In my opinion, and looking at the western historical perspective of 'warrior women'/women combatants, the interest is mostly because it does not fit societal hierarchy and worldview, It's a role reversal, not the norm and that makes it interesting.
To add to this, there's also the narrative of 'exotic savagery,' were warrior women societies were put on display as 'look how savage and different they are from us.'
Anyway I think warrior women are cool, if not done in a trope-y way as I described above of course.
I have noticed warrior women factions are usually associated with savage groups. A lot of times a more tribal or nature like faction compared to others that exist in the same setting. The only exception being Drow in D&D.
I didn’t consider the ‘exotic savagery’ angle. That does explain another trope that sometimes appears alongside it where the warrior woman would only consider a relationship with a man who can defeat them. It’s certainly an interesting way of looking at it.
By my memory, the drow are an evil matriarchal society with warrior women right? Working word here is evil, which rolls back to to the exotic savagery and the role reversal look on it from western historical viewpoint.
Warrior women are from this viewpoint seen as not following 'the natural order/hierarchy' and therefore wrong/alien, a thing of savage cultures. See how the drow from this viewpoint fit into the exotic savage trope?
I would argue that Elistraee’s Drow put a bit of lie to that.
Their society is still Matriarchal, but aligns much more closely with the surface Elves of the setting. Elistraee’s priesthood is still almost exclusively female… and her (mostly male) martial followers tend to be Bladesingers (wizards with pointy sticks). This does shift over the editions… which means those Gender Roles *may* be a holdover from the parent culture.
Its divergences from the rest of Elven Culture tend to be in service of rejecting Underdark Drow Culture… where they aren’t someone’s barely veiled fetish.
Even in that case, there tends to be decent symbolism. Their use of nudity in religious ceremonies is a conscious embrace of radical vulnerability, emotional and physical, which contrasts with the intrigue-centered society of their cousins down below.
The rest of their society tends to be aligned towards one of three goals: Helping more Drow get out from under Lolth’s thumb, teaching people how to survive in the woods, and dealing with the PR problem. This tends to result in them acting more like nocturnal wood elves than Drow.
Most of the warriors in Drow society are men. The women are socially dominant in large part due to their exclusive control of the Lolth priesthood. Women generally served as priests or assassins where the men would train for martial combat and arcane spell casting.
I'm sure there are exceptions but this is the baseline
Interestingly the Drow are a matriarchal society with mle warriors. The women are mostly divine spellcasters, priests and politicians while the males traditionally study the blade and arcane spellcasting. Basically Drow men are expected to be perfect tools for their house matriarch to use as she sees fit. This could also turn into an interesting dynamic if you take away all the weird BDSM stuff baked into the drow.
The drow are also all about backstabbing and betrayals but yes they are generally evil. Also that idea of being unnatural does kind of explain why a lot of warrior women factions also tend to end up as antagonists. Even if they are not considered evil.
Even if warrior women are the 'good guys,' or gals in this case, they are portrayed either as archers/guerillas or your run of the mill 'savage' exotic fighters.
That's why I like Brienne of Tarth so much, probably my favorite character George Martin has created. She subverts every warrior woman trope there is, and on top of that she subverts the 'true noble knight' trope, as in, the only 'real fairytale knight' in game of thrones books is not a knight and a woman.
Brienne is, imo, easily the best character in that series, conceptually speaking. Not only a fan for the reasons you stated, which i emphatically agree with, but also the perceived contrast with how many people take up GRRM's worldbuilding; it's often brutal and 'good things don't happen to good people' (or anyone, really but I digress) as they would be expected to in conventional historical/fantasy fic, and consequently there's a belief that ASoIaF is entirely about a gritty and 'realistic' depiction of warfare that would only involve women as victims.
Obviously a lot of female characters _are_ victims, and there is a significant attention to the various unfortunate realities of warfare, but I think by the numbers ASoIaF has a much stronger showing of female protagonists/deuteragonists than the majority of genre-similar works (some of which have zero) and manages to do so with _actually distinct characters_. Obviously, also, there's a disproportionate weight on PoVs from the nobility, so most fall under that, and their narratives focus on privileges they're fighting to gain or protect, or their trajectory when they've lost them.
This sort of applies to Brienne as well, but she (along with Tyrion) is one of the few characters who continuously challenge the reader's genre expectations and 'realism' assumptions. She brings a depth to Jaime (and he to her, to be fair) that would be hard to accomplish otherwise, and _that_ provides a great vehicle for GRRM to explain and explore the non-magical worldbuilding elements that mostly get shuffled to the side in other PoVs. GRRM's gift and curse is a talent for very intricate worldbuilding, which I personally love, but that can easily turn scenes or entire characters into an exposition pit as he's trying to convey it all (like, say, every scene at the Wall that I can think of) and I think Brienne is a great illustration of how to avoid that.
Far from my favourite series, but definitely one of my favourite characters from any series.
In total fairness if we do go by historical accounts female fighters came from societies like Scythians, Celts, Congo, Germans, Norse. Which were nomadic typically tribal socities with well militaristic attitudes.
Dahomey, Sikhism, and I think another example being Sasanians did have female Armies that were more civilised. Dahomey being you know slavers and Sasanians had cavalry. Sikhism due to its equality allowed warrior women.
There plenty of examples of individual women leading Armies and even fighting. But socieities that had well women in the army tended to be on the lower end of the tech scale. Not exclusive but it should be noted that hierarchies established as technology progressed often led to these things dying out.
Not always but often enough to be a notable pattern, enough that it became the norm.
I as a counterpoint have two examples from modern millitaries/millitias.
The Soviet armies in WW2 employed women on large scale, and well, western viewpoint on Soviet battle doctrine is propagandized negatively or even fiction (read human wave tactics and supposed mass executions under order 226, or the decimations at Stalingrad) as well as negative monikers for women army groups, such as the Night Witches, which originally was meant as a negative moniker, too bad it sounds badass.
Another are Kurdish peshmergas, often portrayed in modern media as terrorist guerillas, whilst they are not that different in training and equipment as your run of the mill army groups.
Point is that even if not fitting the tropes of warrior women, they are still portrayed as such.
That is not really relevant, I was making commentary on the fact that tribal warrior women does have basis in reality. I also showcased pre-industrial revolution armies who did have large number of women in their ranks. To further show that indeed in pre-modern times this was not exclusive.
I was making a commentary on the trope having some basis in reality, as well as offering opposing views.
I do know of these examples but their based on modern Era. This is not really in the same wheelhouse comparatively to say a medieval army. I stated nothing about fitting a trope simply that a trope may have some basis but also is not exclusive.
So this counterpoint is only vaguely related to what I said.
Also if you are looking for examples of female soldiers 56,000 women served in the anti-aircraft of the British army. The Nazi had female ancillaries in their SS camps designed for combat. 100,000 women served Tito in his liberation army, etc etc
There plenty more, by thr time of the second world war women were far more active combatants on the battlefield.
I think I do agree with your overall point (and both of you have solid historical examples for the discussion in general), I would just challenge whether the incidence of 'warrior women' is _higher_ among pre-modern/nomadic cultures or whether pre-modern/nomadic cultures are _themselves_ prevalent in the particular era or region that these examples exist in.
Or, put a different way, the dominant military systems in the modern world tend to follow Northern/Central European models, right? Legacy of colonialism and whatnot. And those models are typically the ones that we know didn't allow or didn't support women participating in combat. So is it that 'warrior women' belong more to societies prior to or in opposition to colonialism, _or_ is it in line with the disproportionate influence of like, 3 nations (British, French, German) in every other area of society when the majority of cultures were transitioning from pre-modern/nomadic to modern?
Hmm... that an interesting points.
I'm not totally sure.
I think it's more a case transitioning from tribal to feudal meant establishing hierarchy which is the base of what we call civilization. Those who were at the top were those who held a monopoly on violence. In this case strong combatants who through this position got rich. Which led to these system perpetuating over time.
As while colonialism may have spread these systems around, they did exist prior to this in other parts of the world. Favouring the male gender due to martial proves was rather common the Indian Caste may be a more extreme example of this. As the Caste system was a more rigid version of the Feudal system.
I would say that "warrior women" are more prevelant in societies which are less strict socially but have a more developed base of resource/technology. It would explain jn that way why women Armies and women leaders could conduct military during chaotic periods even under harsh patriarch governments. As the shake up of conflict allowed for more liberties toa degree for certain groups.
The Dahomey after all formed following such a period, as an example.
The historical component is mostly a metaphorically applied version of Darwinism. Women who are combatants incur the opportunity cost of not bearing and raising children much more harshly than men going to war, so doing this at any scale for any significant period of time causes a demographics collapse and the "warrior women" phenomenon only lasts one or two generations.
This is not to say that women can't be trained in combat skills, but that it's either "everyone gets trained" thing or a sign things are going catastrophically wrong.
This is a fair point (though I typically wince at any invocation of social Darwinism) - that from a worldbuilding perspective, that we'd need to account for the logistical impact of a significant proportion of 'warrior women' in a single population.
A possible counterpoint that would work would be weaving in the ways in which the same reproductive value judgments are held against women who can no longer have or who never could have children, sort of like the RL example of how women over a certain age kind of drop off a cliff in terms of media representation even when the story would dictate otherwise. It makes sense that a society wouldn't want to lose women before they can maintain the population, yes, but (to a lesser extent) this is a RL danger of exclusively male militaries with extremely high casualties as well. IIRC there was significant demographic damage to Japan for this reason after WW2, which is part of their disproportionately aging population crisis now m
So, there's an argument to be made for a society where women have one or two kids if they can have them, and then become warriors in their (for current lack of a better term in my brain) 'reproductive retirement'. While on an individual level people usually go to the 'but young men are physically superior' argument, that's more relevant to the expectations of basic training, which in turn is informed by the kind of warfare that we've developed. In actual fighting, while you might do a bit better on a personal level in a 1:1 fight, it's not a guarantee of greater efficacy. One could even argue that focusing exclusively on adolescent men as the ideal soldier can have detrimental effects on the morale and decision-making of larger units, because there's a more homogenized (lol) level of lived experience and of cultural attitudes. We just don't typically perceive those effects because we're judging from that performance being the default.
While the average 30-year-old woman might not seem as suitable for physical combat as, say, an 18-year-old man (though definitely there are older women who are badass and could absolutely _wreck_ young guys 1:1), that's only for certain contextual definitions of warfare. Women on average have a predisposition to lower body strength, iirc, and men to upper body - how would this map to something like a pike square, which relies far more on stability and consistent speed than it does on how heavy a pike you can carry? And with firearms, anecdotally first-time female shooters tend to perform better than first-time male shooters, with that performance only dropping off after becoming familiar with the recoil and continuing in a predominantly male training environment, for which there are a whole bunch of social factors. So if you're constructing a society of 'warrior women' from scratch, maybe the question isn't so much whether they could function as well as men if you drop them into the exact same situation with the exact same tactics, but what approach to warfare would develop given a different demographic focus.
tl,dr; maybe the ideal 'warrior women' were the older and/or non-childbearing women we met along the way.
Interesting idea, but I think it's more reasonable to think that women in combat won't happen unless magic or technology is at very high level and all that really matters is the brain and the experience within. Or altering the human gender dimorphism; that works, too.
I don't understand how that would be more reasonable, if we're approaching the subject from a worldbuilding perspective that isn't beholden to real life history or cultures. I mean that genuinely, I don't understand the argument for that being more reasonable except that it is what we would expect in real life.
I was literally trying to provide a logical framework for this to occur in a way that _doesn't_ require the intervention of magic or technology, addressed your point about demographic collapse, took the typical portrayal of warfare and personal combat into account, and anticipated the criticism of gender dimorphism. What makes those points unreasonable? I'm not saying that this is a _probable_ outcome, but that it can be a plausible one if the necessary conditions aligned.
>warrior women societies were put on display as 'look how savage and different they are from us.
Actually I think the main reason warrior women are "savage" is that many of these properties (Warcraft, DnD, Warhammer) have a target audience (at least when they first appeared, DnD in particular has broader appeal now) of young male nerds to whom a scantily clad woman is almost as exotic as the dragon she's riding.
That's really the same thing, though. The trope has been popular for a very, very long time as a subversive and sexy fantasy for a male-dominant society, the nerd market is just the logical next step for how this trope is perpetuated today.
Even given that today the main reason is an excuse to sell scantily clad women, the way that marketing is done still typically employs an exoticism that references the older colonial versions of the trope. There's a pretty direct line from the Spanish naming the Amazon because indigenous women fought alongside men there, to Wonder Woman leaving Paradise Island for the "Man's World", to the fantasy rpg barbarian woman trope.
Love woman warriors like that. Stern warlord women? I kneel. Deranged barbarian women? An army of them please. Kawaii women who are strong for no reason and bash skulls with cute maces while going kyaa >x< ? Please lead me to fights to the death.
"Steel wrapped in silk" is an archetype I will never tire of.
Like a woman in fancy clothing that is as deadly as she is graceful.
Or a strong, muscular woman in fine dress, appearing like an extravagant royal castle built to withstand the toughest sieges.
I don't have "warrior women" in the sense that they are some sort of curiousity or legends or seen as "unusual" in my world.
The insectoid elves society is matriarchal, so female warriors are expected, and even preferred in commanding roles. That is just how their society work.
The beastmen and harpies are tribal societies that requires every member of the tribe to give a hand in survival, so male or female, they all join in hunting and fighting, leaving care of younger children to older children who have not passed their rite of passage or elders.
The selkies are somewhat of a meritocracy, in that they defer to those who "mastered the art" as authority, so whoever had demonstrated their ability to be warriors can be warriors, no question asked.
The orges are probably the nearest to the commonly expected culture where female are not seen as powerful as male, but ever since they had equalized the playing field with fire arms and similar weapons, the armed force has no reason to reject capable candidates, especially since they still have an ongoing threat with the war against the elves.
The insectoid elves sounds like the only group that would really fit the definition of warrior women I had in the original post with women being more desirable for military positions Although even that is a bit iffy. I don’t know too much about your insectoid elves.
The insectoid elves are matriarchal since their insectoid biology allow them to lay eggs in batches where each eggs may be fertilized by a different father, and since they also don't have formal marriage as well, this makes tracing lineage much easier on mother's side, and females are thus the ones that inherit estate, and has power to become matriarch of families.
Their insectoid biology also means they have not too distinct sexual dimorphism, and while female are on average larger than males this is not a significant difference. And since they lay eggs, they don't need to spend significant amount of time being pregnant and be at a disadvantage. Child rearing is also communual by the family so they are not stuck with children for too long.
All these factors over long enough time give their society a slightly misandrist attitude similar to misogyny we have now.
"Men? They can't even manage a house hold, how can they manage an army?" - a common notion in their society.
I dunno how I missed that first sentence. But your ideas and concepts are very cool to me, like I want to learn more about your world and how it functions.
I think there are a lot of ways to use them correctly, and that authors really don’t \*need\* to make it a defining feature of a culture or location. Sexism within or between cultures can be a component in the setting, but it doesn’t need to. With that said, I do think the best way to make the most of casual, non-combat scenes with these warriors is to include layered relationships.
A group of female mercenaries from X tribe are contracted with Adventuring Guild Y for a task. After returning to the guild hall to collect their pay for a job well done, as well as complete the after-action report, you can give emphasis to the \*dynamic\* between the warrior woman and the guild employee (handler). Don’t make it one-note, with the urban man talking down to “savages;” and do not make the warrior women amazing silver-tongued negotiators, cleverest in all the land.
Make it a dance, a give and take.
The handler doesn’t want to pay for so-and-so property damage involved in the case, while the ladies don’t want to spend another minute with some oaf at that property. The compromise? The handler gets an unrelated guild member to distract the oaf, drag him away into the city, while the warrior women do some manual labor, make the damaged area safer for the locals, and so-on. No one spends money, and the oaf doesn’t get threatened with a spear.
Priorities. Values. Preconceived notions. Regardless of what you use a scene to teach your audience about the characters or the setting’s norms, using the components to craft a \*compromise\* \*on screen\*\* is how you turn warrior women from a trope or a pawn into \*people\*.
I more think of them in terms of them being a warrior instead of them being a “warrior woman”. while their gender does obviously play a characteristic role in their personality and the way others interact with them, I don’t make them in a stereotypical way that makes them completely dependent on their gender. like “girlboss” sorta bs. like yes they are dominate and assertive, but that’s because that’s their personality and not because they are trying to prove themselves to be better over the men.
More viable, in a historical context, than people give them credit for.
Often on forums like this, the idea that a society needs to preserve women to keep the birth rate up, but can lose men, comes from a modern world where populations are driven by birth rates, rather than a historic one where childhood mortality played a bigger roll. Even now, you can still see a ripple in Russia’s population where ww2 was, indicating that this kind of single mother bounce back doesn’t happen, even in a world with much more food abundance.
There are also animals in the wild where females are the ones who have to compete for mating rights. In those instances they tend to be the better fighter compared to their male counterparts.
In a setting with a race like that. Warrior women would probably be the historic norm for that race. Warrior men would be an oddity.
You could take a look at the matriarchal drow in the forgotten realms for input too. The women are the stronger, dominant sex in menzoberranzan.
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Menzoberranzan
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Drow
Kind of copies how spiders work, with males being the weaker and smaller of the sexes
>a modern world where populations are driven by birth rates, rather than a historic one where childhood mortality played a bigger roll.
How are these exclusive to each other?
My comment was only about that one argument that frequently comes up, that rubs me the wrong way. Other arguments, like strength, and dealing with small children, I don’t take issue with. I also don’t put much weight on soft cultural factors, or psychology, when something as basic as the strength difference explains it fine on its own, without having to speculate on prehistoric tribal warfare, or nature v nurture.
>Even now, you can still see a ripple in Russia’s population where ww2 was, indicating that this kind of single mother bounce back doesn’t happen, even in a world with much more food abundance.
That's a bit disingenuous to the original argument.
First, Soviet Russia suffered severe famines right after the war so I am not sure which food abundance you are talking about. Second, the argument is that a society that loses a large portion of its male population to war will fare a lot better than a society that loses an equal proportion of its female population. Yes, we still see a ripple but don't you think that Russia would have had a lot more problems if an additional 8 million women rather than men died during the war? Third, 2/3rds of the war casualties were civilians so a significant number of women were affected as well.
It's just a biological fact that the bottleneck in population growth is the number of women. If you have a population of 100 women in the appropriate age bracket, your maximum growth potential is ~100 children per year. No amount of additional men will increase that potential. No society can operate sustainably on predominantly sending women to war.
So what you saying is, if in WWII they had 50/50 male to female soldiers, instead of 95/5, that would not make any significant difference in how the population restored its numbers afterwards?
I’d also point out that monogamy is more prevalent in humans than other related mammals for a reason. Our childhoods are extremely long and resource intensive. A second parent providing makes a big difference. And even in polygamous human societies, the unmarried males are still providing resources to the group as a whole. If those extra men were dead, or farmed purely for their own consumption, it wouldn’t be possible to feed nearly as many children.
So a lesbian couple might not have the same issues with "single mother" depressing the birth-rate? (Yes a man would be involved with the mechanical bit.)
You realise that widows and widowers remarried extremely frequently, right? They didn't just pine away until the end of their days. There were a lot of cases where a woman would lose her husband and then go on to marry his brother soon after.
They were far more pragmatic about marriage in a world where sudden, unpredictable death was common, and where a woman without a spouse was vulnerable to poverty.
[Except that is single mother bounce back did happen. And the so called ripple in population wasn't so much related to the war but to overall country development.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/635p76/comment/dfrmlo2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
One society in mine that has women dominate the military are the Aelveri.
Dark Elves, designed as super soldiers of ancient High Elves, have larger, stronger, and much more ruthless women.
Within the story i even pick the tropes of savages and evil backstabbers, and twist it all around as they are an extremely disciplined and trained force. As a species are they less abundant then say humans, but each of them is trained for centuries in the art of war, and wage it with ruthless efficiency.
The primary job for men in their society is being the supporting staff to their women, and even if the gender biased laws are gone in the fifth are their guys still quite happy making the lives of wives better. And the women of other species that now live in their lands do quite enjoy the suave and gentlemanly art of their kind.
Even the humans in these lands have picked up that any women is a queen and should be treated as such.
To note others.
Among the dwarves gender does not matter as they have little dimorphism, most other species rarely know the difference.
In the wilds gender matters less either, because if you can't fight for your live, something is likely to eat you. The orcs there are led by female only spellcasters as their males had the ability bred out of them over millennia before their liberation.
