Were woman ever used as warriors?

Not regularly, no. Even skinny twigs of guys could absolutely destroy most woman in strength related situations. Remember it wasn't about swinging a sword around in fancy ways but knocking people down with shields, thrusting at each other with polearms, and generally not being knocked to the ground where someone's going to thrust a short sword into your belly. Vikings can fuck right off.

I've heard it said that women would make better submariners because they are generally smaller and require less resources, and it's claimed they handle stress better. Though I don't know if there's any validity to the latter claim.

If anything women would make good runners/scouts over super long distances(50+ miles) because the aerobic systems of men and women are virtually at the same capacity

that's why Veeky Forums exists

Women have been successfully employed as spies and secret agents during wartime.

>Nancy Grace Augusta Wake, AC, GM (30 August 1912 – 7 August 2011) was a secret agent during the Second World War. Living in Marseilles with her French industrialist husband when the war broke out, Wake slowly became enmeshed with French efforts against the Germans, and worked to get people out of France. Later she became a leading figure in the maquis groups of the French Resistance and was one of the Allies' most decorated servicewomen.

>After the fall of France in 1940, she became a courier for the French Resistance and later joined the escape network of Captain Ian Garrow. By 1943, Wake was the Gestapo's most wanted person with a 5-million-franc price on her head. It, therefore, became necessary for her to leave France.

>After reaching Britain, Wake joined the Special Operations Executive. On Mar 1, 1944, she parachuted into occupied France near Auvergne, becoming a liaison between London and the local maquis group headed by Captain Henri Tardivat in the Forest of Tronçais. From April 1944 until the liberation of France, her 7,000+ maquisards fought the Germans in many different ways. At one point, being aware of this large group of Maquis, the Germans sent in 22,000 soldiers to wipe them out. However, due to Nancy’s extraordinary organizing abilities, her Maquisards were able to defeat them causing 1,400 German casualties, while suffering only 100 among themselves.

>Jeannie Yvonne Ghislaine Rousseau, married name Jeannie de Clarens, (1 April 1919 – 23 August 2017) was an Allied intelligence agent in occupied France during World War II, a member of the "Druids" network led by Georges Lamarque (fr). Codenamed Amniarix, she evaded Gestapo agents while gathering crucial information on the Germans' emerging rocket weapons programs from behind enemy lines. Her intelligence reports, forwarded to London, led directly to the British raid on Peenemünde and to delays and disruptions in the V-1 and V-2 programs, saving many thousands of lives in the West.

>Her formal career as a spy began in 1941, with a chance meeting with Georges Lamarque on a night train from Paris to Vichy. Lamarque remembered Rousseau from the University of Paris, where she had shown talent in languages, including German, and finished first in her class, in 1939. He asked her to work for him, and she immediately agreed.

>During 1943, she filed, among other reports two particularly remarkable ones about Peenemünde. These reports led R.V. Jones, and ultimately, the rest of the British government and the rest of the Allies, directly to the missile and rocket development work going on there. Her collection and forwarding of this intelligence under very difficult circumstances led, through Jones' analysis and persuasive abilities in London, to the British raid on Peenemünde.

>Shortly before D-Day, a plan to evacuate her and two other agents was foiled by the Gestapo. She was the first to be caught. But even as she was being captured, she warned her comrades and one escaped. As Jones put it: "AMNIARIX's reports stand brilliantly in the history of intelligence, and three concentration camps — Ravensbruck, Königsberg (a punishment camp), and Torgau could not break her." She was rescued by the Swedish Red Cross shortly before the end of the war.

Sucks you never hear about these things.

Everythings all ready been said in this thread.
But I've always given Vikings a pass cause it seems like just Lagerthas thing.
You dont see women in Ivars, Harolds or anyone elses army.

Horse archery requires tremendous upper body strength btw

>rarely in situations primary dependent on upper-body strength
>names archery which requires more upper body strength than any other fighting technique
Nice

Question, why do people have such a hard on for combat while forgetting all the intelligence behind it? Intelligence work is key to winning wars.

No, and if they were, that culture would lose lose fast to cultures with only male warriors.

The reason is simple: Only women can make more men. Every young woman lost in battle is also the potential loss of 5-10 children which she could give birth to in reproductive lifetime. Her sons would all be better fighters than her, while her daughters can also give birth to 5-10 children in her reproductive lifetime.

