Something that bothers me...

[Melissia]

Maybe it's just the fact that the writers don't know what the crap they're doing, but it seems to me that there should actually be more women in the Imperium than men. A great deal of the men are conscripted into the Guard, or on certain planets killed off early in the attempts to find recruits for the Space Marines, or conscripted into the Skiitani, adopted into the Schola Progenium, or into the Arbites-- all of these organizations are depicted as mostly or entirely male in the fiction from what I can tell.

... and yet... somehow... most fiction that depicts civilians shows them as also mostly male (Dark Heresy, the Ciaphas Cain series, etc spring to mind). It doesn't really make much sense, apparently going by the fiction that there is Humanity in the year 40,000 is suffering from a shortage of women? Like out of every 100 citizen there's 30 females and 70 males? Personally I would think that this would mean there SHOULD be a disproportionate amount of women in the civilian population of worlds that are not entirely militarized (like Armageddon or Cadia), simply because of how many men they turn over to the Guard every year as tithes, and their own PDF as well which tend to be all-male in the depictions.

I know, thinking too deeply into science fiction (which itself is almost never internally consistent), but it always made me scratch my head at how stupid it seemed.

[Commissar Lewis]

In the grim dark future, there are only sausage fests, I guess.

[gwensdad]

Maybe the Imperium has lost the secrets of "women giving birth without dying". A oddly high mother mortality rate might start explaining some of the "off" ratio. That or we don't see women because they're doing actual day-to-day work and not acting as the idiot politicians.

[Kahoolin]

I know, thinking too deeply into science fiction (which itself is almost never internally consistent), but it always made me scratch my head at how stupid it seemed.A lot of science fiction is actually very internally consistent. I guess there are limits to what you can expect from science fiction developed from a juvenile futuristic war game though :)

I have to admit I never noticed. There seemed to be females aplenty to me when I read Caiaphas Cain, but then again I'm male so I wasn't paying attention to gender balance at all really :o. You're probably right.

I can remember off the top of my head though, the civvy who becomes one of Amberley's acolytes in the one with the stealer cult. Civilians in general seem pretty thin on the ground even as background scenery, let alone characters.

[Commissar Lewis]

Yeah, 40k's light on civilians, because when you have machine guns that shoot rockets and all the other over-the-top weaponry, the collateral damage would be insane.

[Just_Me]

Hmm... You may have a point, though I do offer a few points that might go some way to account for it. First, despite the depictions in much of the fiction, all indication is that the Imperial Guard in many cases actually inducts from both men and women. The problem is the writers think in terms of modern terrestrial military organizations, which are almost all exclusively male, so that is what they write. The better writers generally seem consider this and acknowledge the existence of female guardsmen/guardswomen. Although on this note it is very odd that all depictions of Cadian forces to date tend to be all male, even though it is VERY clearly stated that they induct both sexes without discrimination, this can be nothing more than simple shortsightedness on the part of the writers.

Similarly, the Schola Progenium does train both male and female operatives, but most women who meet the Schola's high requirements for physical ability and mental strength are shunted into the Adeptus Sororitas (as Melissa already knows), and those who do not meet these standards are not suitable for service in any of the Schola's military branches anyway. So the drain on the male population here cannot be that much greater than it is on the female population.

Astartes recruitment is of course exclusively male (and if anybody decides to turn that comment into an excuse for another FSM argument, I will reach through the interwebs and throttle them), but it really is a negligible number. It has been stated that there are less than one space marine for every planet in the Imperium, and even if a hundred aspirants die for every Space Marine that is still functionally nothing.

As for the Arbites, you and I seem to have arrived at different conclusions, I always thought they seemed to be fairly equally distributed between genders, but maybe that’s just me.

The short version is that I think you overestimate the extent of the inequality. However, even given that all of these facts are true, you are still right that there should be some disparity in genders among the civilian population, but since we very rarely get much perspective on civilians in 40k, we might not actually be able to see it. From what little we do know, it seems that on any industrial worlds women and men perform the same tasks, the Imperium is after all and equal opportunity exploiter, so the gender gap is probably lost among the masses…

Generally speaking, I think what you are addressing is a failure of the writers, personally I have always assumed that the Imperium employs both sexes equally in most fields. But as has been pointed out most of the writers a writing for teenage boys, so they write about men, which is a real shame as 40k is a rich and complex universe that offers skilled writers plenty for solid mature stories.

[Commissar Lewis]

Well said, Just Me.

[Melissia]

With the Guard thing, I'm going off of Ciaphas Cain whom stated that most Guard regiments were male, with a few female and a VERY few mixed.

[Nabterayl]

That brings up something else that's always bothered me, Mel, which is this: just how big is the Imperial Guard anyway? I know the technical answer is "Nobody knows," but most of the orders of magnitude numbers I've heard suggest that the Guard is actually really small. It seems to me that it's consistently described in terms of billions, and the regimental numbers we hear are not that high either. The latest-founded regiment I can find on Lexicanum is the 840th Shock Troops. I don't know how many soldiers are in a Cadian regiment, but let's assume that shock trooper regiments are on the large side for the Imperial Guard, around 12,000 men. If the 1st through 840th Shock Troops were all under arms at the same time (which doesn't seem like an unreasonable assumption), that would mean that Cadia is only contributing about 10.8 million shock troopers to the Imperial Guard.