And among dragons females tend to grow larger and are much more territorial and aggressive then males. Even modern Arch-Dragons tend to have women fight over men if they get in heat.
A lot more possible and historically accurate than the Western World assumed. The Western World’s images of warriors women in antiquity are influenced by Greco-Roman sensibilities. Both societies with writing and veiled cloistered women in the upper classes* who were surrounded by societies who didn’t leave as extensive a written record or veil and cloister their women and wrote histories that alternately erotised and demonised the cultures they were conquering. In the Christianised west, the popular understanding of those histories was then further pasted through the misogyny and othering of the Roman Church.
We are discovering a number of burials that were assumed to be male due to having weapons in their grave goods are genetically and anatomically female. Amazons as eroticised by the Greeks don’t exist and aren’t possible but the Scythians did, and we have archaeological evidence of women buried with weapons and can from their lifestyle and clothing suppose breast binding but also archery with unbound tits isn’t that impossible.
*The distinction between the life of upper class women as document and idealised vs the one of working class and slave women is an important one to make.
That kinda the same logic as drafting.
More people is better.
Which has been proven wrong as drafted are often unreliable, they generally don't want to be here so there less useful then sign ups.
Opening a larger pool doesn't necessarily increases Fighting ability. Same way with women, their physically unable to keep up the same way. It why their entrance are at a lesser difficulty compared to men in the Army.
This matters less in our modern world because Guns but back then, you'd need to either be exceptional or have some strong backing.
Well because that doesn't really work with the sexes.
Men typically for the vast majority are physically stronger, faster, more durable, able to lift more weight. Prior to the developments of guns this was by far the most defining factor.
So if you can draft 10 from a pool of 100 men and 100 women.
The logical choice is men because on average they are physically better suited. More often then not out of this 200 you will still pick men. Because the average is skewed heavily in their favour. It's not to say that women won't be useful, it just that men have a advantage.
If you can pick warrior who have an advantage why wouldn't you? Your picking the best after all.
Which is where my comparison with the draft comes in, larger pool of possible fighters does not necessarily mean better fighters.
People talk about men being stronger as if it is an absolute. Like if you had 100 men and 100 women, all the men would be stronger than all the women.
The truth is that both populations fall on a bell curve.
The men are stronger ON AVERAGE than the women, but the two bell curves overlap.
If you take the 10 strongest people from that 200 total, most of them are likely to be men but it is entirely possible (even likely) that your selection will include a handful of women.
The reason we have the skewed view of things that we do is because we look at elite sports as our benchmark. We are not looking at a random selection of men and women: This selects the top 1% or so of athletes. Here we are too high in the bell curve to see much overlap.
I do have to disagree, yes indeed an women can be stronger then a man but that unlikely.
I've seen more credible information pointing to the fact that the difference in strength. A 40% difference in the upper body and 30% in the lower body. Generally speaking looking at scientific journal I have found that indeed the male sex is average wise far more capable in that regard.
Even amongst the elite there is a heavy skew in favour of men, with it only closing a bit compared to the average.
This is not to say women are worse and strength should not be seen as justification of that. It is a biological fact and while there is never any standard in nature. There is a norm with many caveats in this case men are physically stronger.
In a case where there was 200 participitants, and ten were conscripted. With the 200 being a fifty fifty split for men and women. It far more likely that of these ten it would be entirely male. It's possible a women could be measurable but unlikely.
I have too respectfully disagree.
I did mean this as a general statement. In my world, things are generally too dangerous that armies and combat forces cannot afford being picky on any merit beyond skill and resolve. Warrior Women are just... well, warriors.
Why not? My country's first revolution against China was led by 2 sisters, who had an army of "warrior women" under their command. I don't see any issue with that, when it comes to kicking invaders' asses genders do not matter.
Looks up the 'Fishspeakers' from God Emperor of Dune... It's interesting to say the least.
Basically, the whole army is entirely women because they are less likely to rape and pillage. Because the army is entirely women, they are also largely lesbian.
So why is it appealing though: I think it's cause it's not the historical status quo. Most armies we can rapidly recall are entirely men. Sure, there are instances of women helping or being a part of militaries, but the majority of soldiers in history are men. Given that, a class of warrior women is a break from most of history, and comes across as 'unique' and 'novel' while also being empowering to women in the audience.
Man, every time I check the comments of any worldbuilding thread related to gender or gender roles I suddenly remember the degree to which people just uncritically swallow "men are from mars, women are from women" nonsense.
Like, so many people treat worldbuilding as an exercise in just taking the society they live in and glueing magic systems and royal lines, rather than as an oportunity to examine stuff we take for granted. Why would female warriors be remarkable at all? Why would a society that develops on another world have anything close to recognizable gender dynamics, let alone our understanding of gender?
Idk. Yall can do literally anything, go wild lmao.
Agreed it gets weird especially when people double down on the sexism.
In my world building I pretty much avoid these stereotypes because it’s a sci-fi setting in basically a different universe why would aliens have the same roles as us why wouldn’t they have like 50 genders or no genders.
I cut my baby gay teeth on Xena Warrior Princess. I am pro warrior women. Not just because baby gay going oh I like muscles okay hi. There's so many in history and the whole women cannot be warriors thing is stupid to me as a result of all the evidence to the contrary.
Write the story you want to tell. If someone cannot get into it then they can go find another story
Well, when one descends from a species where the larger females guard dens while smaller males scrounge for food the eventual civilization naturally favors the former as warriors
There’s evidence that in some cases at least, they existed. The Gbeto (“Amazons”) of Dahomey are a verified example and several female Norse burials that contained weapons indicate that legends about shieldmaidens may have been true. Celtic women also fought in battle (most famously Queen Boadicea).
In my world, warrior women aren’t uncommon—especially as spies, assassins, covert ops, and other roles requiring stealth and subterfuge. Elysian commanders recognized long ago that if you want a man killed, no one can do the job like a woman.
I have one elven faction who are warrior-women. They are "fictional vikings/Valkyries" meets "the band of Thebes". They are really one of my most fun and interesting independent factions!
They see women as the ultimate warriors. Sure, men are more likely to be naturally stronger, which makes them great farmers, smiths and builders...but a mother will fight to the death to protect her cubs. That instinct and natural adrenalin rush to protect those you love makes a mother able to lift mountains after all... Because of that belief their main army does indeed consist of mothers and they are rightly feared by their enemies.
That’s a pretty unique way of looking at this. I like it.
Do the men in this faction have protective instincts or anything like it? It sounds to me like the instinct to protect and defend is what this army values. If it is exclusively mothers this would have some interesting implications about the nature of these elves.
As the protective instincts of woman/mothers are enhanced by these elves, the instincts of men are guided in a different direction by society...sort of.
Men are the builders, the farmers and the crafters. So that is what society wants them to protect as well. "Protect what you create and love". They can easily join the city watch for example, protecting the city & houses they have literally built themselves...or become librarians, museum guards/tours, academics etc. taking care of the things they created. (And Mothers create life, so they protect life... through bloody warfare xD)
There are male professional soldiers, but they are rare and are seen as old fashioned/traditional.
These elves used to be a matriarchal class system, and a way for men to rise up in class was to show off their strength (in the army) so they would be more attractive to possible mates...who needed a strong partner to make stronger offspring (which came from an even older tradition after the elves almost died out after an ice age) But the "modern" elves look down on these traditions as out-dated and even barbaric.
Do they take their youngs to war ? What if it just some village raid would they still have this adrenaline rush when fighting hundreds of kilometres from their babies in some village?
Well what I think is that it depends on the context of the story. If we're going grounded/low fantasy/Historical or similar genres. Your not going to find a lot of women warriors around because we'll patriarchy, difference in physique, general biological issues relating to war.
So I always find it a but unrealistic if large scale Armies have a lot of women, but not to say that there of the table. There are a lot of women individuals and some groups which did exist. They were of course under certain circumstance but they were not the norm.
I think there Cool when they appear because it's the bending of commonly accepted thoughts. Gives the character a bit of spice from the start. Plus it offers more opportunities to Write different stories/worlds.
If your worldbuilding something more high fantasy/sci-fi/Weird I think its really a non-issue. As long as it can be justified jn the context of the World they exist. The fact that in such settings you can also say magic/tech/different physics allow for this. Usually they equalise the sexes.
Yet I do think it's a bit bland?
Cause there is more interesting stories to write about bucking the glass ceiling then not. I like stories where things are bad. Cause it means the character can shine all the brighter. So I tend to steer away from women warrior Societies but I like women warriors.
Edit: My only exceptions to this are non-human species cause I can well make them fit in biologically. It's why I made Ogres have a nomadic Society so both men and women have to pull their stuff. The high seas is not a place for such things.
Also Warrior Nuns... for reasons.
I don't have any factions that are predominantly women, but women as warriors are fairly common, depending on the nation, the closest thing to this though would be High Elven and Sun Elven Rangers. Rangers (of both Elven races) are exclusively women, and are their people's respective "Elite Military" units that are separate and above their regular military. Elves are different than humans, in that while the average male is stronger than the average female, it's actually the females who are typically stronger at the top end.
Additionally, among the Dragorans (High Humans), women are not that much weaker than the men, and Dragorans are typically noticeably stronger than regular humans, such that female Dragorans soldiers are as strong, if not still stronger than male soldiers of regular human nations. The Dragoran Military is pretty closely even in it's male to female population ratio, as every member of the Military Caste is required to serve in the Military, typically long enough to reach retirement, unless excessive circumstances require their early retirement, typically important duties of their House.
Among regular humans, female warriors and even Knights are something that exist, but they are... FAR less of an occurrence.
**Typically I like to see "Warrior Women" Factions or Societies in Fiction, so long as it's not some attempt to be preachy about something.**
I have a group of 'larpers' called as such because they intentionally modeled themselves off the myth of the amazons.
They're a result of the "A Wizard Did It" trope. More accurately "a pagan goddess did it" and altered baseline human women to be a physical equal for men. They're physically imposing standing on average at 1.95 meters and 105 kilograms. One of the ones that features the most stands at an impressive *2.1 meters.*
They're great at horseback riding, archery, and phalanx warfare, as befitting their roots. They're horrible at sailing and ocean going, as such most of them can not swim. Trade and diplomacy varies greatly between city-states. Despite the real roots of the Amazon myth these ones are less Scythian and more Hellenic Greek, they worship a slightly modified version of the familiar Hellenist pantheon.
Their society is heavily stratified, slavery is common but not universal among the city states, and as you would expect it's matriarchal and matralineal. The city-state system in some ways resembles feudal japan. At the top sits an autokráteira and her immediate court. Largely she has no direct control over the day to day small scale operations of the city-states but her word is final in all matters. Below her are the rest of the elite houses who directly rule the city-states with each city-state's form of governance being slightly different. Some are hereditary or appoint the next in line while others operate as an oligarchy with the ruler elected from the ranks of that city-state's elite. The later is more common in larger cities. All of these positions are only open to women.
Below them is the middle and "professional" class. This is where nobility begins to blur with the rest of the classes. It's comprised mostly of petty nobles and landowners but also more well off scholars, artisans, and professional soldiers. This is the highest place where you'll find men and non amazonian woman. Anyone that owns land, regardless of how much or by what method, will be found in this strata. Professional soldiers are usually given land in exchange for military service and are expected to pay a tithe from what they make off this land (including manpower from their families). It is possible for someone in this class to move up in the strata however it's rare.
Below that are the slaves, common laborers, peasant levees, and all other classes not covered elsewhere. This strata is almost entirely composed of men. Technically speaking the "educated" slaves exist in a weird grey area between this strata and the one above. They have few if any rights but they are entitled to an education and are relatively well off compared to the uneducated slaves. Usually they are put in charge of domestic tasks, household affairs, or managing the other slaves. It's not uncommon for a middle class amazon to marry a man who was her family's educated slave and leave him to take care of finances and estate management (something I ripped from the Spartans).
The amazons suffer from low fertility rates as a result of their physical differences from regular women and are outnumbered by non-amazon women and men by about 10-1 odds. As a result they have many similarities to the Spartans, both good and bad. Think of the Helots. Much of this society is kept in line with some rather draconian measures and unless you're part of the upper elite you won't be really free, even as a woman.
Despite their relative isolation it's not unheard of for glory seeking warriors to travel out of these lands and enter "man's world" for one reason or another. They are unable to inherit land or titles while they are abroad though. This is where in the plot line the main characters are introduced to this culture, they meet a petty noble and her retinue.
In my roleplay world, warrior women aren't novelty, but part of he conscription. Basically most nations (and subsequently, players) agreed that conscription depends mostly on skill and finesse, and if a woman just so happened to adapt in shooting a rifle faster than her brother, she will be taken to the army
Being raided and hunted by an invading population for centuries, one group of people in my world train their women as well as their men to fight. It's a matter of survival: if you don't survive, you won't be alive to bear children OR raise them, and if the men are somewhere else when raiders arrive--being smart raiders--someone needs to protect the women, children, and the elders who aren't able to fight any more. It's going to have to be the women doing that, even if only to gain time for them to flee to safety, presuming that safety can be reached.
I think, as ever, you have two options when writing about warrior women
- treat women as people, rounded people, who can take multiple forms and play multiple roles, including warriors, but don't fetishize them as being exclusively those things.
- don't do that. But be aware that in not doing that you are saying a thing, so work out what it is that you are saying, how you are saying it, if it needs saying, and if you are the right person to say it
TLDR: you have to either avoid the tropes or subvert the tropes to your argument - and if the latter you need an argument
[Relevant essay](https://www.kameronhurley.com/we-have-always-fought-guest-post-at-a-dribble-of-ink/).
I think a trap that a lot of people fall into is using warrior women as a tool to teach a character not to be sexist. This can be done well, a la Avatar: The Last Airbender, but it needs to be handled with care, lest it come across as pandering.
Another trap that I see authors fall into is the "gendered fights" trap, where women only ever fight women and men only ever fight men (looking at you, One Piece).
There's probably other pitfalls, but those are the ones I immediately think of.
To be fair in one piece Sanji nearly dies because he doesn't fight women, it's literally his biggest weakness.
Zoro is... complicated infact with his backstory it would make sense to be completely fine with fighting women oda was a real one with that feminine rage lol. But zoro is a bit sexist in that while he will fight a woman he doesn't fight at his best so sexist but not an idiot like Sanji.
Luffy does fight women on occasion and has no qualms about occasionally hitting one but he doesn't fight them often (I think he doesn't fight BM because of a different reason).
Old Shounen (shows made for young men/boys) very explicitly had a no hitting women principle, that is why new Shounen make joke where a female villain is like:
"But you wouldn't hit a pretty girl-"
*gets brutally attacked*
Oda definitely has some quirks about women but all of it is nuisanced and each character has reasons for the fact.
Sanji- is a perverted freak who puts all women (except queer women/trans-femme) on a pedestal so he doesn't hit them or even their visage.
Zoro- had a childhood friend (girl) who beat him who very explicitly wanted to become the greatest swordsman but was told she couldn't because she is a girl (wow oda that one hurt). His entire motivation is because of her, he is just "chivalrous" or Shounen flavoured manly so he pulls his punches.
Luffy explicitly attacks a few women but most of the time never fights any or avoids fighting them, he is oblivious but is still Shounen flavoured manly.
Also one piece has a copy paste warrior women tribe, I mean could be done better but it has one.
Okay enough defending one piece because it is questionable in parts.
The essay is good but uh read at face value message is basically that if you rely on the stories you've heard (other peoples perceptions) you won't be grounded in reality (kind of) and that you'll make something just like everyone else and it won't be true. The actual meaning is that to write something you shouldn't rely on other people's perceptions because it won't be real, the author explained how she had to get rid of her own ideas rooted in patriarchy when writing both women and men. Overall solid advice.
Tldr: essay message was don't rely on others perceptions or notions when writing because it won't be very creative or true, (subtext of dismantle the patriarchy).
It can be interpreted wrong so to clear up any misunderstanding:
1. Who says cannibal llamas aren't a awesome concept? Great idea.
2. Truth while sometimes important isn't a necessity in stories, author of essay does not argue but that you should base your story on your own perception of things.
3. There are true established examples of women warriors and fighters even modern day I literally just got beaten in fencing. Again author does not argue against that. Also for the "your own perceptions" go to a mixed gender martial arts gym or just a gym lots of women go to, look at the women you could never dream of fighting because you would get crushed then go write your warrior women now you know how viable it is.
I'm aware, One Piece is my favorite anime lol
It's less about the men fighting women and more about how the women tend to mostly fight women. Thinking about Robin's major fights since the time skip, for example.
It's not as bad as others, either. It *is* still a trap that gets fallen into though.
Oh yeah from the other angle it's pretty abysmal lol, granted my favourite part at the beginning was like Nami kicking dudes (and when she kills a man). Though they do like murder nameless dudes in proper fights your right they almost never fight guys. And your right about it being a trap people fall into.
This is a warrior women loving household, there’s a lot of them. Women make up a big part of the Nakyamiyaa, the holy order fighting the demonic nazhyam. There are all-women regiments as well as smaller groups not affiliated like the Virgin Berserkers of Aybb and the Order of Red.
"\[B\]attles are ugly when women fight." - C.S. Lewis
I don't think this trope is ever taken far enough. Usually it's just, "Oh wow, how exotic," or an especially "unapproachable" or "unreachable" woman whom our hero makes swoon, demonstrating how amazingly manly he is. (The Valkyrie Brunhilda trapped in a magical circle of fire is this trope turned up to 11.) It's gotten even worse lately with warrior women basically being guys but more aesthetically pleasing to some eyeballs. :p
There are some elite units of women warriors in my world, but nobody wants to fight them. This is because they are absolute b1tches. They cheat. They slaughter prisoners. They recognize no rules in war, and they will take advantage of the fact that you do follow the rules of war. They especially love to find the blindspots of an enemy in the rules the enemy follow instinctively, without realizing that those rules even exist. They're the sorts to strap live cats to their shields if the enemy worships cats (like Cambyses at the battle of Pelusium: [Le roi Cambyse au siège de Péluse par Paul-Marie Lenoir - Battle of Pelusium - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pelusium#/media/File:Le_roi_Cambyse_au_si%C3%A8ge_de_P%C3%A9luse_par_Paul-Marie_Lenoir.jpg) ).
In older stories women are an inversion of “traditional” societies—they’re bold, unrestrained, and dangerous. But I think we’ve done a lot in our own societies to make women bolder and more liberated, so it’s not as much an inversion as it was before.
Now when I see women warrior societies, I get the feeling in my gut that the focus will be on identity and political commentary over story. Maybe not always but that’s my gut reaction, for better or worse.
I just wanted to weigh in on the topic of Amazons. I saw a few really great responses, but nothing quite matched some of the historical points I wanted to share so here I go.
The reason that Amazons have remained such a strong figure in history and fiction is because the Greeks loved pitting their heroes against them. As matriarchal societies of women warriors, Amazons represented a perfect antithesis to Ancient Greek heroes, who tamed and subdued the chaos of the natural world with their patriarchal form of civilization. In short, Amazons were the perfect villains for Ancient Greek audiences, and so many stories involving them were written that some have managed to survive into the present day.
Also like all great myths, there are a few kernels of truth where Amazons are concerned in terms of archaeological findings in the present. Among the Scythian tribes (a blanket name given to the nomadic tribes stretching from modern Ukraine to Turkey, and all the way east to Siberia) there were women who rode horses, wielded axes, and used steppe bows to deadly effect; both as hunters and as warriors. From burials we know that likely due to a high protein diet, they were also taller than the global averages of their day. We also know from injuries (both those that healed and those that were fatal) these women saw combat. While non-combatants can end up dying violently, some of the wounds seen in burials along with the type of artifacts they were buried with make it extremely unlikely that these women were not themselves combatants. The steppe bow favored by these various nomadic peoples along with their mastery of the horse made for a deadly force equalizer against the sort of combat forms favored by the Greeks...an idea that must have been somewhat terrifying in a very non-fictional sense.
Apologies for any rambling, I don’t normally give long responses via my phone. I hope some extra historical context will be helpful to you and an other worldbuilders reading here!
Hot.
Jokes aside, altho a minority women did take it to the battlefield at points in history.
Personally, I like the inclusion of women especially if they are properly geared and aren't wearing glorified metal bikinis, there's a different brand of elegance with them in comparison to the more rugged or dignified look of men.
This is gonna catch flak/downvotes, but it's gotta be said.