>Were woman ever used as warriors?
No one has made that argument. OP asked if they were used as warriors not spies or intelligence gatherers. Stop projecting.

Depends on the situation. Nancy Wake judo-chopped to death an SS officer (judo hit to the throat). She had had the advantage of surprise on her.

But then kids see the americans storming the germans and it looks like it's all done in a span of minutes and think that's really how war and battles work.

>generalizing all of history's warriors into a WWI/WWII reference

This is Veeky Forums so I'm not surprised but no one even implied that. They contribute to the war effort yes but they wouldn't be classified as a "warrior" and there is nothing wrong with that besides maybe your perception.

Thread should've ended here.

This is unironically the one true answer. Women *can* be trained to fight as well as men. But a society that regularly encouraged their women to go out and fight instead of being wives and mothers would very quickly be destroyed or overrun by other societies with greater numbers.

As much as it does to be a heavy infantrymen? I find that rather doubtful. Besides my point was more that men are stronger then women on average and women will fair poorly against men in contests of strength, which is what melee combat is. Horse archery and other forms of skirmishing only require enough strength use a bow and control a horse, which is to say considerable, but something a woman could do if she put her mind to it, unlike beating a man in melee combat.

Exception to the rule and modern era combat is more then a little different anyway.

That's not my point. I am not for calling spies "warriors"; I am pointing out how intelligence work gets glossed out of history despite it being vital for success in war.

>thinks intelligence work started with WWI/WWII

Nigger.

50% of soldiers were women and 20% of the population was black, history has been whitewashed sweety ;)

>>Women *can* be trained to fight as well as men.
In what sense? A woman cannot fight as well in melee combat as a man can on average simply because men are stronger then women on average.

Well obviously the potential ceiling is lower.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_warfare_(1500–1699)#Timeline_of_women_in_warfare_from_1500–1699

Depends. Do you consider women leading armies such as during a siege or a rebellion as warriors?

What you meant to say was: Women can't fight like men, but even if they could...

>no woman has ever killed or defeated a man in a fight guise

On a lighter note and some actual history

>Lady Ann Cunningham

>Her historical importance is as a defender of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland against Charles I attempts to convert the whole of Scotland to Anglicanism and her active leadership in the National Covenant resistance movement.

>Her son, James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Hamilton, had sided with Charles I. When he attempted to land an army on the Scottish Coast in 1639, she organised the defences and "came forth with pistol which she vowed to discharge upon her son if he offered to come ashore."

>Lady Ann Cunningham raised a mixed-sex cavalry troop and lead them on horseback, brandishing a pistol and threatening to shoot her son. This was during the Battle of Berwick on 5 June 1639. They rode under a banner showing a hand repelling a prayer book with the motto For God, the King, Religion and the Covenant.

>The result led to the Scots' right to a free church assembly and a free parliament.

>Son you do as I say or I kill you

What a woman.

Obviously not regularly, although there are some exceptions. Ethiopia during its civil war had large numbers of women fighting a semi-conventional war. I forget the exact numbers, but one of the major insurgent groups (either TPLF or EPLF) had women making up around 30% of its fighting force.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_18th-century_warfare

Also another common thing in history is for women to dress up as men in order to serve as soldiers. So yeah they were employed in combat, only their companions didn't know it.

>Hannah Snell

>Following the death of her daughter, she moved to Portsmouth and joined the Marines. She boarded the ship Swallow at Portsmouth on 23 October 1747. The ship sailed to Lisbon on 1 November. Her unit was about to invade Mauritius, but the attack was called off. Her unit then sailed to India.

>In August 1748, her unit was sent to an expedition to capture the French colony of Battle of Pondicherry in India. Later, she also fought in the battle in Devicottail in June 1749. She was wounded eleven times to the legs.

>She was also shot in her groin and to avoid revealing her gender, she instructed a local woman to take out the bullet instead of being tended by the regimental surgeon.

Archery, especially with older bows is harder than you think. The lower limit of a bows draw weight is 80lbs or 36kg, bows could reach up to 100lbs but I'm fairly certain reconstructions of Parthian bows put them as arounf 60-70lbs so it IS possible for a woman to use.

