WOMEN AS WARRIORS: GENDER AND HISTORY

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Original Post: 3 Jun 2014

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By Imogen Rhia Herrad

Jeanne d’Arc is – perhaps – the most famous woman warrior in history, but she was emphatically not the only one. At all times and in all places women have taken part in the business of war: openly side by side with their brothers, their husbands, their fellow members of the tribe; or else secretly, disguised as men.

The Scythians, a nomadic people livinig in the Eurasian steppe, probably inspired the tales about the legendary Amazons – a nation of warlike women – told by the ancient Greeks. Amazons occur already in the ‘Iliad’, Homer’s 8th century BCE epic poem. In Greek minds, the stories about Amazons depicted a nightmare scenario. There was only one way for their philosophers and scholars (almost all of them men) to explain the reports of travellers who had met, on the shores of the Black Sea, mounted and armed women: Scythian women warriors.

 

Greek and Roman thinking was strictly dualistic: there were different and separate spheres for men and for women: men’s work was out in the fields, on the battlefield and in politics; women’s place was in the house. A people made up of women and women who fought side by side, in a kind of equality that probably really did exist among the Scythian warriors, was inconceivable for Greek men, and thinkable only as reversal of existing conditions: women dominating men instead of men dominating women.

For a long time, the Amazons were thought mere inventions; sisters of the sea monsters and centaurs who also inhabit the Greek tales. However, in the mid-19th century archaeologists excavating in the southern Russian and Ukrainian steppes repeatedly encountered ancient women’s graves which contained not only ‘typically female’ grave goods such as spindles, jewellery and cosmetics, but also spears and arrowheads.

Almost one in three of the Scythian women’s graves contain such typical ‘mixed grave goods’: weapons, jewellery and make-up. Well over a hundred of these tombs have by now been identified; the oldest is over three thousand years old. But there is no need to go as far away as the southern Russian steppes to find prehistoric women warriors. They existed elsewhere too, and much closer to home: for example, on the edge of the Swabian Alb [in south-western Germany].

 

Prehistoric graves have no headstones. All you have is a skeleton that has survived the centuries more or less unscathed, and a few grave goods. Name and identity of the dead are almost always unknown, as is their sex – unless you can draw conclusions from physical features or additions. Until very recently – in some cases still today – [German] archaeologists proceeded extremely simply, projecting traditional gender roles into the past.

In cases where a skeleton was found with weapons – arrowheads, spear, sword – it was declared male. Skeletons with jewellery or household items were identified as female; regardless of the fact that other – even past – cultures may have known different divisions of gender roles; regardless of potentially different individual cases and without allowing for transgendered individuals.

The warrior of Niederstotzigen was identified only through DNA analysis as, in fact a warrior woman. There is a second, not completely preserved, Niederstotzingen skeleton which is probably also that of a woman, as an anthropological investigation has found. It is quite possible, even likely, that these two Merovingian women warriors are not isolated cases.

Female burials containing weapons are known from the same historical period from known across the Baltic States, England and Scandinavia. Even written records about medieval warriors exist. The 13th-century Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus wrote:

 

“There were once women among the Danes who dressed themselves to look like men, and devoted almost every instant of their lives to the pursuit of war, that they might not suffer their valour to be unstrung or dulled by the infection of luxury. For they abhorred all dainty living, and used to harden their minds and bodies with toil and endurance. They put away all the softness and lightmindedness of women, and inured their womanish spirit to masculine ruthlessness. They sought, moreover, so zealously to be skilled in warfare, that they might have been thought to have unsexed themselves.” [Sax. Gram. VII.359]

Like the ancient Greek and Roman authors, Saxo disapproves of those women. During his lifetime, in the High Middle Ages, stricter societal standards were being defined and enshrined in European societies, including standards for gendered behaviour. Distinct and mutually exclusive qualities were attributed to men and women. All women were now thought to be “soft” and “lightminded”, while all men now had to be “ruthless” and “skilled in warfare.”

Until the end of the Middle Ages, however, it continued to be possible for aristocratic women, at least, openly to go into battle, even if they were seen as exceptions. Virtue and femininity were not yet mutually exclusive in contemporary thinking, even though different gender roles were coming to be understood to be part of the divinely ordained order, which made it much more difficult for both men and women to break out of their prescribed gender roles.

 

If women still wished to go to war, they had to disguise themselves and pass as men. Again and again, we have reports about warriors or soldiers who turned out – on the sickbed or in death – to be women. One of the best-known cases [in German history] is Eleonore Prochaska, who fought under the alias of August Renz in the Prussian army, was wounded in battle in the autumn of 1813, and some weeks later died of her injuries. Plays and poems were written in her honour; with Ludwig van Beethoven setting a – now-lost – play about her to music.

 

We have no way of knowing how many women fought, disguised as men, in the 1813-1815 anti-Napoleonic wars. Twenty-three of them are known by name, but the real figure is likely to be higher. One of them was even awarded the Iron Cross for bravery: Sergeant Friederike Krueger, a 23-year-old farmer’s daughter from Mecklenburg [in north-eastern Germany] who fought as a man in a Prussian infantry regiment.

 

The West German constitution banned women from joining its Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) until a first breech opened in 1989, when the music and medical corps were made available to them. Combat remained an exclusively male preserve. At this time, Alexandra Klein joined to the German army as a medic. Today she has the rank of captain and works as Equal Opportunity Officer at the Bundeswehr Leadership Center.

 

Today the last legal hurdle has fallen: In Norway, combat functions were opened up to women in 1985, and conscription for women will be introduced in 2015. In Germany, electronics engineer Tanja Kreil went to court for three years, ending up in the European Court of Justice which on 11 January 2000 decided Bundeswehr had to make all areas accessible for women – including combat.

 

Today around 18,000 women soldiers serve in Bundeswehr, almost 10% of the total force. Captain Alexandra Klein explains that requirements are the same for men and women. In addition, she explains that while it is natural that men have more muscle mass and generally a bit more strength, this is complemented by the often stronger mental staying power of women.

 

But the mere fact that all areas of the military are now open to women, and that female soldiers and officers are now also exposed to combat, still heats some minds. Opponents of women in combat argue that women tend to have inherently less aggression and are possessed of more empathy and compassion. But scientific studies have shown that differences between men and women – both mental and physical – are far less than is commonly assumed.

 

Women continue to storm bastions that once were open only to men. In Germany, Ursula von der Leyen was inaugurated as the first-ever female defence secretary in 2013. It was hardly a revolutionary move. Previously, amongst European countries alone, Finland, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden had already installed women at the top of their defence ministries. Women in battle, women in command of armed forces: this is nothing new, but simply a normalisation. Women have always been warriors, soldiers and generals

 

Original article available in German as a blog post and podcast here.

Original post:  http://esfinges1.wix.com/e/apps/blog/women-as-warriors-gender-and-history

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