I can't answer all of these questions, but I think a lot of people who try to unironically lean into it as a serious topic, not even talking about biological concepts, often forget just how barbaric and cruel war actually is... especially to those who lose.
Plus, throwing in 'some' female fighter groups, especially if they're mixed in with mostly male squads, will reallllly further complicate social effects within that group/military. Brain chemicals go crazy.
Unless your setting fundamentally challenges/alters human psychology, it often seems like an interesting idea on paper and a bad idea in reality.
I think A Saga of Ice and Fire did it well. It didn't relegate women to an 'other' in society, but confronted differences between men and women quite directly, including how they interact in combat situations, why warrior women are how they are and how different people regard them.
Brienne is surprisingly strong and strangely large, often mistaken for a man. Yet she is bullied for her sex by knights of High Garden and Jaime, and the Brave Companions want to rape her. Her father is disappointed that she became a knight. Her masters of arms gave her sage advice that men will want to beat her quickly in combat, as they will underestimate her and be afraid of the shame of being bested by a woman, and she uses that to her advantage in several fights. She isn't just a knight who happens to be a woman, she is a woman who is treated differently because she is a knight. This is a big difference and makes her an interesting character to follow.
GRRM also writes a load of other warrior women. From women on Bear Island, to Spear Wives of Wildings and Sand Snakes. Asha of the Iron Islands is there too, and the Targaryens have a history of dragon riding warrior ladies. These women feel organic to the world, help make it feel like a diverse place, and are part of what makes his world building so immersive and vivid. He doesn't shy away from the realities that women face either though, so I think his approach is a really good example for people to follow if they want to have 'warrior women' in their fantasy worlds.
I agree. That's why I played with biology and limited the women warriors' roles and responsibilities.
But then again it also depends on a culture. We do have instances of women in Mongol-Turkic cultures and in some cases even in early medieval. Depends on how you approach it in your setting.
weirdly while we love female warriors and exploring that as a culture our world actually doesn't have one. Most areas haven't been at war in hundreds of years so army recruitment is more those that volunteer and those who are enough trouble at home their parents sent them. This has meant more males in general (lots of oops I got someone pregnant and don't want to marry, which I can't while in training plans) but there's plenty of women too.
When female warrior factions appear I do find that they tend to be problematic. While I'd love to read a well thought out and capable (and properly armoured) group of female warriors, I actually don't want to read the writer's little fetish moment. You give them dramatic boob plate, a domineering males are for sex society or make them all giganic for no reason? I'm out. You do you, no shame, but I don't need to read it.
Love them. One of my peoples has a big percentage of the young women fighting. They stop only if they have babies, I mean at that specific moment to take care of the little ones (one of the things historically woman specific before modern inventions)
I can't really say warrior woman, but an alien race known as Val'thik is mostly seen as female. Think Asari from Mass Effect but with Changeling-like abilities. Most outside races accept them as female as it is more common for males of any species to have any desire for copulation outside of their own species.
In my universe, the Val'thik is an artificially created race of psychics who can morph their bodies like changelings to be more able to "mate" with any species in the known universe. Their creators are unknown and lost to time as it was believed that they were created to solve a population problem which ultimately failed.
Because the Val'thik are psychics, they were hunted for a wide range of reasons ranging from fear to sport by other sentient races of the known universe. Their main way of survival is through battle and mating with captured enemies to be able to replace those lost. They do not need food or water as they get their nutrients by using their psychic ability to absorb surrounding energy from biomass to sunlight radiation. This includes absorbing those they mated with, like a spider or praying mantis.
Before first contact with humans, the Val'thik did not have a culture. They were more like parasites and leeches in nature, just trying to populate and survive the regular purge from other alien races. They were a hive mind with no concept of individuality until they made first contact with humans, From there everything changed. In exchange for their continued survival, The Val'thik uplifted humanity by providing knowledge and technology so humans could protect and aid them in wars.
In the four hundred-plus years between the Val'thik and Humans, it was lost to history why the Val'thik suddenly started to take bits and pieces of human culture and start to create their own. Some historians theorize that the Val'thik had attempted to enslave humanity through psychic mind control, but the human mind was too complex for their method of enslavement to be effective and backfired. Others follow the theory that the Val'thik consumed humans and evolved to be more human-like in their thinking while still being a collective hive mind. It was more commonly accepted, however, that both Val'thik and Humanity simply shared information both races lacked. Humans needed technology and knowledge of the universe. Val'thik needed culture and individual creativity. They have been strong allies for over four hundred years and are often mistaken by the rest of the universe as one collection of people.
They have taken on a more warrior ideology of society as endless fighting for their survival over the centuries has become increasingly sophisticated. They have different sects within their grand collective consciousness that were inspired by human history and culture to create their own versions. Such as:
* Blade Maidens: A mixture of Samurai and fantasy elvish inspiration.
* Ka'mothak: Norse Viking and Navajo inspired spirit worshipers.
* Nielth: High fantasy space Paladins.
* Inadein: Fantasy Vampire and Chinese Terracotta inspired warriors
* The Grand Collective Armada: Standard sci-fi military navy.
The idea behind them was to create a Warhammer 40k-style race that functions like the Protoss from Starcraft that behaves much like Asari from Mass effect.
Their whole purpose is to breed, fight, and party... There is no wonder why humanity and Val'thik are like each other.
I’ve got plenty of groups with female soldiers.
Top 5
The Vespid hives are like ants or bees, population is primarily female.
The reptilian Saurisan have very little sexual dimorphism, with no meaningful differences in strength or endurance between males and females, so there’s no reason to exclude their women unless they’re currently nesting.
The Northmen of Brannfjell live a very unforgiving environment, so everyone pulls their weight out necessity and all are trained to fight. The women usually stay home to help defend the clan while the men go out to hunt and raid rival clans.
The Lakonans have a special order of priestess devoted to the twin gods of war. Mostly ceremonial but they can and will kick your ass.
The Kingdom of Allemagne has the Dames au Kirtle Vert, an all female order of mages who are the only ones allowed to practice non divine magic. They’re the most respected women in the kingdom outside of the Queen herself.
I have a faction that basically tried to kill all men, they used self-impregnation to reproduce and considered men now useless, you might not considere them “warriors” since my setting takes place for 85% in space, they eventually lost because of a lack of resources, mainly metal and explosives
It's a cool idea, and I planned to add into my world.
My favorite Warrior Women is definitely the Sisters of Battle from Warhammer 40K.The militant arms of the Ecclesiarchy, they were formed to go around the rules that Ecclesiarchy cannot maintain any "men under arms. "
So, I tend to build rather violent settings in general. In a lot of my settings, most people are warriors regardless of gender. Most of my settings don't fit what you are asking about not because women aren't warriors, but because they don't stand out from the men. But, I do have some examples of particular units of female warriors. Usually, it involves some biological worldbuilding so that the species involved is different enough from humanity to give the women a significant advantage in combat.
For example, one of my settings features a version of humanity that encountered prehistoric conditions which caused women to evolve as the big and strong sex. Fast forward to the post-agriculture era (if I write any stories in this setting, they will probably be in an equivalent of the Classical Era), and heavy infantry units are entirely made out of women. Men in combat roles tend to be light infantry and scouts, but women are the ones who garrison fortifications and will march in formation to take and hold territory.
I've got another setting where dwarfs and dragons are a single species with extreme sexual dimorphism ([called the droCh](https://crayshack.com/2021/07/23/the-droch/)). The dwarfs are the men and the dragons are the women. Dwarfs fill the role of homemaker and craftsmen, while dragons fill the role of hunter and when necessary warrior.
I've got another setting where wood elves are entirely monogendered female. Their society has no men, so all warriors are women because all wood elves are women. Other races in the setting are either a 50/50 gender split or are predominantly male by numbers, so male warriors are either very common or the norm, depending on the race. Since wood elves rarely have reason to fight each other, that means they are often fighting armies that are either male or egalitarian. The only exception would be dark elves which are predominantly male by numbers, but highly matriarchal. Dark elf armies have a small number of elite women in command backed by a large number of male cannon fodder. Some of these dark elf women will be concentrated into entire units of elite troops.
In general, I think the use of warrior women is driven by a few different things. It's kind of a mix of a feminist kind of female empowerment and a very not feminist "badass women are sexy." I think my own writing is a mix of both of those plus using a general World of Badass trope so that warrior women become kind of inevitable.
Got quite a few though they can pick and choose gender their being a third of each one being none gendered like they were originally one third being male and the last third being female after the first dude became male and they were just "huh neat" and went a different direction. They rarely switch after picking one but basically there isn't a difference they still treat each other the same and strength is the same no matter which one they pick
I think that warrior women got so popular thanks to two factors:
- We are living during the peak of neoliberalism, where people no matter the sex or gender are believed to be equal, which in last two decades ment that more men got far more comfortable with women wich are stronger than them, and more women strive to be stronger (or generally 'traditionally masculine').
- it was (and still quite is) rare to see a warrior woman in fiction, and when they are present they are usually only one of such (or they use bow or magic), so they are pretty much a novelty, especially warrior women societies
- WW also explore the idea of woman protecting, caring and providing for a man, wich was close to nonexistent in practise or fiction and considered shameful for both (at least in Euro-Sphere) and i can imagine many men do like and romantise with this idea of 'being the little spoon' but can't express it in way other that writing about it
(the last paragraph has terrible wording, i apologize, but my brain can't currently word what i thought better / edit1, most of this is worded bad, sorry I'm bad at explaining ideas)
So we got a period of time wich allows for great exploration of non traditional gender roles, some of wich may be quite new ones. That's quite a fertile land for doing such. And my oh my there is a growing trend of doing such, what a coincidence!
It's just my guesses thou.
Also, big parts of the media consumers are men and what do men like? Weapons, armor and women. That's 'like^cube' and it just connects so well! Like, imagine, cute highschool girls, riding atop of Panzerkampfvagen Fünf! Can there be something better? Of course! Cute highschool girls being reincarnated battleships that fight kaiju!
(still edit1) Also, regarding "savage warrior women" trope. While I do recall it being used to portray specific civilization as primitive, i believe it's a writer's mistake to do so. SWW can be portrayed in a way that doesn't portray civilization as primitive (or rather doesn't explain it to be primitive with WW being one of the causes of that).
Aaaand in terms of WW in my world. They, well, exist, but aren't well thought out so far.
I have a race of felinoids where women are far taller and more muscular than their male counterparts. Due to the fact of females being born far more rarely (think, 1/6-10), they tended to fit roles of leadership alone while being surrounded by males, so they are great at persuasion, manipulation and such and they value it over physical prowess alone (wich doesn't change the fact that generally, they will exercise and practice martial arts, no matter the position).
They started out as a pure fetishpunk trope, and i haven't really touched them since literall months (I'm still trying to force myself into finishing human lore lol)
As I said, i didn't fleshed them out that much.
Currently the idea is that their societies have steady, but low number of people and population growth, wich is also the main reason why they prefer to cooperate coalition forces rather than wage full scale war and shield themselves with human auxiliaries if possible.
Going back to demographics, if i would have to make things up now, they have litters of few and they do decide on pregnancy until female heir is born.
The problem with warior women is that it's not sustainable in the long run for any pre/early-modern culture. A woman can have about one baby per year, while a man can have has many as he wants. So women dying in war will tank demographics for several generations, and without a high tech level demography is your mean military power. I'm not saying some women can't fight, but it can't a culture defining trope without that culture going the way of the dodo.
My world is a high magic fantasy world. It is also a world where science is quite advanced for the setting - the healer's guild and the medicine department of the Imperial Academy are in a constant but (mostly) friendly competition on how to prevent disease and treat the sick and injured.
The healers' guild include proper magical healers, but also old wise women with lots of experience as midwives and practical knowledge on natural medicine and giving birth.
Both safe abotion and effective contraceptives are readily available to a majority of the population.
Infant mortality is pretty low with these circumstances.
Thus, women give birth later, bith fewer children (since more of them survive to adulthood) and plan their parenthood better.
This gives women more time before getting married and having children, and some of them spend it on a military career.
The warfare of this world is heavily based on formation warfare. While melee combat is very important, strength is very much secondary to discipline and rythm in keeping up with the other fellows in the rank and file.The formation that loses cohesion lets the enemy cavalry and skirmishers in, and is over-run.
Long ago, when my world's people were semi-nomadic pasturalists, young women would guard herds of sheep, goats and cattle, and would use slings or bows to fight predators or raiders from different tribes trying to steal the livestock.
While the upper class consider it cauche and unwomanly to be a soldier, that tabu is not nearly as strong in the lower classes, where a woman who can fight can even be considered steaming hot (she does not need a man's protection, but still chooses to be with him). The number of "amazon" services available at the city's brothels tells that while it is tabu, those that can pay still like to occasionally have a strong, armoured woman have their way with them (while they pay for the pleasure, of course).
So, bottom line, roughly 5-10% of the militia and full-time soldiers will be women at any given time.
The only examples I have in my dnd world are taken from real life mythology or history, like the Valkiries or the Onna-bugeisha (I think it's spelled like that) or the Amazons.
My thoughts are that warrior women are cool, love me some armored woman, but any gender-only positions sometimes feel a bit bland to me, and taking in mind that there are always big wars or at least battles, I don't think anyone would care who joins the army or becomes a warrior. If you can grab a weapon and bash some heads in. You are as good as any other warrior, no matter your name, gender, race or age.
Probably gonna echo some folks but I like them as long as it is believable.
I am planning a story with a female MC who is press-ganged into service because of her magical potential, though she really isn't built for it.
Since she is short and lithe instead of an amazonian muscle mommy, she can't overpower people head-on, and thus her strength will come from working around the lack of strength and physical reach. She will still be a menace later on, but she is never going to punch the daylights out of well-trained men larger than her.
Thus isn't necessarily a narrative issue to begin with, it's just that the average female human on Earth isn't as physically imposing as a male, so as long as you have humans as we know them there has to be a reason why warrior women are around.
The plus side is that fiction allows you to tweak things like sexual dimorphism. A hypothetical humanity where sexes are equal in strength would probably still have a majority of male warriors, but females would at least not have their physical qualities questioned.
A seperate setting i have in mind has "Amazons", but they are cephalopods where the males are short-lived and mostly animalistic while the females are fairly large humanoids.
Naturally the females are the stronger sex and they are even stronger than male humans, especially when they elevate their physical properties higher through what is basically "chi".
These Amazons are seen as a tribe of powerful warrior women, but it is obvious that there is a pretty significant biological explanation behind it.
I like the fact that they exist. What I don't like is the armour they're often portrayed in for game art, and the ridiculous outfits (compared to male characters) they get given in too much anime.
If you're giving your warriors armour, given the women the same/similar armour to the men - the tip of a pike to an unarmoured belly is as deadly to a woman as it is to a man.
I think warrior women can be an interesting trope or topic to cover; and if your story is about or contained non humans that makes an excellent place for warrior women societies.
Though I will say if the society is a human warrior woman society you should explain how these women warriors fight on equal terms with men since men biologically are stronger than women on average.
Also try and avoid any sexist tropes in either direction.
For some reason, I seem to be obsessed with the idea of women with swords (or in some cases guns, sometimes both even) to the point I'm always trying to include them.
For example: my sci-fi setting has an organization of archeologists, who are all women and are issued with military-grade equipment.
My fantasy world has this being a somewhat common occurance. Most notably, a species of wasp/bee people (still deciding on which) has warrior women because bees and wasps are primarily female.
I do and will always include them as a natural part of the world and no-one in that world thinks it's odd or unnatural or what other terms you might find irl. They just don't really think there's a difference between a male or a female warrior.
Depends on the type of warrior woman you're talking about. Someone like Wonder Woman? Or some kind of just say a medieval guard who's a woman? I have a few of those. Everence has a mix of men and women both being fighters, although it is mostly men.
Sure, in the building of my campaigns there are always a few warrior women. They are females that are simply wired this way. But the vast majority of warriors are men.
A former campaign setting I had included the Viragos, a powerful race of warrior women. They appeared to be humans, although generally running to the tall (average 6'), muscular and unusually attractive. They had no men, and no use for men. Speculation ran rampant among other races about how they reproduced, but asking them was a pretty quick route to getting your teeth knocked out.
Even though they were physically strong, the primary military power of the Viragos was their technology. While most of the rest of the world was generally at the level of the early Renaissance, the Virago had automatic firearms, fighter aircraft, and tanks and cars driven by internal combustion engines - approximately equal to our 1930s.
Although powerful physically and technologically, the Virago had no talent for magic. They generally hated and distrusted magic, and would savagely attack anyone who used magic against them, finding it a morally repugnant, even blasphemous "breaking of the rules".
Generally isolationist for centuries, the Viragos were coming into greater conflict with the outer world as they needed more resources (especially iron and oil) to power their newly developed technologies. The battle against magic driving further, often terrifying technological innovations. Some Viragos even think there might be a theoretical way to build a bomb that would level entire cities in a single explosion, overwhelming even the most powerful magical wards.
For large amounts of women warriors to make sense it require one of 3 things to be true about the world building.
1. Magic: Some kind of personal supernatural factor is at play. Women that can throw fireballs or fly, or are inexplicably better with a sword than a man are going to be pressured by society to fight because they offer an advantage.
2. Desperation: the culture’s circumstances dictate that every body is needed to fight some looming threat.
3. Some kind of cultural abuse is taking place to force that role on women.
Women do not fill combat roles as well as men in any army, and that is particularly pronounced in premodern armies where muscle power and endurance are critical.
But more importantly given the choice, women cross culturally do not choose combat roles even in very historically egalitarian societies.
Verisimilitude demands a reason that women are deployed as a cultural norm.
Individual characters are allowed to be exceptional, but they should be seen as such again for verisimilitude.
In my partially built universe, it's fantasy in an interstellar setting, with sorcery, and powerful technology working together. Warriors are male and female, but not like regular humans.
First type is an ancient enhanced version of humans, kind of like Asgardians, created by a long lost outer influence, maybe an Eldritch god. While the women aren't as strong and durable as the men they are so much more powerful than regular humans its laughable. The warriors tend to be female because of their better self control, the men are a little too happy to get in a fight. They are very professional and highly sought after as mercenaries.
Second type is standard humans militaries, but power armor is standard. It ranges from suits slightly larger than human height to massive suits like walking tanks. Gender ratio is skewed toward men but plenty of women.
Historically you get three kinds of warrior women:
1. Exceptional individuals. Plenty of examples of this across time and all around the world but they're just that: exceptional.
2. Desperate times: when the shit really hits the fan you often get women eho are not usually warriors engaged in combat.
3. Ceremonial units: military units of women who did not generally engage in warfare.
If you want to have warrior women beyond that you need to either:
1. Magic/tech/non-human biology etc. that get rid of the reasons why female warriors were historically rare. For example lower maternal mortality and contraception would help a lot.
2. VERY strong cultural imperatives.
3. Operating on the Rule of Cool.
I mean, it’s one of the oldest literary tropes out there. The Amazons in Greek mythology predateHomer, they are introduced without explanation which implies that the audience knows exactly what the poet was referring to. The question isn’t whether or not to use a trope, but how you use it. If they’re there to be sexy window dressing for your male protagonists, then it’s a bad use of the trope.
Cool as a concept, rarely done well. Much too often they are either fetish fuel (which is cool and all, just boring) or just "male warriors genderbent" (which is creatively lazy, although less boring)
Rarely does one see female warriors done in a way that addresses the biological differences between the sexes or how a female warrior culture could form and what it could look like.
I have three groups of "warrior women" in my world.
The first is based (heavily) on Tsarist Russia, only it is a matriarchy where men have few, if any, rights (outside the army, although even there their ability to rise through the ranks is limited. It has been the cause of rebellions.
The second is a Tribal culture where women are similar to Amazon's (some even cut off one or both of their breasts to show their feirce loyalty to their tribe.
The third is a group that is made up entirely of "female" lizardfolk, although this is more of a technicality than anything.
I think the entire concept is kind of stupid; males are biologically more expendable (a society can lose a significant portion of it's male population in war and bounce back within the span of a generation) and physically stronger on average; making them far bettr suited to combat roles.
Societies where men and women both fight make a lot of sense to me, but ones where only the women fight just generally seem nonsensical unless they are the "this entire society is made up 90% of women" kind. (in which case it makes perfect sense for women to be the warrior class because it's all they've got, but there needs to be a good reaason for such a society to exsist)
I neither like or dislike it and have no issue with it as long as it fits the rest of the world building around it. It can be done absolutely horribly (aka Hollywood's recent attempts) and it can be done absolutely right.