The issue arrives in practical application, lets go with 65lbs, just under 30kg, if push comes to shove most people can lift 30kg. However if you ask a person to pull 30kg of weight for hours at a time you run in to problems. The Battle of Carrhae is a great example, the battle lasted all day and the Parthians are said to have used thousands of camels to supply the horse archers with arrows. Anyone that is pulling that much weight for hours aat a time while also controlling a horse is going to be absolutely exhausted.

You also underestimate the difficulties of riding a horse without modern equipment. They had to rely on their legs to control the horse, they had to rely on their legs to stay on the horse too, you'd need amazing strength in your legs to ride horses in difficult situations.

>1740: Ann Mills fights on the frigate Maidenstone as a dragoon.
>1741–1743: Maria van de Gijessen served in the Dutch navy under then name Claes van de Gijessen.
>1744: An unnamed female serve in the Dutch navy dressed as a male.
>1745: Jacobina (last name unknown) served in the Dutch navy dressed as a male.
>1745: An unnamed female served in the Dutch navy dressed as a male.
> 1745: Phoebe Hessel fights in the Battle of Fontenoy. She had disguised herself as a man to do so.
>1745: Scottish Mary Ralphson fights in the British army in Battle of Fontenoy dressed as a man
>1746: Johanna Bennius serve in the Dutch navy dressed as a male under the name Jan Drop.
>1746: Elisabeth Huyser serve in the Dutch army dressed as a male.
>1746–1769: Maria van Antwerpen serves as a soldier in the Netherlands under the name Jan van Art.
>1747–1750: Hannah Snell, serve disguised as a man in the Royal Marine: her military service is officially recognized in 1750, and she is granted a pension.
>1750: Maria Sophia Stording serve in the Dutch navy dressed as a man.
>1751: Two unnamed soldiers of the Dutch navy are discovered to be females dressed as males.
>1754: An unnamed female serve in the Dutch army dressed as a man.
>1755: An unnamed female serve in the Dutch navy dressed as a man
>1756: Soldier Jochem Wiesse of the Dutch army are discovered to be a female dressed as a male.
>1757: Sailor "Arthur Douglas" is revealed to be a woman. Her birth-name is unknown.
>1757: An unnamed female serve in the Dutch army dressed as a man.
>1757–58: Two unnamed females serve in the Dutch navy dressed as a males.
>1759–1771: Mary Lacy serves as a Marine carpenter under the name of "William Chandler".

What's up with the Dutch?

The thread is on female warriors, not female spies or soldiers.

why the fuck are you so caught up on intelligence work?? It has nothing to do with this thread, take it somewhere else

>soldiers are not warriors

>Makes a post without looking up definitions to words

There is a massive difference in post WW1 combat and historical wars. The tactics were nothing even close to each other. Its like comparing apples to oranges.

>post WW1 combat and historical wars
>18th century warfare
>post WWI

Yes.

>Trusting ANYTHING that comes out of the USSRs mouth

This has always been holocaust denial tier delusion.

Yes as leaders of armies in antiquity and 1500-1699, 18th century had a boom of women dressing up as men and joining the army/navy (pirates included) not to the knowledge of their male companions.

DUDE GIANT ANTS LMAO

There's pretty substantial evidence showing that Kroum of Bulgaria who ruled from 803AD to 814AD utilized females in the army out of sheer desperation. After Nikephorus I ambushed and killed most of his army Kroum mobilized everyone pretty much against their will including women. This will prove the deciding factor in the battle of the Varbitza pass when contemporary sources say the Romans were at first laughing at the sight of women charging them but then quickly became discouraged when then suffered heavy losses ( probably because of the flanking cavalry and not because of the women). Nikephoros lost and died and battle, his son died in battle as well. One of the worst defeats our army ever suffered. It is said that Basil II hatred towards Bulgars was born out of the desire to avenge the death of Nikephorus 200 years earlier.

>1787–1807: A woman serves twenty years in the British Marines under the name "Tom Bowling"

>be a british sailor in the British Navy
>suddenly find out your m8 Tom is actually Jane
>what do you do?

Who would you root for?

