extent people in ancient societies thought about this issue at all, they probably thought that the benefits would have been severely outweighed by the costs. Some of the costs I can think of off the top of my head would be:
1. Money spent training the much larger number of women who not qualify in the end.
2. Having to police soldiers’ sexuality. This would include not only adjudicating rape claims, a massive problem even in modern militaries, but also preventing consensual relationships as well. The harm done to morale from having all the men compete over the small number of women and the resultant jealousy would be enormous. And even a single pregnancy would be a gigantic hindrance to an ancient military out on campaign. It’s quite another thing in a modern context when a pregnant soldier can be sent back home in 48 hours on an airplane.
3. Leaving children, farms, and other domestic businesses unattended
The benefits would be a small number of additional, likely quite mediocre soldiers. The criterion of “able to lift the armour” is totally insufficient when the goal is to move faster than the person thrusting a spear at your face while wearing armour after you spent the previous day marching. There are in fact certain inherent limitations on women’s bodies as compared to men (not 5’2” academics in the 21st century, but trained soldiers we’re thinking of here), no matter how much they train or how naturally gifted.
When the Williams sisters faced a male tennis player named Karsten Braasch, they both got annihilated. Braasch faced them both in a single afternoon and beat both, 6-1 and 6-2. Braasch was a heavy smoker and ranked 203rd among men at the time.
There’s a bit of presentism in the idea that the sexuality of soldiers needs to be regulated in some way. While pregnancy may be an issue, there is evidence that the Romans had abortifacients https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium and could have regulated pregnancy in that way.
More importantly, it is a very modern conception that sexual relations have a negative affect on unit cohesion, look at the Sacred Band of Thebes. When could certainly imagine a scenario where senior warriors in a unit, regardless of gender, enter into sexual/mentoring relationships with younger members.
As pointed out above, I think the author has done a good job dismantling the most common arguments why woman have not served in the military historically (up until very recently), now the interesting question is why? Why have women not been allowed to serve in militaries? Sexism is to me not an answer but a description of the question.
Joan of Arc?
“women are naturally physically shorter, weaker, and smaller than men, that pregnancy and menstruation would hinder them from fighting”
Clearly he has never been in a room with a woman who is angry with him. My ex is 6 inches shorter than me but she knows how to stab & swings a wicked old-fashioned table telephone.
1. So it seems that there were some ancient societies in which women fought in battles, at least sometimes. Why did that not become more common?
One possibility, aside from sexism, is the human equivalent of Darwinian natural selection among competing societies. Apparently, societies with all-male armies succeeded more often, and came to dominate.
If having women in the army was an advantage (and just having more citizens available to fight seems to be an advantage), one would expect that societies with women warriors would have, on average over long periods of time, won more battles, won more wars, and become dominant. But they didn’t.
2. I think another possibility is that in ancient societies, a huge portion of the female population at any given time was either pregnant, or nursing a child. Not like modern society when most women do neither for most of their adult life, and are more available for military service.
I have read the book “The Amazons” by Adrienne Mayor, in which she documents both the literary & archeological evidence for warrior women.
This evidence is most abundant for horse nomad societies of the Eurasian steppe.
A thought I have about that is that if you (& your opponents) are fighting from the backs of not particularly large horses, being small is an advantage since your horse can run faster & longer before tiring. The men would still have an advantage in usually greater arm strength & so be able to draw a more powerful bow, but the faster horse would level the fighting field for the smaller person vs. the larger person.
Thoughts on this from people who have more knowledge about fighting from horseback?
Jesus my answer I typed up in 15 minutes sure offended you. I suspect it’s the sort of political leanings that has infected academia.
You don’t answer the question. You just say “sexism kept women from the military in the ancient world” but this is a bold-faced cop-out. Why did those attitudes exist?
For instance, Sparta was pretty egalitarian. Native American tribes were often Matriarchal. Yet in both instances, women did not serve as warriors. There are only a scant few times in history where women were involved with war at all and they were a drastic exception.
You make no valid points and that is strange for a historian. I thought you were an expert. I mean you have to know that being an archer, slinger, or ranged warrior, in general, requires strength and that these skirmishers often engage in melee combat. Are you saying women are as strong and capable as men. That a 1 on 1 fistfight between a man and a woman is an even fight and should be allowed to happen.
Women are smaller, women have weaker bones, women have smaller hearts, and women have worse reflexes. This is not sexism- it is an indisputable scientific fact. In a 1 on 1 fight (which was a lot of ancient war) a woman would be quickly overpowered and killed by the male combat.
Then you seem to claim that women who are as tall as men should be able to serve. Well in many societies that were the case. Particularly strong women did occasionally fight by they were such an exception they may as well have not existed.
In addition and to clarify- I stated in my writing that women have periods was an extremely small factor- you left that out though which is typically dishonest. I’ve dated many women and I am married. I can tell you for a fact that my wife is not 100% when on her period. Is any woman here prepared to say that they are 100% when menstruating? I am not saying women are incapable during this period of time- and I was specific on that. But in ancient war disease, exhaustion, and sanitization were significant issues. How were you never taught this in college?
Chalking everything up to prejudice is lazy and plainly stupid. It’s the application of modern politics to ancient peoples. My writing was correct. It was quick and simple, as intended, but it was correct. The fact you have taken this long to “debunk” it is rather telling. You have disproved nothing. You flail about illogically trying to make something stick and nothing does.
Your issue here is that my answer should have said “women were oppressed” because that is the only acceptable answer to any topic involving women for you I suspect. Good luck with that buddy.
Alex, you seem to be missing most of the nuance that I try to convey in my article. I am not arguing that all women are equally as strong as all men. I explicitly acknowledge that women are, on average, smaller and weaker than men. My point here is that some women are stronger than most men and would be capable of fighting, so having a rule that all men, including weaker men, must fight and that all women, including women who are larger and stronger, are not allowed to fight is sexist, because it assesses a person’s ability to fight based solely on their gender.
Dare I say it was more than gender bias. It was religious bias on the part of Christianity by viewing women as unequal to men. Look at the creation myth from the book of Genesis, the example of Eve being created from a man (or man’s rib). Powerful women from antiquity fell to Christianity like the polytheistic religions of the Norse, Greeks, and Egyptians.
I would love to share my work on the topic with you.
It’s certainly true that institutional forms of Christianity throughout history have generally been very misogynistic towards women.
Prejudice against women, however, is certainly not a uniquely Christian phenomenon; it was common throughout nearly all ancient societies, including both Christian and non-Christian societies. Indeed, very much contrary to what you say here, misogyny was absolutely rampant in ancient Greece and Rome, despite the fact that these societies were thoroughly “pagan.” (For instance, here is an article I wrote in June 2019 about ancient Greek misogyny.)
Moreover, Christianity itself is not necessarily always misogynistic. Despite the fact that institutional Christianity has generally been misogynistic, there have been various lay forms of Christianity that have been empowering towards women, and often Christianity in practice has been very different from the religion that has formally been preached. Joan of Arc (lived c. 1412 – 1431) rose to military prominence primarily through her role as an alleged Christian prophet.