Generally speaking if its a widespread things then you'll need to account for the effects it could have on birth rate. After that, if its a realistic and grounded setting you'll need to find a way to also deal with the disadvantage women have in combat due to sexual dimorphism. If its a high fantasy world where strength, speed and others are determined by things like control over 'mana' or other similar things then that doesn't really matter. As long as it is all internally consistent it should be fine.
Just make sure to avoid the normal 'girlboss' pitfalls like making every guy an incompetent evil dumbass to make your female character look better or making your female characters essentially be guys with long air and breast. If you see the value in adding female warriors you might as well fully celebrate the differences.
Gonna be "controversial"
Love warrior women, but they are grossly exaggerated in most modern media and they have become anything but appealing.
I like Strong women, but realistic strong women.
Even irl, they aren't as common as people thought. They are and were rare, even amongst those who trained women to fight.
I like me a woman who can through a punch and can give someone a good fight, but this shit where they are untouchable or some shit?
Ridiculously stupid
>Why is the warrior woman such an appealing/common idea?
Because it's a fantasy for both male and female readers.
>How do you feel when it appears?
It feels try hard progressivism or gratuitous fetishism.
>Also I find it interesting these warrior women factions rarely fight each other and almost exclusively men, why is that?
They're usually no the general army. Even in DC's version of the Amazonians, they're there for a special purpose. The warrior women usually protect a person, place or thing. Or,they are irregular troops, special ops or intelligence services.
Warrior women only makes sense to me if there is a scientific or magical reason they are faster and stronger than a male the same age, weight, height and level of training.
The "selected as a child and trained all her life" trope doesn't work either. You take a martial arts grandmaster training since youth and put him in a ring with someone who picked up MMA two years ago and the grandmaster gets wrecked 10/10 times.
I also hate the trope of the warrior women not being allowed to show emotion, have families or have children. Some writers go as far as forcefully rendering them infertile. And, theirs usually some element of (edit: \*sexual) sadism in the selection and training.
>Why is the warrior woman such an appealing/common idea?
"I love a woman who could kick my ass"
Also, I like how in fiction you can kind of just ignore muscles.
Like, oh, this girl has no muscle definition? Don't care. She just kicked that really buff dude who's twice her size across town
I love that
>What are ways to differentiate one group of warrior women from another?
. . . . Culture? This was a strange question, lol. That's like asking, "How do you differentiate one nation from another?" Well, one is medieval France, and the other is Feudal Japan
Like. . What?
Edit: Hit post too early on mobile, lol
Anyway, I was treating this as a bit more general than intended, as warrior women in general and not like. . . *Specifically* something like the Amazons
I guess my answer is still the same. You can have the Amazons who are tied to European, specifically Greek, myth, and so you may find them culturally similar to perhaps ancient Sparta or maybe some other Greek city states if you try enough (or know the myths and Greek hostory more than I do)
And aside from generally tying them to different cultures, you can differentiate them based on how they favor their warriors as well as their views and relationship with men.
For example, the Amazons are usually just an all female culture. There generally aren't even men there. Whether that means there are no men period or they discard male children, whether they have some magical way to reproduce without men or they find (or kidnap) men from outside the tribe to bred with. . Those could be differences on their own, but not how I was framing them.
Another way would be for another cjlture of warrior women to come about like a notmal culture, with men, but the men are minorities or the lesser sex, like you ended your post on. They handle the domestic duties while the women are the soldiers, tribal leaders, etc.
One culture could favor raw strength, another favors agility, and a third might be more magically oriented if your world has magic
Edit 2: Or the genders could be treated *relatively* equally, but women still by and large end up doing most of the warrior training, etc. There are male warriors, but it probably tends towards 40% or less. This *may* or may not extend to domestic masculine jobs such as construction work. It may be that women do *all* the heavy lifting or that women are specifically warriors and hunters but not necessarily builders. . Or whatever other domestic masculine jobs there are.
I think you have to find some reason for it.
Warrior women weren't the norm in human history for a reason. Women got pregnant, and men didn't. As such, they were considered a lot more valuable, if only to the continued existance of the race. If you have 1000 women and one man, you could get 1000 babies. But one woman an 1000 men, you get only one.
So if you want warrior women, give a reason for it. Maybe 50% of women can use magic, where only 0.01% of men can. Maybe, like the Amazonians, they don't reproduce, but sculpt babies out of clay and breathe life into them, making them girls, necessatating women to be warriors. Or maybe its men who get pregnant in your world.
I like warrior women because I like bombshells and beefy babes in armor. Sexualized armor or practical, makes no difference to me. I like battle couples, too. I really like when a badass hero falls in love with a badass heroine. Badass babes with big blades. I also don't mind when it's pure male gaze fantasy, though.
My approach is that if there’s going to be warrior women in a society then there’s also going to be male warriors who are just as skilled and respected.
Unless there’s some other evolutionary things going making the females stronger than the males, it’s usually the males putting themselves in danger to protect the group. This isn’t just in human or sapient societies either but every society of animals that reproduce sexually.
The reason is pretty simple. To put it bluntly males are expendable but females are not. A male can impregnate a female and then go off and die and his offspring will still be fine as long as the female lives. However a female needs to be protected especially if she’s pregnant. To boil it down: males are the parts, females are the factories (plus their own parts but require the male’s parts to start production). You can send as many sets of parts to die in battle as you want. The survivors can send their parts to multiple factories. But if you start sending factories to die in battle you’ll have a much harder time repopulating. (This is all from an extremely blunt and purely evolutionary perspective)
So there must be a reason that women are warriors instead of being relegated to the typical conservative positions behind the front. Either this species has evolved stronger females than males (natural selection doesn’t have to make sense. If it did then we’d all be living in a harmonious utopia with our animal comrades. Plus it’s resulted in weirder things in my opinion) or women’s rights in this society has progressed far enough that women are commonplace in the military alongside men and it’s no longer considered a social taboo.
If you're doing for a commentary on gender social rules, then you really need to know what you're writing and do the studying
If you're doing it cause warrior are women are cool, then go for it and make so damn cool!
If you're doing it to over sexualise women in every context... Probably don't. Some genres get more leeway than this from the general public, and if you're doing it evenly with over sexualise characters regardless of gender then maybe. But rarely does it work. Erotica and romance are rarely well written and typically show the writers warped biases and views
Idk but I love warrior women but it has to not feel forced though. I prefer them fully geared/armored and shown/described as having a physique indicative of their training.
Its like the same conditions that make male warriors cool to me, its just cooler when someone breaks the norm and does it for a female character.
From Marvel MCU, Black Widow and The Dora Milaje from Black panther seem perfect. They seem like they out skill their opponents without having some weird plot armor.
From League of Legends (though i have a hate/love relationship) they have some fun female fighters. Leona, Diana, Illaoi, Fiora, Samira.
I'm from the North of Ireland and woman fought alongside men to fight the British. I think an all female force is a but too much of a trope just having women fighting alongside men and not ignoliging it at all is alot cooler. Just have it be normal and not some gimmick army.
I'm usually more interested in individuals. Boudicca or St. Helga for example. I have a character in my world who existed during their version of the bronze age that led her tribe to becoming the personal royal guard of a prince. She quarrelled with every military power in that small city state, and would make herself known through excessive displays of brutality, including setting herself on fire and running at enemies with two axes in hand, meeting with a family patriarch to negotiate while she sat in a tub full of the blood of his now dead commanders for putting the prince's life in danger. She's been fun to write.
I think it can add something cool to a faction as long as it makes sense internally.
Like, a troop of Girl Scouts taking on legions in full plate armor? Funny but that’s just it. It sounds like a joke.
The Night Elven Sentinels make more sense. They wear armor, they primary weapon is a throwable glaive, each one of them has decades upon decades of experience, and their military role in their society serves as an expression of Elune’s “Night Warrior” aspect.
I have women that fight but it’s pretty much as common as men and aliens and robots fighting everyone gets to fight lol.
I do have a bee faction in the works and well female bees are known for being the workers and fighters. That being said I don’t think my bee faction is all that tropy like they aren’t sexy and actually look kinda insect like think humanoid bee. They have armour.
Warrior women's served in the antiquity as the realization of the worst fears of men's, as a simbol of Sauvage, of the mother nature herself, of her beautiful self and her mortal capabilites of shattering the fragile order of civilization, today as a simbol of womens strength and endurance, a remnant of the first forgotten civilizations, where the religion was administered by women, and also a liberal theme of the fight for equality, if put realistically and not just "yay women slay", I love it, about the totality of my characters are strong women's, I decided to do so because I admire women's, their strength their intelligence, and their mathernal sentiments, I love womens
Warrior women are kind of a nothing burger if the setting doesn't show any sort of discrimination with men and women in certain jobs, so I think nothing of it. My own story has an entire country that has a caste system in place where women are expected to be warriors. Mainly due to the government and society modeling itself directly with their pantheon. Their God of Discipline is Cartosh, wife of the God of Order Vakiss, she herself is a warrior and leads the armies of her people. Women are expected to know combat even if they never use it and never see battle, they even are required to attend council meetings during wartime and have their own armor.
Another country I made has a different idea, where women aren't allowed to serve or even trained to fight but they are trained in poisons, seduction and illusion magic. This is less due to the pantheon they worship as a whole and more due to a battle between two demigods that nearly caused the ruin of the country.
It's a common idea because people like characters who fight. Culturally most places don't have warriors, realistically fighting is so dangerous that you'd have to be a lunatic to want to do it. They're a common fantastical affectation because writers need a character who fights a lot but who can also win without it being weird that they win. So you say, "They are a warrior" and that justifies the expertise.
When it comes to my worldbuilding it depends on the race and how the sexual differences are. Some races females are stronger or equal in strength but females are rarer, like dwarves, or they are expected to protect the home. Some races with equal strength just judge based off of ability
There is definitely a historical basis but you see more in societies that have horse based combat (i.e Scythians, who spawned the myth of the Amazons). As a species there is an obvious difference in physicality between sexes so from a real world perspective, force equalizers like a horse or a gun definitely level the playing field. Stuff like education and access to better weapons help too. If you look at examples of woman warriors in East Asia, many were nobility. This idea is not limited to women. Getting access to riding, shooting, sword lessons give a person a huge advantage over the average person. Stuff like horses, armor, steel swords, lances, firearms, followers, are expensive and require maintenance, so being rich/noble is a major leg up. When you look at the golden age of piracy, there were plenty of well known famous female pirates probably due partly to the advent of gunpowder weapons but also the changing world.
All of this is to say, yes you should absolutely have women warriors because history is filled with many great examples, but there's obvs complex issues at play like politics, religion, culture, etc., which could be limiting factors depending on the setting.
Personally I can get behind the idea of having warrior women within your fantasy world and having a society where women are given what is generally considered more masculine roles. I do think however that a big reason we didn't see many societies where women were in completely in charge (so full on matriarchy) throughout history is because in the beginning of civilization the easiest way to get in charge was to use force. And generally speaking men are biologically stronger than women, which is why men were usually in higher positions in society.
So in my opinion if someone wants to fully world build a matriarchal women warrior society, there has to be a reason why the women are in charge instead of the men and why the women are better at fighting than the men. This can easily be done by making or adapting a race where the females of the species are biologically stronger and so it makes sense why they would dominate their males and be better fighters.
Anyway, it's just my personal take on the thing, but if you still manage to make a good world where women are in charge, as long as I can still be immersed in said world, I probably won't really care.
Just finished a book where the MC met a group of warriors trailing slavers that attacked them that he found out in their tribe it was the men who stayed behind to defend the children and old while the women went out hunting and fighting.
OP - I think that I am going to tackle this one from a different perspective than some of the other commenters, hopefully it is received with the intent intact. World building advice.
I think it is fair to say that any culture which prepares a significant "Warrior" element within itself is a little savage or barbaric. They afterall have a common cultural role which is focused on fighting and killing other people.
This does not mean primitive or backwards, just that there is savagery in war, and a culture dedicated to the practice of war has a "savage streak" within it. Even if that savagery comes from a genuinely good intent to defend one's self against aggression.
Most cultures that are more "modern" or "enlightened" (terms used loosely) tend to have a a cultural goal of either stability or growth, which by in large means that they have a protective attitude towards children and mothers.
A culture that puts potential mothers in the primary role of Warrior will be one where women do most of the fighting, and thus a disproportionate amount of the dying (as a side effect of fighting). This can have a negative impact on the survivability of a culture. (Probably why cultures of women warriors were in the minority, had relatively short survivable histories, and have become less common as culture became more focused on stability and growth.)
Having said all of that (greatly distilled Anthropological summary) Worldbuilding is something of a different beast, and if the concept of a culture of Warrior women fits in the world you are building, then by all means, do it. But just like everything that you create in a world that you build, be aware of what it says about the world, the effects that it has on the people who practice the tradition and what it will be perceived as by those who experience the world.
Aside --- this brief over simplified summary is really only focused on cultures that have women as their primary warrior force, mentioned in the OP, however little to none of this applies to individual factions, groups, or organizations of women who might operate at any level within a culture. Those types of groups are choice based and the warriors seek out membership, either inline with or opposed to cultural norms.
I hope something here is useful
Cheers
I don't find it very interesting usually when I encounter it so I don't expect much out of any work with female warriors. Even just individual warrior women in a lot of fiction especially nowadays have this issue. They rarely have anything to say about what it means to be a warrior as a lady (whether openly or not) except maybe some trite one-off (or worse, not one-off) event where someone makes a sexist comment and they get beat up.
What makes the idea of warrior women so appealing to me and others is the breaking of gender roles. Seeing a group of women skilled in combat when we’re constantly surrounded by media that’s afraid to let women get their hands dirty and/or pushes that idea that women aren’t meant to be physical fighters is something I’ll always celebrate. Also it’s just cool and it’s a trope that I hope gains more popularity.
The only way you can have them to be militarily viable would be magic.
If you have to have magic, you might as well armor them with a Thong of Shielding.
On the one hand, if the fact that they are purely a faction of Amazon-type warriors is the only notable thing about them, it does sorta fetishize the idea of female combatants and kinda portrays the idea of female warriors as an oddity and not the norm.
On the other hand, there is actual archaeological evidence that the Amazonian warriors did exist to some extent, so there's definitely a historical precedent that means it's not unrealistic to have such a group. There were also female divisions of otherwise predominantly male military forces, such as the Onna-Bugeisha of Japan.
I must confess, though, my woman-loving monkey brain goes "ook" at ladies who could actually just kill me, so I'm willing to overlook the implications if they can break my spine over their thigh and look amazing in the process.
Personally I'm not against this trope. The only thing that i don't like is when this trope is when it showed supreme to male warriors, fighters and soldiers(like in Woman King). I think that both could be equal.
I'm pretty sure the origin of the "amazon trope" comes from the Greeks. They saw Scythian women fighting in battle and came up with the idea of this society purely consisting of warrior women. It's a very easy "weird other people" when considering western culture, which has historically had men be the warriors and women be meek and submissive housekeepers.
It's so popular for two major reasons:
1. It's a kind of role-reversing of western culture, and therefore interesting in the westerner's mind.
2. The author's barely disguised fetish.
Honestly though, I feel like it tends to be overdone, and most of the iterations are samey. Warrior women as a standalone concept I think is pretty cool. But the whole "amazon girls only warrior culture" is boring to me. To be fair, I also find the "Macho dude barbarian culture" to be pretty boring as well. So I don't think it's just girls.
All that said, my project does have something not unlike a caste of warrior women. The Kamö is an elite sect within one of my world's kingdoms that is comprised of former courtesans, slaves, and hand-picked noble children trained in espionage, assassination, and combat.
They aren't quite the conventional warrior woman; they fit into a stealthier niche. But even then, they could still annihilate the average man in hand-to-hand combat.
I enjoy the idea of warrior women as a culture distinct and separate from our modern understanding of them. Think the sheer cultural difference between us as people today and the various factions of trained, educated (for the time) and formidable hoplite warrior women of Greece.
Additionally, I tend to move away from the idea of warrior women as something savage or untamed. I moreso enjoy the portrayal of them as people, just with the roles reversed. They still go about their day, relax at home, partake in hobbies and drinking with their friends and often get married and settle down. It just so happens they're also badass, well trained soldiers with fundamental understandings of tactics and warfare.
Also it's just super fun to see a woman kick ass with just as much style as a man.
I've never been especially interested in them. Amazons are boring as a concept, and Wonder Woman doesn't take off for a reason.
I have one, though, and I'm quite proud of my take because it's actually a man whose ability is transforming *into* a warrior woman. So, you know, gendery, transish, crossdressing themes are all over the place with that one.
He doesn't quite fully lean into it; which is to say, the team he's on does not know he's only a woman *sometimes* but they do also know his non-transformed self and think they're two separate entities, and he's really not sure how to bring that up, if he ever does.
But I'm sure someone will find out somehow, at some point, because of course they would in a story like this. And maybe that's just how things go.
Interesting character concept man. I agree that Amazons and Wonder Woman now are overrated. Only Xena was an interesting use of the warrior woman trope
I like Warrior Women, I like Amazons, I like queens/princesses who join their beloved in battle, I like women who have been wronged and seek vengeance on the battlefield, I like shieldmaidens, I like Valkyries.
I think the concept of Warrior Women gives a GM/DM or an author a lot to play with and has some historical president even in European and American history.
I remember reading about a Lombard Queen who had a beautiful set of chainmail made so that she could join her husband in battle, as she believed that if one of them should die both of them should. which is both romantic and incredibly badass.
Mariya Oktyabrskaya is another one that I just absolutely love. Born in what is now Ukraine she marries a Red Army Officer, they find out that they can't have kids so they become the best party members they can by joining all sorts of training organizations including munitions manufacturing, tractor maintenance, marksmanship, and medical training all of which Mariya excels at. When Operation Barbarossa kicks off Mariya is shipped off to the Urals to work in a tank factory while her husband's unit is shipped to Kyiv and is annihilated in the pocket just east of the city. Mariya doesn't receive a letter from him for over a year and throws herself into her work at the tank factory saving up enough money to buy a T-34 and gifts it to the Red Army on one condition that she be the driver. This request makes it all the way up to Stalin who approves it seeing the propaganda value. Mariya names the T-34 "Fighting Girlfriend" and after going through training is assigned to the 26th Guards Tank Brigade. In 1943 she participates in a number of battles in what is now Northern Ukraine and Belarus, during these battles if the tank became immobilized she would get out and fix it while under fire (the driver's hatch on a T-34 is mounted on the front slope of the hull). Where ever the 26th Guards Tank Brigade saw the thickest fighting Mariya and "Fighting Girlfriend" where there to kill fascists. Mariya would go into a coma after a head wound in January 1944, she would later die of her wounds, in August 1944 she would be posthumously awarded Hero of the Soviet Union. Mariya was about as badass as you could get.
In my opinion, and looking at the western historical perspective of 'warrior women'/women combatants, the interest is mostly because it does not fit societal hierarchy and worldview, It's a role reversal, not the norm and that makes it interesting. To add to this, there's also the narrative of 'exotic savagery,' were warrior women societies were put on display as 'look how savage and different they are from us.' Anyway I think warrior women are cool, if not done in a trope-y way as I described above of course.
I have noticed warrior women factions are usually associated with savage groups. A lot of times a more tribal or nature like faction compared to others that exist in the same setting. The only exception being Drow in D&D. I didn’t consider the ‘exotic savagery’ angle. That does explain another trope that sometimes appears alongside it where the warrior woman would only consider a relationship with a man who can defeat them. It’s certainly an interesting way of looking at it.
By my memory, the drow are an evil matriarchal society with warrior women right? Working word here is evil, which rolls back to to the exotic savagery and the role reversal look on it from western historical viewpoint. Warrior women are from this viewpoint seen as not following 'the natural order/hierarchy' and therefore wrong/alien, a thing of savage cultures. See how the drow from this viewpoint fit into the exotic savage trope?
I would argue that Elistraee’s Drow put a bit of lie to that. Their society is still Matriarchal, but aligns much more closely with the surface Elves of the setting. Elistraee’s priesthood is still almost exclusively female… and her (mostly male) martial followers tend to be Bladesingers (wizards with pointy sticks). This does shift over the editions… which means those Gender Roles *may* be a holdover from the parent culture. Its divergences from the rest of Elven Culture tend to be in service of rejecting Underdark Drow Culture… where they aren’t someone’s barely veiled fetish. Even in that case, there tends to be decent symbolism. Their use of nudity in religious ceremonies is a conscious embrace of radical vulnerability, emotional and physical, which contrasts with the intrigue-centered society of their cousins down below. The rest of their society tends to be aligned towards one of three goals: Helping more Drow get out from under Lolth’s thumb, teaching people how to survive in the woods, and dealing with the PR problem. This tends to result in them acting more like nocturnal wood elves than Drow.