Which ever one had the bigger tits

So Herc for sure

Because it's never answered correctly

There isn't much difference between a Dutchman and a woman

There's one single Byzantine source attesting to the Norse warrior women meme, and they were obviously acting as auxiliaries defending the wounded, so no not really

no Night Witches in this thread?

Flying borderline suicide missions in outdated biplanes might be brave, but I don't know if you'd really call it "warrior" territory

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_Battalion
calm down dweeb

Christian Davies got by pretty good in the Scots Grey's, though I guess she doesn't count since she enlisted under the guise of a man.

the red army did.

Red Army soldiers resented the female contingents because they sucked dick to not get put on the front

>Russian Provisional Govt uses women as propaganda tool to continue the war
>This means USSR fairy tales about epic female snipers killing hundreds of men are true

If putting people in uniforms and having them guard something makes them warriors then Paul Blart is truly an apex predator on the battle field. You shouldn't even trust their records for male USSR war heroes, they were that far in to the propaganda machine.

They actually outperformed the male units at the time, not that this was any great feat. Considering Russias situation a bunch of naive women was probably the most effective force to field

who says they are war heroes, they were canon fodder, but they were still soldiers

>You also underestimate the difficulties of riding a horse without modern equipment

Women were horseriding already in medieval times nigger

Obviously it has happened at some point in history, but it's uncommon for the same reason men being nurses is uncommon, even today.

The stirrup, spurs and advanced saddles were common in medieval times. They weren't common in 50 BC.

>You also underestimate the difficulties of riding a horse without modern equipment
>medieval times
>modern equipment

Thanks for outing yourself as a retard.

>Be me when I was 12
>Little faggot in Judo class
>Practise was used with 16+ year old girls because they were used as sparring partners for prebuscent boys
>These were girls who were out of the norm (most girls don't like fighting to begin with) too.

MUH
SHIELD
MAIDEN.

Short answer: No

Long answer: In emergencies where men are unavailable, women were used as defense against cities/towsn, but never as an offensive army. In certain countries, women were trained as assassins due to ease of access to important places where men resided.

This hasn't changed.

>Who is Joan of Arc?

>never as an offensive army

What about and ?

Dutchfag here, our navy was irrelevant back then, at most they would patrol the seas to secure the spice trade but there was not much active combat since the third Anglo-Dutch war and would only resume afterwards (when the list ends).

>Pedantic
>Adjective
>Excessively concerned with minor details or rules

Now explain how this massive revelation you've brought to light changes my arguments for why shooting arrows off a horse all day with antiquity-tier equipment is extremely difficult. I am obviously aware

>there's no way soviet snipers could kill someone but fingolian slit-eyed farmer could xdd
calm down stormfaggie :)

>dressed as male
Most are due to the officers thinking they were male, so they were given male roles. The women themselves adopted a male persona as a result.

Even so, these are singular events, not mass events. In the history of warfare, male to female ratio for soldiers is millions to 1

>Excessively concerned with minor details or rules

You fucking nigger, either you're an absolutely ignorant underage piece of shit that posts terms at random or you are deliberately trying to post false, misleading information and you're buttmad you got called out on it. Serves you right.

It's still enough to disprove your claim that "women were never used in an offensive army." Just because their superiors didn't know they were women doesn't suddenly make them not women.

If the soldier was a spy, does that mean the commander was supporting the enemy?

Its an absurd notion to hold the commanders responsibility if the soldiers holds a secret. The best a commander is responsible for is not checking the bodies of the soldiers. Or in the case of a spy in the ranks, the commander would be responsible for not cleaning out the spy sooner.

>not much active combat
Are you kidding? Just because pirates were more like mafia crimelords rather than official Nazi soldiers doesn't mean they put up any less of a fight in combat.

>when the list ends
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_18th-century_warfare
You know you can read Wikipedia yourself

No one is saying that. What I'm saying is that
>women were never used in offensive armies
is historically proven false and wrong.

Explain to me how I am wrong then please. You're a pedantic spastic that noticed one thing incorrect, a mistake in the wording, not even a flaw in my argument, instead of saying "more advanced" or "more modern" I said "modern." You're building up a grammatical error and using it to discount my entire argument, if anyone here is being misleading it is you.

Again I'm asking you to explain how I am wrong about Parthian horse archery being an extremely difficult skill to master.