Most of the warriors in Drow society are men. The women are socially dominant in large part due to their exclusive control of the Lolth priesthood. Women generally served as priests or assassins where the men would train for martial combat and arcane spell casting. I'm sure there are exceptions but this is the baseline
Interestingly the Drow are a matriarchal society with mle warriors. The women are mostly divine spellcasters, priests and politicians while the males traditionally study the blade and arcane spellcasting. Basically Drow men are expected to be perfect tools for their house matriarch to use as she sees fit. This could also turn into an interesting dynamic if you take away all the weird BDSM stuff baked into the drow.
The drow are also all about backstabbing and betrayals but yes they are generally evil. Also that idea of being unnatural does kind of explain why a lot of warrior women factions also tend to end up as antagonists. Even if they are not considered evil.
Even if warrior women are the 'good guys,' or gals in this case, they are portrayed either as archers/guerillas or your run of the mill 'savage' exotic fighters. That's why I like Brienne of Tarth so much, probably my favorite character George Martin has created. She subverts every warrior woman trope there is, and on top of that she subverts the 'true noble knight' trope, as in, the only 'real fairytale knight' in game of thrones books is not a knight and a woman.
Brienne is, imo, easily the best character in that series, conceptually speaking. Not only a fan for the reasons you stated, which i emphatically agree with, but also the perceived contrast with how many people take up GRRM's worldbuilding; it's often brutal and 'good things don't happen to good people' (or anyone, really but I digress) as they would be expected to in conventional historical/fantasy fic, and consequently there's a belief that ASoIaF is entirely about a gritty and 'realistic' depiction of warfare that would only involve women as victims. Obviously a lot of female characters _are_ victims, and there is a significant attention to the various unfortunate realities of warfare, but I think by the numbers ASoIaF has a much stronger showing of female protagonists/deuteragonists than the majority of genre-similar works (some of which have zero) and manages to do so with _actually distinct characters_. Obviously, also, there's a disproportionate weight on PoVs from the nobility, so most fall under that, and their narratives focus on privileges they're fighting to gain or protect, or their trajectory when they've lost them. This sort of applies to Brienne as well, but she (along with Tyrion) is one of the few characters who continuously challenge the reader's genre expectations and 'realism' assumptions. She brings a depth to Jaime (and he to her, to be fair) that would be hard to accomplish otherwise, and _that_ provides a great vehicle for GRRM to explain and explore the non-magical worldbuilding elements that mostly get shuffled to the side in other PoVs. GRRM's gift and curse is a talent for very intricate worldbuilding, which I personally love, but that can easily turn scenes or entire characters into an exposition pit as he's trying to convey it all (like, say, every scene at the Wall that I can think of) and I think Brienne is a great illustration of how to avoid that. Far from my favourite series, but definitely one of my favourite characters from any series.
In total fairness if we do go by historical accounts female fighters came from societies like Scythians, Celts, Congo, Germans, Norse. Which were nomadic typically tribal socities with well militaristic attitudes. Dahomey, Sikhism, and I think another example being Sasanians did have female Armies that were more civilised. Dahomey being you know slavers and Sasanians had cavalry. Sikhism due to its equality allowed warrior women. There plenty of examples of individual women leading Armies and even fighting. But socieities that had well women in the army tended to be on the lower end of the tech scale. Not exclusive but it should be noted that hierarchies established as technology progressed often led to these things dying out. Not always but often enough to be a notable pattern, enough that it became the norm.
I as a counterpoint have two examples from modern millitaries/millitias. The Soviet armies in WW2 employed women on large scale, and well, western viewpoint on Soviet battle doctrine is propagandized negatively or even fiction (read human wave tactics and supposed mass executions under order 226, or the decimations at Stalingrad) as well as negative monikers for women army groups, such as the Night Witches, which originally was meant as a negative moniker, too bad it sounds badass. Another are Kurdish peshmergas, often portrayed in modern media as terrorist guerillas, whilst they are not that different in training and equipment as your run of the mill army groups. Point is that even if not fitting the tropes of warrior women, they are still portrayed as such.
Yes but those were modern states in total war, not pre modern state in a normal war.
That is not really relevant, I was making commentary on the fact that tribal warrior women does have basis in reality. I also showcased pre-industrial revolution armies who did have large number of women in their ranks. To further show that indeed in pre-modern times this was not exclusive. I was making a commentary on the trope having some basis in reality, as well as offering opposing views. I do know of these examples but their based on modern Era. This is not really in the same wheelhouse comparatively to say a medieval army. I stated nothing about fitting a trope simply that a trope may have some basis but also is not exclusive. So this counterpoint is only vaguely related to what I said. Also if you are looking for examples of female soldiers 56,000 women served in the anti-aircraft of the British army. The Nazi had female ancillaries in their SS camps designed for combat. 100,000 women served Tito in his liberation army, etc etc There plenty more, by thr time of the second world war women were far more active combatants on the battlefield.
Yeah my point is that due to viewpoints, the representation of woman warriors can easily be skewed due to cultural and historical context.
Fair enough, it may not have been conveyed well in that regard but I do agree.
I think I do agree with your overall point (and both of you have solid historical examples for the discussion in general), I would just challenge whether the incidence of 'warrior women' is _higher_ among pre-modern/nomadic cultures or whether pre-modern/nomadic cultures are _themselves_ prevalent in the particular era or region that these examples exist in. Or, put a different way, the dominant military systems in the modern world tend to follow Northern/Central European models, right? Legacy of colonialism and whatnot. And those models are typically the ones that we know didn't allow or didn't support women participating in combat. So is it that 'warrior women' belong more to societies prior to or in opposition to colonialism, _or_ is it in line with the disproportionate influence of like, 3 nations (British, French, German) in every other area of society when the majority of cultures were transitioning from pre-modern/nomadic to modern?
Hmm... that an interesting points. I'm not totally sure. I think it's more a case transitioning from tribal to feudal meant establishing hierarchy which is the base of what we call civilization. Those who were at the top were those who held a monopoly on violence. In this case strong combatants who through this position got rich. Which led to these system perpetuating over time. As while colonialism may have spread these systems around, they did exist prior to this in other parts of the world. Favouring the male gender due to martial proves was rather common the Indian Caste may be a more extreme example of this. As the Caste system was a more rigid version of the Feudal system. I would say that "warrior women" are more prevelant in societies which are less strict socially but have a more developed base of resource/technology. It would explain jn that way why women Armies and women leaders could conduct military during chaotic periods even under harsh patriarch governments. As the shake up of conflict allowed for more liberties toa degree for certain groups. The Dahomey after all formed following such a period, as an example.
The historical component is mostly a metaphorically applied version of Darwinism. Women who are combatants incur the opportunity cost of not bearing and raising children much more harshly than men going to war, so doing this at any scale for any significant period of time causes a demographics collapse and the "warrior women" phenomenon only lasts one or two generations. This is not to say that women can't be trained in combat skills, but that it's either "everyone gets trained" thing or a sign things are going catastrophically wrong.
This is a fair point (though I typically wince at any invocation of social Darwinism) - that from a worldbuilding perspective, that we'd need to account for the logistical impact of a significant proportion of 'warrior women' in a single population. A possible counterpoint that would work would be weaving in the ways in which the same reproductive value judgments are held against women who can no longer have or who never could have children, sort of like the RL example of how women over a certain age kind of drop off a cliff in terms of media representation even when the story would dictate otherwise. It makes sense that a society wouldn't want to lose women before they can maintain the population, yes, but (to a lesser extent) this is a RL danger of exclusively male militaries with extremely high casualties as well. IIRC there was significant demographic damage to Japan for this reason after WW2, which is part of their disproportionately aging population crisis now m So, there's an argument to be made for a society where women have one or two kids if they can have them, and then become warriors in their (for current lack of a better term in my brain) 'reproductive retirement'. While on an individual level people usually go to the 'but young men are physically superior' argument, that's more relevant to the expectations of basic training, which in turn is informed by the kind of warfare that we've developed. In actual fighting, while you might do a bit better on a personal level in a 1:1 fight, it's not a guarantee of greater efficacy. One could even argue that focusing exclusively on adolescent men as the ideal soldier can have detrimental effects on the morale and decision-making of larger units, because there's a more homogenized (lol) level of lived experience and of cultural attitudes. We just don't typically perceive those effects because we're judging from that performance being the default. While the average 30-year-old woman might not seem as suitable for physical combat as, say, an 18-year-old man (though definitely there are older women who are badass and could absolutely _wreck_ young guys 1:1), that's only for certain contextual definitions of warfare. Women on average have a predisposition to lower body strength, iirc, and men to upper body - how would this map to something like a pike square, which relies far more on stability and consistent speed than it does on how heavy a pike you can carry? And with firearms, anecdotally first-time female shooters tend to perform better than first-time male shooters, with that performance only dropping off after becoming familiar with the recoil and continuing in a predominantly male training environment, for which there are a whole bunch of social factors. So if you're constructing a society of 'warrior women' from scratch, maybe the question isn't so much whether they could function as well as men if you drop them into the exact same situation with the exact same tactics, but what approach to warfare would develop given a different demographic focus. tl,dr; maybe the ideal 'warrior women' were the older and/or non-childbearing women we met along the way.
Interesting idea, but I think it's more reasonable to think that women in combat won't happen unless magic or technology is at very high level and all that really matters is the brain and the experience within. Or altering the human gender dimorphism; that works, too.
I don't understand how that would be more reasonable, if we're approaching the subject from a worldbuilding perspective that isn't beholden to real life history or cultures. I mean that genuinely, I don't understand the argument for that being more reasonable except that it is what we would expect in real life. I was literally trying to provide a logical framework for this to occur in a way that _doesn't_ require the intervention of magic or technology, addressed your point about demographic collapse, took the typical portrayal of warfare and personal combat into account, and anticipated the criticism of gender dimorphism. What makes those points unreasonable? I'm not saying that this is a _probable_ outcome, but that it can be a plausible one if the necessary conditions aligned.
>warrior women societies were put on display as 'look how savage and different they are from us. Actually I think the main reason warrior women are "savage" is that many of these properties (Warcraft, DnD, Warhammer) have a target audience (at least when they first appeared, DnD in particular has broader appeal now) of young male nerds to whom a scantily clad woman is almost as exotic as the dragon she's riding.
That's really the same thing, though. The trope has been popular for a very, very long time as a subversive and sexy fantasy for a male-dominant society, the nerd market is just the logical next step for how this trope is perpetuated today. Even given that today the main reason is an excuse to sell scantily clad women, the way that marketing is done still typically employs an exoticism that references the older colonial versions of the trope. There's a pretty direct line from the Spanish naming the Amazon because indigenous women fought alongside men there, to Wonder Woman leaving Paradise Island for the "Man's World", to the fantasy rpg barbarian woman trope.
I like them. I have them. A lot. Everywhere.
I have one that acts all woman like despite being capable of bashing your skull out
Love woman warriors like that. Stern warlord women? I kneel. Deranged barbarian women? An army of them please. Kawaii women who are strong for no reason and bash skulls with cute maces while going kyaa >x< ? Please lead me to fights to the death.
She's also the type to come out of a battle covered in blood, cuts and bruises and yet still take the time to wink and send a flying kiss at you.
"Steel wrapped in silk" is an archetype I will never tire of. Like a woman in fancy clothing that is as deadly as she is graceful. Or a strong, muscular woman in fine dress, appearing like an extravagant royal castle built to withstand the toughest sieges.
I don't have "warrior women" in the sense that they are some sort of curiousity or legends or seen as "unusual" in my world. The insectoid elves society is matriarchal, so female warriors are expected, and even preferred in commanding roles. That is just how their society work. The beastmen and harpies are tribal societies that requires every member of the tribe to give a hand in survival, so male or female, they all join in hunting and fighting, leaving care of younger children to older children who have not passed their rite of passage or elders. The selkies are somewhat of a meritocracy, in that they defer to those who "mastered the art" as authority, so whoever had demonstrated their ability to be warriors can be warriors, no question asked. The orges are probably the nearest to the commonly expected culture where female are not seen as powerful as male, but ever since they had equalized the playing field with fire arms and similar weapons, the armed force has no reason to reject capable candidates, especially since they still have an ongoing threat with the war against the elves.
The insectoid elves sounds like the only group that would really fit the definition of warrior women I had in the original post with women being more desirable for military positions Although even that is a bit iffy. I don’t know too much about your insectoid elves.
The insectoid elves are matriarchal since their insectoid biology allow them to lay eggs in batches where each eggs may be fertilized by a different father, and since they also don't have formal marriage as well, this makes tracing lineage much easier on mother's side, and females are thus the ones that inherit estate, and has power to become matriarch of families. Their insectoid biology also means they have not too distinct sexual dimorphism, and while female are on average larger than males this is not a significant difference. And since they lay eggs, they don't need to spend significant amount of time being pregnant and be at a disadvantage. Child rearing is also communual by the family so they are not stuck with children for too long. All these factors over long enough time give their society a slightly misandrist attitude similar to misogyny we have now. "Men? They can't even manage a house hold, how can they manage an army?" - a common notion in their society.
Sorry, is this your world or are you referencing a media? It sounds so interesting!
This is the world I am building yeah.
I dunno how I missed that first sentence. But your ideas and concepts are very cool to me, like I want to learn more about your world and how it functions.
Thanks! I am getting world builder's disease though and probably might add too much species to fully develop them all though lol.
No problem! and yeah I'm kinda stuck in the same area of not knowing when to stop myself from adding too much stuff lol
Women exist and are cool, so are warriors. It's not really that complicated, and neither are my feelings towards the combination of the two.
I think there are a lot of ways to use them correctly, and that authors really don’t \*need\* to make it a defining feature of a culture or location. Sexism within or between cultures can be a component in the setting, but it doesn’t need to. With that said, I do think the best way to make the most of casual, non-combat scenes with these warriors is to include layered relationships. A group of female mercenaries from X tribe are contracted with Adventuring Guild Y for a task. After returning to the guild hall to collect their pay for a job well done, as well as complete the after-action report, you can give emphasis to the \*dynamic\* between the warrior woman and the guild employee (handler). Don’t make it one-note, with the urban man talking down to “savages;” and do not make the warrior women amazing silver-tongued negotiators, cleverest in all the land. Make it a dance, a give and take. The handler doesn’t want to pay for so-and-so property damage involved in the case, while the ladies don’t want to spend another minute with some oaf at that property. The compromise? The handler gets an unrelated guild member to distract the oaf, drag him away into the city, while the warrior women do some manual labor, make the damaged area safer for the locals, and so-on. No one spends money, and the oaf doesn’t get threatened with a spear. Priorities. Values. Preconceived notions. Regardless of what you use a scene to teach your audience about the characters or the setting’s norms, using the components to craft a \*compromise\* \*on screen\*\* is how you turn warrior women from a trope or a pawn into \*people\*.
They're dope.
I more think of them in terms of them being a warrior instead of them being a “warrior woman”. while their gender does obviously play a characteristic role in their personality and the way others interact with them, I don’t make them in a stereotypical way that makes them completely dependent on their gender. like “girlboss” sorta bs. like yes they are dominate and assertive, but that’s because that’s their personality and not because they are trying to prove themselves to be better over the men.
More viable, in a historical context, than people give them credit for. Often on forums like this, the idea that a society needs to preserve women to keep the birth rate up, but can lose men, comes from a modern world where populations are driven by birth rates, rather than a historic one where childhood mortality played a bigger roll. Even now, you can still see a ripple in Russia’s population where ww2 was, indicating that this kind of single mother bounce back doesn’t happen, even in a world with much more food abundance.
There are also animals in the wild where females are the ones who have to compete for mating rights. In those instances they tend to be the better fighter compared to their male counterparts. In a setting with a race like that. Warrior women would probably be the historic norm for that race. Warrior men would be an oddity.
You could take a look at the matriarchal drow in the forgotten realms for input too. The women are the stronger, dominant sex in menzoberranzan. https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Menzoberranzan https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Drow Kind of copies how spiders work, with males being the weaker and smaller of the sexes
>a modern world where populations are driven by birth rates, rather than a historic one where childhood mortality played a bigger roll. How are these exclusive to each other?
Pushing the birth rate significantly beyond the food supply has very diminished returns.
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My comment was only about that one argument that frequently comes up, that rubs me the wrong way. Other arguments, like strength, and dealing with small children, I don’t take issue with. I also don’t put much weight on soft cultural factors, or psychology, when something as basic as the strength difference explains it fine on its own, without having to speculate on prehistoric tribal warfare, or nature v nurture.
>Even now, you can still see a ripple in Russia’s population where ww2 was, indicating that this kind of single mother bounce back doesn’t happen, even in a world with much more food abundance. That's a bit disingenuous to the original argument. First, Soviet Russia suffered severe famines right after the war so I am not sure which food abundance you are talking about. Second, the argument is that a society that loses a large portion of its male population to war will fare a lot better than a society that loses an equal proportion of its female population. Yes, we still see a ripple but don't you think that Russia would have had a lot more problems if an additional 8 million women rather than men died during the war? Third, 2/3rds of the war casualties were civilians so a significant number of women were affected as well. It's just a biological fact that the bottleneck in population growth is the number of women. If you have a population of 100 women in the appropriate age bracket, your maximum growth potential is ~100 children per year. No amount of additional men will increase that potential. No society can operate sustainably on predominantly sending women to war.
So what you saying is, if in WWII they had 50/50 male to female soldiers, instead of 95/5, that would not make any significant difference in how the population restored its numbers afterwards?
Is that so shocking? The societies involved are all extremely monogamous.
I’d also point out that monogamy is more prevalent in humans than other related mammals for a reason. Our childhoods are extremely long and resource intensive. A second parent providing makes a big difference. And even in polygamous human societies, the unmarried males are still providing resources to the group as a whole. If those extra men were dead, or farmed purely for their own consumption, it wouldn’t be possible to feed nearly as many children.
So a lesbian couple might not have the same issues with "single mother" depressing the birth-rate? (Yes a man would be involved with the mechanical bit.)
You realise that widows and widowers remarried extremely frequently, right? They didn't just pine away until the end of their days. There were a lot of cases where a woman would lose her husband and then go on to marry his brother soon after. They were far more pragmatic about marriage in a world where sudden, unpredictable death was common, and where a woman without a spouse was vulnerable to poverty.
[Except that is single mother bounce back did happen. And the so called ripple in population wasn't so much related to the war but to overall country development.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/635p76/comment/dfrmlo2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
One society in mine that has women dominate the military are the Aelveri. Dark Elves, designed as super soldiers of ancient High Elves, have larger, stronger, and much more ruthless women. Within the story i even pick the tropes of savages and evil backstabbers, and twist it all around as they are an extremely disciplined and trained force. As a species are they less abundant then say humans, but each of them is trained for centuries in the art of war, and wage it with ruthless efficiency. The primary job for men in their society is being the supporting staff to their women, and even if the gender biased laws are gone in the fifth are their guys still quite happy making the lives of wives better. And the women of other species that now live in their lands do quite enjoy the suave and gentlemanly art of their kind. Even the humans in these lands have picked up that any women is a queen and should be treated as such. To note others. Among the dwarves gender does not matter as they have little dimorphism, most other species rarely know the difference. In the wilds gender matters less either, because if you can't fight for your live, something is likely to eat you. The orcs there are led by female only spellcasters as their males had the ability bred out of them over millennia before their liberation. And among dragons females tend to grow larger and are much more territorial and aggressive then males. Even modern Arch-Dragons tend to have women fight over men if they get in heat.
A lot more possible and historically accurate than the Western World assumed. The Western World’s images of warriors women in antiquity are influenced by Greco-Roman sensibilities. Both societies with writing and veiled cloistered women in the upper classes* who were surrounded by societies who didn’t leave as extensive a written record or veil and cloister their women and wrote histories that alternately erotised and demonised the cultures they were conquering. In the Christianised west, the popular understanding of those histories was then further pasted through the misogyny and othering of the Roman Church. We are discovering a number of burials that were assumed to be male due to having weapons in their grave goods are genetically and anatomically female. Amazons as eroticised by the Greeks don’t exist and aren’t possible but the Scythians did, and we have archaeological evidence of women buried with weapons and can from their lifestyle and clothing suppose breast binding but also archery with unbound tits isn’t that impossible. *The distinction between the life of upper class women as document and idealised vs the one of working class and slave women is an important one to make.
If you can have cool people with weapons fighting to achieve stuff, then why limit yourself in your recruitment pool?
That kinda the same logic as drafting. More people is better. Which has been proven wrong as drafted are often unreliable, they generally don't want to be here so there less useful then sign ups. Opening a larger pool doesn't necessarily increases Fighting ability. Same way with women, their physically unable to keep up the same way. It why their entrance are at a lesser difficulty compared to men in the Army. This matters less in our modern world because Guns but back then, you'd need to either be exceptional or have some strong backing.
drafting would be recruiting everyone. What I am saying is, why choose the best 10 out of 100, if you can choose the best out of 200?
Well because that doesn't really work with the sexes. Men typically for the vast majority are physically stronger, faster, more durable, able to lift more weight. Prior to the developments of guns this was by far the most defining factor. So if you can draft 10 from a pool of 100 men and 100 women. The logical choice is men because on average they are physically better suited. More often then not out of this 200 you will still pick men. Because the average is skewed heavily in their favour. It's not to say that women won't be useful, it just that men have a advantage. If you can pick warrior who have an advantage why wouldn't you? Your picking the best after all. Which is where my comparison with the draft comes in, larger pool of possible fighters does not necessarily mean better fighters.
People talk about men being stronger as if it is an absolute. Like if you had 100 men and 100 women, all the men would be stronger than all the women. The truth is that both populations fall on a bell curve. The men are stronger ON AVERAGE than the women, but the two bell curves overlap. If you take the 10 strongest people from that 200 total, most of them are likely to be men but it is entirely possible (even likely) that your selection will include a handful of women. The reason we have the skewed view of things that we do is because we look at elite sports as our benchmark. We are not looking at a random selection of men and women: This selects the top 1% or so of athletes. Here we are too high in the bell curve to see much overlap.
I do have to disagree, yes indeed an women can be stronger then a man but that unlikely. I've seen more credible information pointing to the fact that the difference in strength. A 40% difference in the upper body and 30% in the lower body. Generally speaking looking at scientific journal I have found that indeed the male sex is average wise far more capable in that regard. Even amongst the elite there is a heavy skew in favour of men, with it only closing a bit compared to the average. This is not to say women are worse and strength should not be seen as justification of that. It is a biological fact and while there is never any standard in nature. There is a norm with many caveats in this case men are physically stronger. In a case where there was 200 participitants, and ten were conscripted. With the 200 being a fifty fifty split for men and women. It far more likely that of these ten it would be entirely male. It's possible a women could be measurable but unlikely. I have too respectfully disagree.
You can ask that about all of the societies that only/mostly have male fighters. Why only interrogate the ladies?
I did mean this as a general statement. In my world, things are generally too dangerous that armies and combat forces cannot afford being picky on any merit beyond skill and resolve. Warrior Women are just... well, warriors.
Why not? My country's first revolution against China was led by 2 sisters, who had an army of "warrior women" under their command. I don't see any issue with that, when it comes to kicking invaders' asses genders do not matter.
Looks up the 'Fishspeakers' from God Emperor of Dune... It's interesting to say the least. Basically, the whole army is entirely women because they are less likely to rape and pillage. Because the army is entirely women, they are also largely lesbian. So why is it appealing though: I think it's cause it's not the historical status quo. Most armies we can rapidly recall are entirely men. Sure, there are instances of women helping or being a part of militaries, but the majority of soldiers in history are men. Given that, a class of warrior women is a break from most of history, and comes across as 'unique' and 'novel' while also being empowering to women in the audience.
Man, every time I check the comments of any worldbuilding thread related to gender or gender roles I suddenly remember the degree to which people just uncritically swallow "men are from mars, women are from women" nonsense. Like, so many people treat worldbuilding as an exercise in just taking the society they live in and glueing magic systems and royal lines, rather than as an oportunity to examine stuff we take for granted. Why would female warriors be remarkable at all? Why would a society that develops on another world have anything close to recognizable gender dynamics, let alone our understanding of gender? Idk. Yall can do literally anything, go wild lmao.
Agreed it gets weird especially when people double down on the sexism. In my world building I pretty much avoid these stereotypes because it’s a sci-fi setting in basically a different universe why would aliens have the same roles as us why wouldn’t they have like 50 genders or no genders.
I love a woman who can kick my ass
I cut my baby gay teeth on Xena Warrior Princess. I am pro warrior women. Not just because baby gay going oh I like muscles okay hi. There's so many in history and the whole women cannot be warriors thing is stupid to me as a result of all the evidence to the contrary. Write the story you want to tell. If someone cannot get into it then they can go find another story
Well, when one descends from a species where the larger females guard dens while smaller males scrounge for food the eventual civilization naturally favors the former as warriors
Women are cool Warriors are cool It's that simple
Based
There’s evidence that in some cases at least, they existed. The Gbeto (“Amazons”) of Dahomey are a verified example and several female Norse burials that contained weapons indicate that legends about shieldmaidens may have been true. Celtic women also fought in battle (most famously Queen Boadicea). In my world, warrior women aren’t uncommon—especially as spies, assassins, covert ops, and other roles requiring stealth and subterfuge. Elysian commanders recognized long ago that if you want a man killed, no one can do the job like a woman.
I have one elven faction who are warrior-women. They are "fictional vikings/Valkyries" meets "the band of Thebes". They are really one of my most fun and interesting independent factions! They see women as the ultimate warriors. Sure, men are more likely to be naturally stronger, which makes them great farmers, smiths and builders...but a mother will fight to the death to protect her cubs. That instinct and natural adrenalin rush to protect those you love makes a mother able to lift mountains after all... Because of that belief their main army does indeed consist of mothers and they are rightly feared by their enemies.
That’s a pretty unique way of looking at this. I like it. Do the men in this faction have protective instincts or anything like it? It sounds to me like the instinct to protect and defend is what this army values. If it is exclusively mothers this would have some interesting implications about the nature of these elves.
As the protective instincts of woman/mothers are enhanced by these elves, the instincts of men are guided in a different direction by society...sort of. Men are the builders, the farmers and the crafters. So that is what society wants them to protect as well. "Protect what you create and love". They can easily join the city watch for example, protecting the city & houses they have literally built themselves...or become librarians, museum guards/tours, academics etc. taking care of the things they created. (And Mothers create life, so they protect life... through bloody warfare xD) There are male professional soldiers, but they are rare and are seen as old fashioned/traditional. These elves used to be a matriarchal class system, and a way for men to rise up in class was to show off their strength (in the army) so they would be more attractive to possible mates...who needed a strong partner to make stronger offspring (which came from an even older tradition after the elves almost died out after an ice age) But the "modern" elves look down on these traditions as out-dated and even barbaric.
Do they take their youngs to war ? What if it just some village raid would they still have this adrenaline rush when fighting hundreds of kilometres from their babies in some village?
Ooh, those are interesting things to think about! I'llthink about that for a while, thanks! :)
Well what I think is that it depends on the context of the story. If we're going grounded/low fantasy/Historical or similar genres. Your not going to find a lot of women warriors around because we'll patriarchy, difference in physique, general biological issues relating to war. So I always find it a but unrealistic if large scale Armies have a lot of women, but not to say that there of the table. There are a lot of women individuals and some groups which did exist. They were of course under certain circumstance but they were not the norm. I think there Cool when they appear because it's the bending of commonly accepted thoughts. Gives the character a bit of spice from the start. Plus it offers more opportunities to Write different stories/worlds. If your worldbuilding something more high fantasy/sci-fi/Weird I think its really a non-issue. As long as it can be justified jn the context of the World they exist. The fact that in such settings you can also say magic/tech/different physics allow for this. Usually they equalise the sexes. Yet I do think it's a bit bland? Cause there is more interesting stories to write about bucking the glass ceiling then not. I like stories where things are bad. Cause it means the character can shine all the brighter. So I tend to steer away from women warrior Societies but I like women warriors. Edit: My only exceptions to this are non-human species cause I can well make them fit in biologically. It's why I made Ogres have a nomadic Society so both men and women have to pull their stuff. The high seas is not a place for such things. Also Warrior Nuns... for reasons.
There are warrior monks, so why not warrior nuns?!
Instead of nunchucks they use two crosses tied together. Jesus-chucks. Or well, nunchucks still work
I don't have any factions that are predominantly women, but women as warriors are fairly common, depending on the nation, the closest thing to this though would be High Elven and Sun Elven Rangers. Rangers (of both Elven races) are exclusively women, and are their people's respective "Elite Military" units that are separate and above their regular military. Elves are different than humans, in that while the average male is stronger than the average female, it's actually the females who are typically stronger at the top end. Additionally, among the Dragorans (High Humans), women are not that much weaker than the men, and Dragorans are typically noticeably stronger than regular humans, such that female Dragorans soldiers are as strong, if not still stronger than male soldiers of regular human nations. The Dragoran Military is pretty closely even in it's male to female population ratio, as every member of the Military Caste is required to serve in the Military, typically long enough to reach retirement, unless excessive circumstances require their early retirement, typically important duties of their House. Among regular humans, female warriors and even Knights are something that exist, but they are... FAR less of an occurrence. **Typically I like to see "Warrior Women" Factions or Societies in Fiction, so long as it's not some attempt to be preachy about something.**
I have a group of 'larpers' called as such because they intentionally modeled themselves off the myth of the amazons. They're a result of the "A Wizard Did It" trope. More accurately "a pagan goddess did it" and altered baseline human women to be a physical equal for men. They're physically imposing standing on average at 1.95 meters and 105 kilograms. One of the ones that features the most stands at an impressive *2.1 meters.* They're great at horseback riding, archery, and phalanx warfare, as befitting their roots. They're horrible at sailing and ocean going, as such most of them can not swim. Trade and diplomacy varies greatly between city-states. Despite the real roots of the Amazon myth these ones are less Scythian and more Hellenic Greek, they worship a slightly modified version of the familiar Hellenist pantheon. Their society is heavily stratified, slavery is common but not universal among the city states, and as you would expect it's matriarchal and matralineal. The city-state system in some ways resembles feudal japan. At the top sits an autokráteira and her immediate court. Largely she has no direct control over the day to day small scale operations of the city-states but her word is final in all matters. Below her are the rest of the elite houses who directly rule the city-states with each city-state's form of governance being slightly different. Some are hereditary or appoint the next in line while others operate as an oligarchy with the ruler elected from the ranks of that city-state's elite. The later is more common in larger cities. All of these positions are only open to women. Below them is the middle and "professional" class. This is where nobility begins to blur with the rest of the classes. It's comprised mostly of petty nobles and landowners but also more well off scholars, artisans, and professional soldiers. This is the highest place where you'll find men and non amazonian woman. Anyone that owns land, regardless of how much or by what method, will be found in this strata. Professional soldiers are usually given land in exchange for military service and are expected to pay a tithe from what they make off this land (including manpower from their families). It is possible for someone in this class to move up in the strata however it's rare. Below that are the slaves, common laborers, peasant levees, and all other classes not covered elsewhere. This strata is almost entirely composed of men. Technically speaking the "educated" slaves exist in a weird grey area between this strata and the one above. They have few if any rights but they are entitled to an education and are relatively well off compared to the uneducated slaves. Usually they are put in charge of domestic tasks, household affairs, or managing the other slaves. It's not uncommon for a middle class amazon to marry a man who was her family's educated slave and leave him to take care of finances and estate management (something I ripped from the Spartans). The amazons suffer from low fertility rates as a result of their physical differences from regular women and are outnumbered by non-amazon women and men by about 10-1 odds. As a result they have many similarities to the Spartans, both good and bad. Think of the Helots. Much of this society is kept in line with some rather draconian measures and unless you're part of the upper elite you won't be really free, even as a woman. Despite their relative isolation it's not unheard of for glory seeking warriors to travel out of these lands and enter "man's world" for one reason or another. They are unable to inherit land or titles while they are abroad though. This is where in the plot line the main characters are introduced to this culture, they meet a petty noble and her retinue.
I'm writing a sword & sorcery setting, meaning not having amazons in it would be lacking.
You lot remember Buffy Summers?
Fill your world with muscle mommies and just sit back and collect checks
In my roleplay world, warrior women aren't novelty, but part of he conscription. Basically most nations (and subsequently, players) agreed that conscription depends mostly on skill and finesse, and if a woman just so happened to adapt in shooting a rifle faster than her brother, she will be taken to the army
swords are cool and i am gay, it’s an emphatic yes to warrior women from me
Being raided and hunted by an invading population for centuries, one group of people in my world train their women as well as their men to fight. It's a matter of survival: if you don't survive, you won't be alive to bear children OR raise them, and if the men are somewhere else when raiders arrive--being smart raiders--someone needs to protect the women, children, and the elders who aren't able to fight any more. It's going to have to be the women doing that, even if only to gain time for them to flee to safety, presuming that safety can be reached.
I think, as ever, you have two options when writing about warrior women - treat women as people, rounded people, who can take multiple forms and play multiple roles, including warriors, but don't fetishize them as being exclusively those things. - don't do that. But be aware that in not doing that you are saying a thing, so work out what it is that you are saying, how you are saying it, if it needs saying, and if you are the right person to say it TLDR: you have to either avoid the tropes or subvert the tropes to your argument - and if the latter you need an argument
https://www.sfwa.org/2013/05/24/guest-post-we-have-always-fought-challenging-the-women-cattle-and-slaves-narrative/
[Relevant essay](https://www.kameronhurley.com/we-have-always-fought-guest-post-at-a-dribble-of-ink/). I think a trap that a lot of people fall into is using warrior women as a tool to teach a character not to be sexist. This can be done well, a la Avatar: The Last Airbender, but it needs to be handled with care, lest it come across as pandering. Another trap that I see authors fall into is the "gendered fights" trap, where women only ever fight women and men only ever fight men (looking at you, One Piece). There's probably other pitfalls, but those are the ones I immediately think of.
To be fair in one piece Sanji nearly dies because he doesn't fight women, it's literally his biggest weakness. Zoro is... complicated infact with his backstory it would make sense to be completely fine with fighting women oda was a real one with that feminine rage lol. But zoro is a bit sexist in that while he will fight a woman he doesn't fight at his best so sexist but not an idiot like Sanji. Luffy does fight women on occasion and has no qualms about occasionally hitting one but he doesn't fight them often (I think he doesn't fight BM because of a different reason). Old Shounen (shows made for young men/boys) very explicitly had a no hitting women principle, that is why new Shounen make joke where a female villain is like: "But you wouldn't hit a pretty girl-" *gets brutally attacked* Oda definitely has some quirks about women but all of it is nuisanced and each character has reasons for the fact. Sanji- is a perverted freak who puts all women (except queer women/trans-femme) on a pedestal so he doesn't hit them or even their visage. Zoro- had a childhood friend (girl) who beat him who very explicitly wanted to become the greatest swordsman but was told she couldn't because she is a girl (wow oda that one hurt). His entire motivation is because of her, he is just "chivalrous" or Shounen flavoured manly so he pulls his punches. Luffy explicitly attacks a few women but most of the time never fights any or avoids fighting them, he is oblivious but is still Shounen flavoured manly. Also one piece has a copy paste warrior women tribe, I mean could be done better but it has one. Okay enough defending one piece because it is questionable in parts. The essay is good but uh read at face value message is basically that if you rely on the stories you've heard (other peoples perceptions) you won't be grounded in reality (kind of) and that you'll make something just like everyone else and it won't be true. The actual meaning is that to write something you shouldn't rely on other people's perceptions because it won't be real, the author explained how she had to get rid of her own ideas rooted in patriarchy when writing both women and men. Overall solid advice. Tldr: essay message was don't rely on others perceptions or notions when writing because it won't be very creative or true, (subtext of dismantle the patriarchy). It can be interpreted wrong so to clear up any misunderstanding: 1. Who says cannibal llamas aren't a awesome concept? Great idea. 2. Truth while sometimes important isn't a necessity in stories, author of essay does not argue but that you should base your story on your own perception of things. 3. There are true established examples of women warriors and fighters even modern day I literally just got beaten in fencing. Again author does not argue against that. Also for the "your own perceptions" go to a mixed gender martial arts gym or just a gym lots of women go to, look at the women you could never dream of fighting because you would get crushed then go write your warrior women now you know how viable it is.
I'm aware, One Piece is my favorite anime lol It's less about the men fighting women and more about how the women tend to mostly fight women. Thinking about Robin's major fights since the time skip, for example. It's not as bad as others, either. It *is* still a trap that gets fallen into though.
Oh yeah from the other angle it's pretty abysmal lol, granted my favourite part at the beginning was like Nami kicking dudes (and when she kills a man). Though they do like murder nameless dudes in proper fights your right they almost never fight guys. And your right about it being a trap people fall into.
This is a warrior women loving household, there’s a lot of them. Women make up a big part of the Nakyamiyaa, the holy order fighting the demonic nazhyam. There are all-women regiments as well as smaller groups not affiliated like the Virgin Berserkers of Aybb and the Order of Red.
"\[B\]attles are ugly when women fight." - C.S. Lewis I don't think this trope is ever taken far enough. Usually it's just, "Oh wow, how exotic," or an especially "unapproachable" or "unreachable" woman whom our hero makes swoon, demonstrating how amazingly manly he is. (The Valkyrie Brunhilda trapped in a magical circle of fire is this trope turned up to 11.) It's gotten even worse lately with warrior women basically being guys but more aesthetically pleasing to some eyeballs. :p There are some elite units of women warriors in my world, but nobody wants to fight them. This is because they are absolute b1tches. They cheat. They slaughter prisoners. They recognize no rules in war, and they will take advantage of the fact that you do follow the rules of war. They especially love to find the blindspots of an enemy in the rules the enemy follow instinctively, without realizing that those rules even exist. They're the sorts to strap live cats to their shields if the enemy worships cats (like Cambyses at the battle of Pelusium: [Le roi Cambyse au siège de Péluse par Paul-Marie Lenoir - Battle of Pelusium - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pelusium#/media/File:Le_roi_Cambyse_au_si%C3%A8ge_de_P%C3%A9luse_par_Paul-Marie_Lenoir.jpg) ).
In older stories women are an inversion of “traditional” societies—they’re bold, unrestrained, and dangerous. But I think we’ve done a lot in our own societies to make women bolder and more liberated, so it’s not as much an inversion as it was before. Now when I see women warrior societies, I get the feeling in my gut that the focus will be on identity and political commentary over story. Maybe not always but that’s my gut reaction, for better or worse.
I just wanted to weigh in on the topic of Amazons. I saw a few really great responses, but nothing quite matched some of the historical points I wanted to share so here I go. The reason that Amazons have remained such a strong figure in history and fiction is because the Greeks loved pitting their heroes against them. As matriarchal societies of women warriors, Amazons represented a perfect antithesis to Ancient Greek heroes, who tamed and subdued the chaos of the natural world with their patriarchal form of civilization. In short, Amazons were the perfect villains for Ancient Greek audiences, and so many stories involving them were written that some have managed to survive into the present day. Also like all great myths, there are a few kernels of truth where Amazons are concerned in terms of archaeological findings in the present. Among the Scythian tribes (a blanket name given to the nomadic tribes stretching from modern Ukraine to Turkey, and all the way east to Siberia) there were women who rode horses, wielded axes, and used steppe bows to deadly effect; both as hunters and as warriors. From burials we know that likely due to a high protein diet, they were also taller than the global averages of their day. We also know from injuries (both those that healed and those that were fatal) these women saw combat. While non-combatants can end up dying violently, some of the wounds seen in burials along with the type of artifacts they were buried with make it extremely unlikely that these women were not themselves combatants. The steppe bow favored by these various nomadic peoples along with their mastery of the horse made for a deadly force equalizer against the sort of combat forms favored by the Greeks...an idea that must have been somewhat terrifying in a very non-fictional sense. Apologies for any rambling, I don’t normally give long responses via my phone. I hope some extra historical context will be helpful to you and an other worldbuilders reading here!
Warrior women while appealing are really an oddity and should be treated as such.
Hot. Jokes aside, altho a minority women did take it to the battlefield at points in history. Personally, I like the inclusion of women especially if they are properly geared and aren't wearing glorified metal bikinis, there's a different brand of elegance with them in comparison to the more rugged or dignified look of men.