CASTRATE THE MALES

GENDER WAR NOW

No one cares about your arguments or parthian horse archery. Your wording was wrong and it triggered my autism as it implied there exist no evolution of archery or horseback riding between antiquity and modernity. You had to be corrected.

How about next time instead of acting the way you did you just say:
>Hey dude, don't you mean medieval horse-riding advances and not modern ones?
If you want to feel like you're correcting someone you could even try:
>Those things you mentioned were popularized in Europe during the middle ages not recently.

You also were well aware that I meant medieval when I replied to you with a picture of a Norman using the equipment in question instead of some 16th century Cossack or Turk, you chose to continue to act like a spastic and insist you were correcting me. You make out this big song and dance for something you knew we agreed on when I replied to you for the first time. Why you chose to continue trying to correct me on something you could see I knew about is beyond me.

Stop being so obsessed with correcting people, if someone is wrong about something it is more constructive to correct them gently instead of calling them a nigger and trying your best to belittle them with comments how old you think they are or how they're plotting to spread misinformation for no apparent reason.

>you knew blah blah blah

No nigger, stop projecting. If you spout retarded shit I'm not going to think "oh he's just PRETENDING to be retarded".

Yes.

Zurich Switzerland - In 1292, all the men had gone away to war, leaving only the women and children in the town. Duke Albrecht I. of Habsburg attacked the town and the women, donning spare armor and weapons from the town armories, manned the city walls and successfully defended the town. This statue was raised in 1912 in their honour.

Are you being sarcastic? I have Asperger Syndrome and so I can't tell if you're trying to insult me or if this is just how you talk to people. I think you should try to make your posts more clear, this lack of clarity is half the reason we're even writing this much to one another. Regardless, clearly I have upset you in some way and so I apologise for misusing the word modern and upsetting you. Next time I will be sure to specify the time period a tool becomes common when explaining that it didn't exist for some people.

Being precise when talking about history is something someone with Asperger's should already do.

Only by Israel

This

The whole "shieldmaiden" thing comes from women who would be trained to defend their homes while the men were away

People with AS typically have specific interests and are not experts on everything , I don't know anyone that finds the development of horse riding as specifically amazing. It is an interesting idea, now I'm curious if women that obsess over horses are on the spectrum and if they know about the development of horse riding.

Its been a nice chat Mr. Grumpy, its 4.20am here so I am going to sleep. If you want to be friends leave your email and I'll email you when I wake up. Night.

>People with AS typically have specific interests and are not experts on everything

That's no excuse for shitposting

>be woman
>men attack your hometown
>organize defense with other women
>you are able to defeat the enemy men in combat
>virgins on the internet still somehow think women can never fight off men

are you retarded? Jeanne d'Arc was just a moral booster

More male pilots did this job than female pilots by a huge margin, common misconception, is that they are called nightwitches for being female. In reality they are called night witches (men and women) because they would turn off the engine and soldiers could hear the bomb whistle then explosion.

Completely overrated and the female role overstated.

bookmarking this thread.

Why waste one women when they can produce 9+ men. Women are valuable, it'd be waste to have them killed.

>"Night Witches" (German: Nachthexen; Russian: Hoчныe вeдьмы, Nochnye Vedmy) was a World War II German nickname for the women military aviators of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, known later as the 46th "Taman" Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, of the Soviet Air Forces. Though women were initially barred from combat, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin issued an order on October 8, 1941 to deploy three women's air force units, including the 588th regiment. The regiment, formed by Colonel Marina Raskova and led by Major Yevdokia Bershanskaya, was made up entirely of women volunteers in their late teens and early twenties.

Why do you post blatantly false bullshit?

How on earth did the Germans know the sex of the pilots fucktard? One group of the "nightwitches" where female. It's not like germans could tell the difference between the men and woman who flew the planes at night, night witches is literally just the name they gave them for the screeching bombs after the engine was turned off.

I don't know where this stupid meme came from...

I think the problem is people assume they are called night witches because of their sex, not because of the screeching bombs. But because the standards for female achievement are a lot lower people never bothered to correct it.

I can understand why most women never feel represented in history. It's because stuff like this is ignored in school curriculum, and they are beyond the point of actually learning about great women now. A shame, really.