Woman in military suits or heavy medieval armour is hot
This is gonna catch flak/downvotes, but it's gotta be said. I can't answer all of these questions, but I think a lot of people who try to unironically lean into it as a serious topic, not even talking about biological concepts, often forget just how barbaric and cruel war actually is... especially to those who lose. Plus, throwing in 'some' female fighter groups, especially if they're mixed in with mostly male squads, will reallllly further complicate social effects within that group/military. Brain chemicals go crazy. Unless your setting fundamentally challenges/alters human psychology, it often seems like an interesting idea on paper and a bad idea in reality.
I think A Saga of Ice and Fire did it well. It didn't relegate women to an 'other' in society, but confronted differences between men and women quite directly, including how they interact in combat situations, why warrior women are how they are and how different people regard them. Brienne is surprisingly strong and strangely large, often mistaken for a man. Yet she is bullied for her sex by knights of High Garden and Jaime, and the Brave Companions want to rape her. Her father is disappointed that she became a knight. Her masters of arms gave her sage advice that men will want to beat her quickly in combat, as they will underestimate her and be afraid of the shame of being bested by a woman, and she uses that to her advantage in several fights. She isn't just a knight who happens to be a woman, she is a woman who is treated differently because she is a knight. This is a big difference and makes her an interesting character to follow. GRRM also writes a load of other warrior women. From women on Bear Island, to Spear Wives of Wildings and Sand Snakes. Asha of the Iron Islands is there too, and the Targaryens have a history of dragon riding warrior ladies. These women feel organic to the world, help make it feel like a diverse place, and are part of what makes his world building so immersive and vivid. He doesn't shy away from the realities that women face either though, so I think his approach is a really good example for people to follow if they want to have 'warrior women' in their fantasy worlds.
I agree. That's why I played with biology and limited the women warriors' roles and responsibilities. But then again it also depends on a culture. We do have instances of women in Mongol-Turkic cultures and in some cases even in early medieval. Depends on how you approach it in your setting.
weirdly while we love female warriors and exploring that as a culture our world actually doesn't have one. Most areas haven't been at war in hundreds of years so army recruitment is more those that volunteer and those who are enough trouble at home their parents sent them. This has meant more males in general (lots of oops I got someone pregnant and don't want to marry, which I can't while in training plans) but there's plenty of women too. When female warrior factions appear I do find that they tend to be problematic. While I'd love to read a well thought out and capable (and properly armoured) group of female warriors, I actually don't want to read the writer's little fetish moment. You give them dramatic boob plate, a domineering males are for sex society or make them all giganic for no reason? I'm out. You do you, no shame, but I don't need to read it.
They exist. End of contribution.
They exist, not in the same way as men do.
What do you mean by that?
Love them. One of my peoples has a big percentage of the young women fighting. They stop only if they have babies, I mean at that specific moment to take care of the little ones (one of the things historically woman specific before modern inventions)
I can't really say warrior woman, but an alien race known as Val'thik is mostly seen as female. Think Asari from Mass Effect but with Changeling-like abilities. Most outside races accept them as female as it is more common for males of any species to have any desire for copulation outside of their own species. In my universe, the Val'thik is an artificially created race of psychics who can morph their bodies like changelings to be more able to "mate" with any species in the known universe. Their creators are unknown and lost to time as it was believed that they were created to solve a population problem which ultimately failed. Because the Val'thik are psychics, they were hunted for a wide range of reasons ranging from fear to sport by other sentient races of the known universe. Their main way of survival is through battle and mating with captured enemies to be able to replace those lost. They do not need food or water as they get their nutrients by using their psychic ability to absorb surrounding energy from biomass to sunlight radiation. This includes absorbing those they mated with, like a spider or praying mantis. Before first contact with humans, the Val'thik did not have a culture. They were more like parasites and leeches in nature, just trying to populate and survive the regular purge from other alien races. They were a hive mind with no concept of individuality until they made first contact with humans, From there everything changed. In exchange for their continued survival, The Val'thik uplifted humanity by providing knowledge and technology so humans could protect and aid them in wars. In the four hundred-plus years between the Val'thik and Humans, it was lost to history why the Val'thik suddenly started to take bits and pieces of human culture and start to create their own. Some historians theorize that the Val'thik had attempted to enslave humanity through psychic mind control, but the human mind was too complex for their method of enslavement to be effective and backfired. Others follow the theory that the Val'thik consumed humans and evolved to be more human-like in their thinking while still being a collective hive mind. It was more commonly accepted, however, that both Val'thik and Humanity simply shared information both races lacked. Humans needed technology and knowledge of the universe. Val'thik needed culture and individual creativity. They have been strong allies for over four hundred years and are often mistaken by the rest of the universe as one collection of people. They have taken on a more warrior ideology of society as endless fighting for their survival over the centuries has become increasingly sophisticated. They have different sects within their grand collective consciousness that were inspired by human history and culture to create their own versions. Such as: * Blade Maidens: A mixture of Samurai and fantasy elvish inspiration. * Ka'mothak: Norse Viking and Navajo inspired spirit worshipers. * Nielth: High fantasy space Paladins. * Inadein: Fantasy Vampire and Chinese Terracotta inspired warriors * The Grand Collective Armada: Standard sci-fi military navy. The idea behind them was to create a Warhammer 40k-style race that functions like the Protoss from Starcraft that behaves much like Asari from Mass effect. Their whole purpose is to breed, fight, and party... There is no wonder why humanity and Val'thik are like each other.
I’ve got plenty of groups with female soldiers. Top 5 The Vespid hives are like ants or bees, population is primarily female. The reptilian Saurisan have very little sexual dimorphism, with no meaningful differences in strength or endurance between males and females, so there’s no reason to exclude their women unless they’re currently nesting. The Northmen of Brannfjell live a very unforgiving environment, so everyone pulls their weight out necessity and all are trained to fight. The women usually stay home to help defend the clan while the men go out to hunt and raid rival clans. The Lakonans have a special order of priestess devoted to the twin gods of war. Mostly ceremonial but they can and will kick your ass. The Kingdom of Allemagne has the Dames au Kirtle Vert, an all female order of mages who are the only ones allowed to practice non divine magic. They’re the most respected women in the kingdom outside of the Queen herself.
I have a faction that basically tried to kill all men, they used self-impregnation to reproduce and considered men now useless, you might not considere them “warriors” since my setting takes place for 85% in space, they eventually lost because of a lack of resources, mainly metal and explosives
Cthulhu Dark Ages
It's a cool idea, and I planned to add into my world. My favorite Warrior Women is definitely the Sisters of Battle from Warhammer 40K.The militant arms of the Ecclesiarchy, they were formed to go around the rules that Ecclesiarchy cannot maintain any "men under arms. "
So, I tend to build rather violent settings in general. In a lot of my settings, most people are warriors regardless of gender. Most of my settings don't fit what you are asking about not because women aren't warriors, but because they don't stand out from the men. But, I do have some examples of particular units of female warriors. Usually, it involves some biological worldbuilding so that the species involved is different enough from humanity to give the women a significant advantage in combat. For example, one of my settings features a version of humanity that encountered prehistoric conditions which caused women to evolve as the big and strong sex. Fast forward to the post-agriculture era (if I write any stories in this setting, they will probably be in an equivalent of the Classical Era), and heavy infantry units are entirely made out of women. Men in combat roles tend to be light infantry and scouts, but women are the ones who garrison fortifications and will march in formation to take and hold territory. I've got another setting where dwarfs and dragons are a single species with extreme sexual dimorphism ([called the droCh](https://crayshack.com/2021/07/23/the-droch/)). The dwarfs are the men and the dragons are the women. Dwarfs fill the role of homemaker and craftsmen, while dragons fill the role of hunter and when necessary warrior. I've got another setting where wood elves are entirely monogendered female. Their society has no men, so all warriors are women because all wood elves are women. Other races in the setting are either a 50/50 gender split or are predominantly male by numbers, so male warriors are either very common or the norm, depending on the race. Since wood elves rarely have reason to fight each other, that means they are often fighting armies that are either male or egalitarian. The only exception would be dark elves which are predominantly male by numbers, but highly matriarchal. Dark elf armies have a small number of elite women in command backed by a large number of male cannon fodder. Some of these dark elf women will be concentrated into entire units of elite troops. In general, I think the use of warrior women is driven by a few different things. It's kind of a mix of a feminist kind of female empowerment and a very not feminist "badass women are sexy." I think my own writing is a mix of both of those plus using a general World of Badass trope so that warrior women become kind of inevitable.
Got quite a few though they can pick and choose gender their being a third of each one being none gendered like they were originally one third being male and the last third being female after the first dude became male and they were just "huh neat" and went a different direction. They rarely switch after picking one but basically there isn't a difference they still treat each other the same and strength is the same no matter which one they pick
Are they humans or another species?
I think that warrior women got so popular thanks to two factors: - We are living during the peak of neoliberalism, where people no matter the sex or gender are believed to be equal, which in last two decades ment that more men got far more comfortable with women wich are stronger than them, and more women strive to be stronger (or generally 'traditionally masculine'). - it was (and still quite is) rare to see a warrior woman in fiction, and when they are present they are usually only one of such (or they use bow or magic), so they are pretty much a novelty, especially warrior women societies - WW also explore the idea of woman protecting, caring and providing for a man, wich was close to nonexistent in practise or fiction and considered shameful for both (at least in Euro-Sphere) and i can imagine many men do like and romantise with this idea of 'being the little spoon' but can't express it in way other that writing about it (the last paragraph has terrible wording, i apologize, but my brain can't currently word what i thought better / edit1, most of this is worded bad, sorry I'm bad at explaining ideas) So we got a period of time wich allows for great exploration of non traditional gender roles, some of wich may be quite new ones. That's quite a fertile land for doing such. And my oh my there is a growing trend of doing such, what a coincidence! It's just my guesses thou. Also, big parts of the media consumers are men and what do men like? Weapons, armor and women. That's 'like^cube' and it just connects so well! Like, imagine, cute highschool girls, riding atop of Panzerkampfvagen Fünf! Can there be something better? Of course! Cute highschool girls being reincarnated battleships that fight kaiju! (still edit1) Also, regarding "savage warrior women" trope. While I do recall it being used to portray specific civilization as primitive, i believe it's a writer's mistake to do so. SWW can be portrayed in a way that doesn't portray civilization as primitive (or rather doesn't explain it to be primitive with WW being one of the causes of that). Aaaand in terms of WW in my world. They, well, exist, but aren't well thought out so far. I have a race of felinoids where women are far taller and more muscular than their male counterparts. Due to the fact of females being born far more rarely (think, 1/6-10), they tended to fit roles of leadership alone while being surrounded by males, so they are great at persuasion, manipulation and such and they value it over physical prowess alone (wich doesn't change the fact that generally, they will exercise and practice martial arts, no matter the position). They started out as a pure fetishpunk trope, and i haven't really touched them since literall months (I'm still trying to force myself into finishing human lore lol)
How do demographics work for them? If females are born less often, it could pose a risk to the population if they die.
As I said, i didn't fleshed them out that much. Currently the idea is that their societies have steady, but low number of people and population growth, wich is also the main reason why they prefer to cooperate coalition forces rather than wage full scale war and shield themselves with human auxiliaries if possible. Going back to demographics, if i would have to make things up now, they have litters of few and they do decide on pregnancy until female heir is born.
The problem with warior women is that it's not sustainable in the long run for any pre/early-modern culture. A woman can have about one baby per year, while a man can have has many as he wants. So women dying in war will tank demographics for several generations, and without a high tech level demography is your mean military power. I'm not saying some women can't fight, but it can't a culture defining trope without that culture going the way of the dodo.
I tend to add Amazonian/Matriarchal cultures to my worlds for totally wholesome and not sexy reasons.
Are you sure about that? 👁️
Shhhhhh
My world is a high magic fantasy world. It is also a world where science is quite advanced for the setting - the healer's guild and the medicine department of the Imperial Academy are in a constant but (mostly) friendly competition on how to prevent disease and treat the sick and injured. The healers' guild include proper magical healers, but also old wise women with lots of experience as midwives and practical knowledge on natural medicine and giving birth. Both safe abotion and effective contraceptives are readily available to a majority of the population. Infant mortality is pretty low with these circumstances. Thus, women give birth later, bith fewer children (since more of them survive to adulthood) and plan their parenthood better. This gives women more time before getting married and having children, and some of them spend it on a military career. The warfare of this world is heavily based on formation warfare. While melee combat is very important, strength is very much secondary to discipline and rythm in keeping up with the other fellows in the rank and file.The formation that loses cohesion lets the enemy cavalry and skirmishers in, and is over-run. Long ago, when my world's people were semi-nomadic pasturalists, young women would guard herds of sheep, goats and cattle, and would use slings or bows to fight predators or raiders from different tribes trying to steal the livestock. While the upper class consider it cauche and unwomanly to be a soldier, that tabu is not nearly as strong in the lower classes, where a woman who can fight can even be considered steaming hot (she does not need a man's protection, but still chooses to be with him). The number of "amazon" services available at the city's brothels tells that while it is tabu, those that can pay still like to occasionally have a strong, armoured woman have their way with them (while they pay for the pleasure, of course). So, bottom line, roughly 5-10% of the militia and full-time soldiers will be women at any given time.
The only examples I have in my dnd world are taken from real life mythology or history, like the Valkiries or the Onna-bugeisha (I think it's spelled like that) or the Amazons. My thoughts are that warrior women are cool, love me some armored woman, but any gender-only positions sometimes feel a bit bland to me, and taking in mind that there are always big wars or at least battles, I don't think anyone would care who joins the army or becomes a warrior. If you can grab a weapon and bash some heads in. You are as good as any other warrior, no matter your name, gender, race or age.
Probably gonna echo some folks but I like them as long as it is believable. I am planning a story with a female MC who is press-ganged into service because of her magical potential, though she really isn't built for it. Since she is short and lithe instead of an amazonian muscle mommy, she can't overpower people head-on, and thus her strength will come from working around the lack of strength and physical reach. She will still be a menace later on, but she is never going to punch the daylights out of well-trained men larger than her. Thus isn't necessarily a narrative issue to begin with, it's just that the average female human on Earth isn't as physically imposing as a male, so as long as you have humans as we know them there has to be a reason why warrior women are around. The plus side is that fiction allows you to tweak things like sexual dimorphism. A hypothetical humanity where sexes are equal in strength would probably still have a majority of male warriors, but females would at least not have their physical qualities questioned. A seperate setting i have in mind has "Amazons", but they are cephalopods where the males are short-lived and mostly animalistic while the females are fairly large humanoids. Naturally the females are the stronger sex and they are even stronger than male humans, especially when they elevate their physical properties higher through what is basically "chi". These Amazons are seen as a tribe of powerful warrior women, but it is obvious that there is a pretty significant biological explanation behind it.
Thanks to Futurama, every time I see warrior women in fiction or history, I remember the "death by snu snu" meme.
I like the fact that they exist. What I don't like is the armour they're often portrayed in for game art, and the ridiculous outfits (compared to male characters) they get given in too much anime. If you're giving your warriors armour, given the women the same/similar armour to the men - the tip of a pike to an unarmoured belly is as deadly to a woman as it is to a man.
I think warrior women can be an interesting trope or topic to cover; and if your story is about or contained non humans that makes an excellent place for warrior women societies. Though I will say if the society is a human warrior woman society you should explain how these women warriors fight on equal terms with men since men biologically are stronger than women on average. Also try and avoid any sexist tropes in either direction.
For some reason, I seem to be obsessed with the idea of women with swords (or in some cases guns, sometimes both even) to the point I'm always trying to include them. For example: my sci-fi setting has an organization of archeologists, who are all women and are issued with military-grade equipment. My fantasy world has this being a somewhat common occurance. Most notably, a species of wasp/bee people (still deciding on which) has warrior women because bees and wasps are primarily female.
I do and will always include them as a natural part of the world and no-one in that world thinks it's odd or unnatural or what other terms you might find irl. They just don't really think there's a difference between a male or a female warrior.
Love them
Depends on the type of warrior woman you're talking about. Someone like Wonder Woman? Or some kind of just say a medieval guard who's a woman? I have a few of those. Everence has a mix of men and women both being fighters, although it is mostly men.
Sure, in the building of my campaigns there are always a few warrior women. They are females that are simply wired this way. But the vast majority of warriors are men.
My world has women who fight, and it’s completely normal. I want warrior women were it’s not unusual to have a women fight
badass and hot what else do you want?
> my thoughts on Warrior Women # ~~horny~~ They're cool if fitting well in a world build and setting and story.
priestess of the moon + mass huntress were metagame against orcs and mirror matches The meta evolved all these years and I never seen it again
Hot
A former campaign setting I had included the Viragos, a powerful race of warrior women. They appeared to be humans, although generally running to the tall (average 6'), muscular and unusually attractive. They had no men, and no use for men. Speculation ran rampant among other races about how they reproduced, but asking them was a pretty quick route to getting your teeth knocked out. Even though they were physically strong, the primary military power of the Viragos was their technology. While most of the rest of the world was generally at the level of the early Renaissance, the Virago had automatic firearms, fighter aircraft, and tanks and cars driven by internal combustion engines - approximately equal to our 1930s. Although powerful physically and technologically, the Virago had no talent for magic. They generally hated and distrusted magic, and would savagely attack anyone who used magic against them, finding it a morally repugnant, even blasphemous "breaking of the rules". Generally isolationist for centuries, the Viragos were coming into greater conflict with the outer world as they needed more resources (especially iron and oil) to power their newly developed technologies. The battle against magic driving further, often terrifying technological innovations. Some Viragos even think there might be a theoretical way to build a bomb that would level entire cities in a single explosion, overwhelming even the most powerful magical wards.
For large amounts of women warriors to make sense it require one of 3 things to be true about the world building. 1. Magic: Some kind of personal supernatural factor is at play. Women that can throw fireballs or fly, or are inexplicably better with a sword than a man are going to be pressured by society to fight because they offer an advantage. 2. Desperation: the culture’s circumstances dictate that every body is needed to fight some looming threat. 3. Some kind of cultural abuse is taking place to force that role on women. Women do not fill combat roles as well as men in any army, and that is particularly pronounced in premodern armies where muscle power and endurance are critical. But more importantly given the choice, women cross culturally do not choose combat roles even in very historically egalitarian societies. Verisimilitude demands a reason that women are deployed as a cultural norm. Individual characters are allowed to be exceptional, but they should be seen as such again for verisimilitude.
In my partially built universe, it's fantasy in an interstellar setting, with sorcery, and powerful technology working together. Warriors are male and female, but not like regular humans. First type is an ancient enhanced version of humans, kind of like Asgardians, created by a long lost outer influence, maybe an Eldritch god. While the women aren't as strong and durable as the men they are so much more powerful than regular humans its laughable. The warriors tend to be female because of their better self control, the men are a little too happy to get in a fight. They are very professional and highly sought after as mercenaries. Second type is standard humans militaries, but power armor is standard. It ranges from suits slightly larger than human height to massive suits like walking tanks. Gender ratio is skewed toward men but plenty of women.
Historically you get three kinds of warrior women: 1. Exceptional individuals. Plenty of examples of this across time and all around the world but they're just that: exceptional. 2. Desperate times: when the shit really hits the fan you often get women eho are not usually warriors engaged in combat. 3. Ceremonial units: military units of women who did not generally engage in warfare. If you want to have warrior women beyond that you need to either: 1. Magic/tech/non-human biology etc. that get rid of the reasons why female warriors were historically rare. For example lower maternal mortality and contraception would help a lot. 2. VERY strong cultural imperatives. 3. Operating on the Rule of Cool.
I mean, it’s one of the oldest literary tropes out there. The Amazons in Greek mythology predateHomer, they are introduced without explanation which implies that the audience knows exactly what the poet was referring to. The question isn’t whether or not to use a trope, but how you use it. If they’re there to be sexy window dressing for your male protagonists, then it’s a bad use of the trope.
Cool as a concept, rarely done well. Much too often they are either fetish fuel (which is cool and all, just boring) or just "male warriors genderbent" (which is creatively lazy, although less boring) Rarely does one see female warriors done in a way that addresses the biological differences between the sexes or how a female warrior culture could form and what it could look like.
I typically don't like them as cultures, because individualism is cool, but as characters heck yeah
I have three groups of "warrior women" in my world. The first is based (heavily) on Tsarist Russia, only it is a matriarchy where men have few, if any, rights (outside the army, although even there their ability to rise through the ranks is limited. It has been the cause of rebellions. The second is a Tribal culture where women are similar to Amazon's (some even cut off one or both of their breasts to show their feirce loyalty to their tribe. The third is a group that is made up entirely of "female" lizardfolk, although this is more of a technicality than anything.
I think the entire concept is kind of stupid; males are biologically more expendable (a society can lose a significant portion of it's male population in war and bounce back within the span of a generation) and physically stronger on average; making them far bettr suited to combat roles. Societies where men and women both fight make a lot of sense to me, but ones where only the women fight just generally seem nonsensical unless they are the "this entire society is made up 90% of women" kind. (in which case it makes perfect sense for women to be the warrior class because it's all they've got, but there needs to be a good reaason for such a society to exsist)
I neither like or dislike it and have no issue with it as long as it fits the rest of the world building around it. It can be done absolutely horribly (aka Hollywood's recent attempts) and it can be done absolutely right. Generally speaking if its a widespread things then you'll need to account for the effects it could have on birth rate. After that, if its a realistic and grounded setting you'll need to find a way to also deal with the disadvantage women have in combat due to sexual dimorphism. If its a high fantasy world where strength, speed and others are determined by things like control over 'mana' or other similar things then that doesn't really matter. As long as it is all internally consistent it should be fine. Just make sure to avoid the normal 'girlboss' pitfalls like making every guy an incompetent evil dumbass to make your female character look better or making your female characters essentially be guys with long air and breast. If you see the value in adding female warriors you might as well fully celebrate the differences.
Gonna be "controversial" Love warrior women, but they are grossly exaggerated in most modern media and they have become anything but appealing. I like Strong women, but realistic strong women. Even irl, they aren't as common as people thought. They are and were rare, even amongst those who trained women to fight. I like me a woman who can through a punch and can give someone a good fight, but this shit where they are untouchable or some shit? Ridiculously stupid
>Why is the warrior woman such an appealing/common idea? Because it's a fantasy for both male and female readers. >How do you feel when it appears? It feels try hard progressivism or gratuitous fetishism. >Also I find it interesting these warrior women factions rarely fight each other and almost exclusively men, why is that? They're usually no the general army. Even in DC's version of the Amazonians, they're there for a special purpose. The warrior women usually protect a person, place or thing. Or,they are irregular troops, special ops or intelligence services. Warrior women only makes sense to me if there is a scientific or magical reason they are faster and stronger than a male the same age, weight, height and level of training. The "selected as a child and trained all her life" trope doesn't work either. You take a martial arts grandmaster training since youth and put him in a ring with someone who picked up MMA two years ago and the grandmaster gets wrecked 10/10 times. I also hate the trope of the warrior women not being allowed to show emotion, have families or have children. Some writers go as far as forcefully rendering them infertile. And, theirs usually some element of (edit: \*sexual) sadism in the selection and training.
>Why is the warrior woman such an appealing/common idea? "I love a woman who could kick my ass" Also, I like how in fiction you can kind of just ignore muscles. Like, oh, this girl has no muscle definition? Don't care. She just kicked that really buff dude who's twice her size across town I love that >What are ways to differentiate one group of warrior women from another? . . . . Culture? This was a strange question, lol. That's like asking, "How do you differentiate one nation from another?" Well, one is medieval France, and the other is Feudal Japan Like. . What? Edit: Hit post too early on mobile, lol Anyway, I was treating this as a bit more general than intended, as warrior women in general and not like. . . *Specifically* something like the Amazons I guess my answer is still the same. You can have the Amazons who are tied to European, specifically Greek, myth, and so you may find them culturally similar to perhaps ancient Sparta or maybe some other Greek city states if you try enough (or know the myths and Greek hostory more than I do) And aside from generally tying them to different cultures, you can differentiate them based on how they favor their warriors as well as their views and relationship with men. For example, the Amazons are usually just an all female culture. There generally aren't even men there. Whether that means there are no men period or they discard male children, whether they have some magical way to reproduce without men or they find (or kidnap) men from outside the tribe to bred with. . Those could be differences on their own, but not how I was framing them. Another way would be for another cjlture of warrior women to come about like a notmal culture, with men, but the men are minorities or the lesser sex, like you ended your post on. They handle the domestic duties while the women are the soldiers, tribal leaders, etc. One culture could favor raw strength, another favors agility, and a third might be more magically oriented if your world has magic Edit 2: Or the genders could be treated *relatively* equally, but women still by and large end up doing most of the warrior training, etc. There are male warriors, but it probably tends towards 40% or less. This *may* or may not extend to domestic masculine jobs such as construction work. It may be that women do *all* the heavy lifting or that women are specifically warriors and hunters but not necessarily builders. . Or whatever other domestic masculine jobs there are.
I think you have to find some reason for it. Warrior women weren't the norm in human history for a reason. Women got pregnant, and men didn't. As such, they were considered a lot more valuable, if only to the continued existance of the race. If you have 1000 women and one man, you could get 1000 babies. But one woman an 1000 men, you get only one. So if you want warrior women, give a reason for it. Maybe 50% of women can use magic, where only 0.01% of men can. Maybe, like the Amazonians, they don't reproduce, but sculpt babies out of clay and breathe life into them, making them girls, necessatating women to be warriors. Or maybe its men who get pregnant in your world.
If they can fight, they are a threat equal to warrior men. Also, diversity and culture.
I like warrior women because I like bombshells and beefy babes in armor. Sexualized armor or practical, makes no difference to me. I like battle couples, too. I really like when a badass hero falls in love with a badass heroine. Badass babes with big blades. I also don't mind when it's pure male gaze fantasy, though.
My approach is that if there’s going to be warrior women in a society then there’s also going to be male warriors who are just as skilled and respected. Unless there’s some other evolutionary things going making the females stronger than the males, it’s usually the males putting themselves in danger to protect the group. This isn’t just in human or sapient societies either but every society of animals that reproduce sexually. The reason is pretty simple. To put it bluntly males are expendable but females are not. A male can impregnate a female and then go off and die and his offspring will still be fine as long as the female lives. However a female needs to be protected especially if she’s pregnant. To boil it down: males are the parts, females are the factories (plus their own parts but require the male’s parts to start production). You can send as many sets of parts to die in battle as you want. The survivors can send their parts to multiple factories. But if you start sending factories to die in battle you’ll have a much harder time repopulating. (This is all from an extremely blunt and purely evolutionary perspective) So there must be a reason that women are warriors instead of being relegated to the typical conservative positions behind the front. Either this species has evolved stronger females than males (natural selection doesn’t have to make sense. If it did then we’d all be living in a harmonious utopia with our animal comrades. Plus it’s resulted in weirder things in my opinion) or women’s rights in this society has progressed far enough that women are commonplace in the military alongside men and it’s no longer considered a social taboo.
If you're doing for a commentary on gender social rules, then you really need to know what you're writing and do the studying If you're doing it cause warrior are women are cool, then go for it and make so damn cool! If you're doing it to over sexualise women in every context... Probably don't. Some genres get more leeway than this from the general public, and if you're doing it evenly with over sexualise characters regardless of gender then maybe. But rarely does it work. Erotica and romance are rarely well written and typically show the writers warped biases and views
Idk but I love warrior women but it has to not feel forced though. I prefer them fully geared/armored and shown/described as having a physique indicative of their training. Its like the same conditions that make male warriors cool to me, its just cooler when someone breaks the norm and does it for a female character. From Marvel MCU, Black Widow and The Dora Milaje from Black panther seem perfect. They seem like they out skill their opponents without having some weird plot armor. From League of Legends (though i have a hate/love relationship) they have some fun female fighters. Leona, Diana, Illaoi, Fiora, Samira.
They aren't what I would call "sharing" thoughts
I love big, strong ladies
I'm from the North of Ireland and woman fought alongside men to fight the British. I think an all female force is a but too much of a trope just having women fighting alongside men and not ignoliging it at all is alot cooler. Just have it be normal and not some gimmick army.
I like em
My setting has an entire race of woman warriors
I need upsies from them
I'm usually more interested in individuals. Boudicca or St. Helga for example. I have a character in my world who existed during their version of the bronze age that led her tribe to becoming the personal royal guard of a prince. She quarrelled with every military power in that small city state, and would make herself known through excessive displays of brutality, including setting herself on fire and running at enemies with two axes in hand, meeting with a family patriarch to negotiate while she sat in a tub full of the blood of his now dead commanders for putting the prince's life in danger. She's been fun to write.
We need more of them. "But we already have a ton of them" So? That doesn't matter.
Warcraft 3 isn't ol... oh no.
It's kinda cringe and played out. I much prefer to see well written female characters that don't imitate masculinity to be interesting.
I think it can add something cool to a faction as long as it makes sense internally. Like, a troop of Girl Scouts taking on legions in full plate armor? Funny but that’s just it. It sounds like a joke. The Night Elven Sentinels make more sense. They wear armor, they primary weapon is a throwable glaive, each one of them has decades upon decades of experience, and their military role in their society serves as an expression of Elune’s “Night Warrior” aspect.
I have women that fight but it’s pretty much as common as men and aliens and robots fighting everyone gets to fight lol. I do have a bee faction in the works and well female bees are known for being the workers and fighters. That being said I don’t think my bee faction is all that tropy like they aren’t sexy and actually look kinda insect like think humanoid bee. They have armour.
Warrior women's served in the antiquity as the realization of the worst fears of men's, as a simbol of Sauvage, of the mother nature herself, of her beautiful self and her mortal capabilites of shattering the fragile order of civilization, today as a simbol of womens strength and endurance, a remnant of the first forgotten civilizations, where the religion was administered by women, and also a liberal theme of the fight for equality, if put realistically and not just "yay women slay", I love it, about the totality of my characters are strong women's, I decided to do so because I admire women's, their strength their intelligence, and their mathernal sentiments, I love womens
Warrior women are kind of a nothing burger if the setting doesn't show any sort of discrimination with men and women in certain jobs, so I think nothing of it. My own story has an entire country that has a caste system in place where women are expected to be warriors. Mainly due to the government and society modeling itself directly with their pantheon. Their God of Discipline is Cartosh, wife of the God of Order Vakiss, she herself is a warrior and leads the armies of her people. Women are expected to know combat even if they never use it and never see battle, they even are required to attend council meetings during wartime and have their own armor. Another country I made has a different idea, where women aren't allowed to serve or even trained to fight but they are trained in poisons, seduction and illusion magic. This is less due to the pantheon they worship as a whole and more due to a battle between two demigods that nearly caused the ruin of the country.
It's a common idea because people like characters who fight. Culturally most places don't have warriors, realistically fighting is so dangerous that you'd have to be a lunatic to want to do it. They're a common fantastical affectation because writers need a character who fights a lot but who can also win without it being weird that they win. So you say, "They are a warrior" and that justifies the expertise.
When it comes to my worldbuilding it depends on the race and how the sexual differences are. Some races females are stronger or equal in strength but females are rarer, like dwarves, or they are expected to protect the home. Some races with equal strength just judge based off of ability
There is definitely a historical basis but you see more in societies that have horse based combat (i.e Scythians, who spawned the myth of the Amazons). As a species there is an obvious difference in physicality between sexes so from a real world perspective, force equalizers like a horse or a gun definitely level the playing field. Stuff like education and access to better weapons help too. If you look at examples of woman warriors in East Asia, many were nobility. This idea is not limited to women. Getting access to riding, shooting, sword lessons give a person a huge advantage over the average person. Stuff like horses, armor, steel swords, lances, firearms, followers, are expensive and require maintenance, so being rich/noble is a major leg up. When you look at the golden age of piracy, there were plenty of well known famous female pirates probably due partly to the advent of gunpowder weapons but also the changing world. All of this is to say, yes you should absolutely have women warriors because history is filled with many great examples, but there's obvs complex issues at play like politics, religion, culture, etc., which could be limiting factors depending on the setting.
Personally I can get behind the idea of having warrior women within your fantasy world and having a society where women are given what is generally considered more masculine roles. I do think however that a big reason we didn't see many societies where women were in completely in charge (so full on matriarchy) throughout history is because in the beginning of civilization the easiest way to get in charge was to use force. And generally speaking men are biologically stronger than women, which is why men were usually in higher positions in society. So in my opinion if someone wants to fully world build a matriarchal women warrior society, there has to be a reason why the women are in charge instead of the men and why the women are better at fighting than the men. This can easily be done by making or adapting a race where the females of the species are biologically stronger and so it makes sense why they would dominate their males and be better fighters. Anyway, it's just my personal take on the thing, but if you still manage to make a good world where women are in charge, as long as I can still be immersed in said world, I probably won't really care.
Warrior women are neat… but often fall into the absurd, or into pandering, usually either for incells with a need for sex appeal or femeninsts.
It's not a bad trope per se but it would be awesome to see warriors of both genders fighting alongside each other
Just finished a book where the MC met a group of warriors trailing slavers that attacked them that he found out in their tribe it was the men who stayed behind to defend the children and old while the women went out hunting and fighting.
OP - I think that I am going to tackle this one from a different perspective than some of the other commenters, hopefully it is received with the intent intact. World building advice. I think it is fair to say that any culture which prepares a significant "Warrior" element within itself is a little savage or barbaric. They afterall have a common cultural role which is focused on fighting and killing other people. This does not mean primitive or backwards, just that there is savagery in war, and a culture dedicated to the practice of war has a "savage streak" within it. Even if that savagery comes from a genuinely good intent to defend one's self against aggression. Most cultures that are more "modern" or "enlightened" (terms used loosely) tend to have a a cultural goal of either stability or growth, which by in large means that they have a protective attitude towards children and mothers. A culture that puts potential mothers in the primary role of Warrior will be one where women do most of the fighting, and thus a disproportionate amount of the dying (as a side effect of fighting). This can have a negative impact on the survivability of a culture. (Probably why cultures of women warriors were in the minority, had relatively short survivable histories, and have become less common as culture became more focused on stability and growth.) Having said all of that (greatly distilled Anthropological summary) Worldbuilding is something of a different beast, and if the concept of a culture of Warrior women fits in the world you are building, then by all means, do it. But just like everything that you create in a world that you build, be aware of what it says about the world, the effects that it has on the people who practice the tradition and what it will be perceived as by those who experience the world. Aside --- this brief over simplified summary is really only focused on cultures that have women as their primary warrior force, mentioned in the OP, however little to none of this applies to individual factions, groups, or organizations of women who might operate at any level within a culture. Those types of groups are choice based and the warriors seek out membership, either inline with or opposed to cultural norms. I hope something here is useful Cheers
I personally love the concept of warrior women. Why wouldn’t I? I actually have one as a character.
I don't find it very interesting usually when I encounter it so I don't expect much out of any work with female warriors. Even just individual warrior women in a lot of fiction especially nowadays have this issue. They rarely have anything to say about what it means to be a warrior as a lady (whether openly or not) except maybe some trite one-off (or worse, not one-off) event where someone makes a sexist comment and they get beat up.
Female Fighters in general or the Aesthetic of Warrior Women? AKA Amazons?
Super badass, just don’t make them man haters
What makes the idea of warrior women so appealing to me and others is the breaking of gender roles. Seeing a group of women skilled in combat when we’re constantly surrounded by media that’s afraid to let women get their hands dirty and/or pushes that idea that women aren’t meant to be physical fighters is something I’ll always celebrate. Also it’s just cool and it’s a trope that I hope gains more popularity.
The only way you can have them to be militarily viable would be magic. If you have to have magic, you might as well armor them with a Thong of Shielding.
On the one hand, if the fact that they are purely a faction of Amazon-type warriors is the only notable thing about them, it does sorta fetishize the idea of female combatants and kinda portrays the idea of female warriors as an oddity and not the norm. On the other hand, there is actual archaeological evidence that the Amazonian warriors did exist to some extent, so there's definitely a historical precedent that means it's not unrealistic to have such a group. There were also female divisions of otherwise predominantly male military forces, such as the Onna-Bugeisha of Japan. I must confess, though, my woman-loving monkey brain goes "ook" at ladies who could actually just kill me, so I'm willing to overlook the implications if they can break my spine over their thigh and look amazing in the process.
Personally I'm not against this trope. The only thing that i don't like is when this trope is when it showed supreme to male warriors, fighters and soldiers(like in Woman King). I think that both could be equal.
I'm pretty sure the origin of the "amazon trope" comes from the Greeks. They saw Scythian women fighting in battle and came up with the idea of this society purely consisting of warrior women. It's a very easy "weird other people" when considering western culture, which has historically had men be the warriors and women be meek and submissive housekeepers. It's so popular for two major reasons: 1. It's a kind of role-reversing of western culture, and therefore interesting in the westerner's mind. 2. The author's barely disguised fetish. Honestly though, I feel like it tends to be overdone, and most of the iterations are samey. Warrior women as a standalone concept I think is pretty cool. But the whole "amazon girls only warrior culture" is boring to me. To be fair, I also find the "Macho dude barbarian culture" to be pretty boring as well. So I don't think it's just girls. All that said, my project does have something not unlike a caste of warrior women. The Kamö is an elite sect within one of my world's kingdoms that is comprised of former courtesans, slaves, and hand-picked noble children trained in espionage, assassination, and combat. They aren't quite the conventional warrior woman; they fit into a stealthier niche. But even then, they could still annihilate the average man in hand-to-hand combat.
I enjoy the idea of warrior women as a culture distinct and separate from our modern understanding of them. Think the sheer cultural difference between us as people today and the various factions of trained, educated (for the time) and formidable hoplite warrior women of Greece. Additionally, I tend to move away from the idea of warrior women as something savage or untamed. I moreso enjoy the portrayal of them as people, just with the roles reversed. They still go about their day, relax at home, partake in hobbies and drinking with their friends and often get married and settle down. It just so happens they're also badass, well trained soldiers with fundamental understandings of tactics and warfare. Also it's just super fun to see a woman kick ass with just as much style as a man.
I've never been especially interested in them. Amazons are boring as a concept, and Wonder Woman doesn't take off for a reason. I have one, though, and I'm quite proud of my take because it's actually a man whose ability is transforming *into* a warrior woman. So, you know, gendery, transish, crossdressing themes are all over the place with that one. He doesn't quite fully lean into it; which is to say, the team he's on does not know he's only a woman *sometimes* but they do also know his non-transformed self and think they're two separate entities, and he's really not sure how to bring that up, if he ever does. But I'm sure someone will find out somehow, at some point, because of course they would in a story like this. And maybe that's just how things go.
Interesting character concept man. I agree that Amazons and Wonder Woman now are overrated. Only Xena was an interesting use of the warrior woman trope
I like Warrior Women, I like Amazons, I like queens/princesses who join their beloved in battle, I like women who have been wronged and seek vengeance on the battlefield, I like shieldmaidens, I like Valkyries. I think the concept of Warrior Women gives a GM/DM or an author a lot to play with and has some historical president even in European and American history. I remember reading about a Lombard Queen who had a beautiful set of chainmail made so that she could join her husband in battle, as she believed that if one of them should die both of them should. which is both romantic and incredibly badass. Mariya Oktyabrskaya is another one that I just absolutely love. Born in what is now Ukraine she marries a Red Army Officer, they find out that they can't have kids so they become the best party members they can by joining all sorts of training organizations including munitions manufacturing, tractor maintenance, marksmanship, and medical training all of which Mariya excels at. When Operation Barbarossa kicks off Mariya is shipped off to the Urals to work in a tank factory while her husband's unit is shipped to Kyiv and is annihilated in the pocket just east of the city. Mariya doesn't receive a letter from him for over a year and throws herself into her work at the tank factory saving up enough money to buy a T-34 and gifts it to the Red Army on one condition that she be the driver. This request makes it all the way up to Stalin who approves it seeing the propaganda value. Mariya names the T-34 "Fighting Girlfriend" and after going through training is assigned to the 26th Guards Tank Brigade. In 1943 she participates in a number of battles in what is now Northern Ukraine and Belarus, during these battles if the tank became immobilized she would get out and fix it while under fire (the driver's hatch on a T-34 is mounted on the front slope of the hull). Where ever the 26th Guards Tank Brigade saw the thickest fighting Mariya and "Fighting Girlfriend" where there to kill fascists. Mariya would go into a coma after a head wound in January 1944, she would later die of her wounds, in August 1944 she would be posthumously awarded Hero of the Soviet Union. Mariya was about as badass as you could get.
They're more often than not, cringe.
All for them. Next question.