Of course, Cadia is a weird case, since presumably it has a permanent defensive Guard presence. Krieg, which probably wouldn't need Guard regiments to garrison it, only lists regimental numbers into the high 400s - again, on the order of a few million men in the Death Korps at any given time. And of course we have the example of Tanith, which raised a measly three regiments (and tiny ones, at that - 2,000 men apiece) for the first time late in the 41st millennium.

In short, I wonder if the Imperial Guard is actually all that big a drain on most planets' manpower. Every indication I've seen suggests that the Guard is only big compared to everybody else's army.

[eldargal]

Well, the IG fluff says 'countless billions' which could mean 10 billion or 500 billion. There is also PDF forces to consider, Cadia might only have 840 regiments but it could have hundreds of millions more PDF forces for all we know, who could be inducted into the IG as needed, one presumes. Krieg is a death world with small population that is sustained by Vitae Wombs. There could be hive worlds out there with a population in the tens or hundreds of billions with a capacity to supply billions of guard.
I just checked Lexicanum, it has populations for the hive worlds of Ichar IV (500bn) and Scintilla (25bn), factor in PDF and you have a huge body of men which could be mobilised into IG in a pinch.

[Kahoolin]

The better writers generally seem consider this and acknowledge the existence of female guardsmen/guardswomen. Although on this note it is very odd that all depictions of Cadian forces to date tend to be all male, even though it is VERY clearly stated that they induct both sexes without discrimination, this can be nothing more than simple shortsightedness on the part of the writers.
Yeah that bugs me too - the only guard regiment where in the actual codex it explicitly states that the birth rate is synonymous with the recruitment rate, and I can't think of any examples in fluff or fiction of female Cadians. It almost seems like they don't want there to be female Cadian soldiers but they just love saying "the birth rate and recruitment rate are synonymous" because it sounds tough.

[Melissia]

I've seen fluff describe hiveworlds as donating a percentage of their population every year to the Guard-- and these planets have hundreds of billions of people living in them-- and in fact that's just about ALL they tithe aside from some small trade goods produced in their factories. I'd say that there's a TON more Guard than GW's often rather mediocre writers let on.

[eldargal]

Ok, if you take Ichar IV, population of 500,000,000, and take a modern birth rate (say that of Grear Britain, lower than some developed nations, bear with me) of 10.65 births per thousand. 50,000,000 thousands, giving number of births per year of 5,325,000,000,000. So taking the modern (low) birth rate of Great Britain, Ichar IV could tithe five billion soldiers each and every year. This presumes that the tithe rate is geared to allow populations to remain stable. Now, if one assumes that the Imperium doesn't go in for contraception, needing as much meat for the grinder as possible, and encourages large families if we run the same numbers with the highest earth birth rate of 49.60 (Congo) we get a figure of 24,800,000,000 births per year.
If the imperium employs some kind of forced breeding program on some planets using the optimum arrangement of one man to every 6 females, then the birth rate could be truly astronomical. At some point excess females could also be inducted into the armed forces without compromising birth rate, which is what I think would happen on Cadia.
It is 4am and I've been painting and reading, so feel free to point out ant flaws in my math.

Edit: Thanks Melissia for pointing out I was leaving out some zeros. Fixed, read the calculator wrong.


I've seen fluff describe hiveworlds as donating a percentage of their population every year to the Guard-- and these planets have hundreds of billions of people living in them-- and in fact that's just about ALL they tithe aside from some small trade goods produced in their factories. I'd say that there's a TON more Guard than GW's often rather mediocre writers let on.

[Melissia]

Assuming you mean 500 billion for Ichar IV (that is, 500,000,000,000)? Keep in mind osme hiveworlds are described as having trillions. But anyway...

That would be 5,325,000,000 born per year with the UK's birthrate, and 24,800,000,000 per year using Congo's birthrate.

That is to say, between five and twenty five billion people are born every year on Ichar IV. Even if they only tithed enough to keep the population relatively even and prevent overpopulation, that would be a very high amount of Guardsmen. And even assuming a high death rate (which is believable given the nature of hiveworlds), that still means many billions of people are recruited every year.

Every YEAR. Over the course of a century this would be an unbelievable number.

[eldargal]

Well, take a hypothetical hive world with a population of two trillion and it could tithe 100,000,000,000 per annum. I think. As I said, this assumes a relatively natural (ie not forced, but no/little contraception) birth rate.
It also ignores infant mortality rates, which we have no information on. I would assume that the Imperium tries to maintain at least basic health and sanitation services, if only to not give Nurgle a helping hand. Even just clean water and basic sanitation on a subsistence level diet would keep the population relatively healthy.
Edit: The highest infant morality rate on Earth is around 180/1000 live births. If one ups it up to 250, arbitrarily, to take into account other hazards before one reaches conscription age, then that reduces the above figures by 25%. So taking the high figures for birth rate and mortality (they usually go like this in the real world, high mortality = high birth) then Ichar IV could still tithe 18,600,000,000 per annum.


Assuming you mean 500 billion for Ichar IV (that is, 500,000,000,000)? Keep in mind osme hiveworlds are described as having trillions. But anyway...

That would be 5,325,000,000 born per year with the UK's birthrate, and 24,800,000,000 per year using Congo's birthrate.

That is to say, between five and twenty five billion people are born every year on Ichar IV. Even if they only tithed enough to keep the population relatively even and prevent overpopulation, that would be a very high amount of Guardsmen. And even assuming a high death rate (which is believable given the nature of hiveworlds), that still means many billions of people are recruited every year.

Every YEAR. Over the course of a century this would be an unbelievable number.

[Melissia]

The highest population growth rate on earth ATM is 4.5% per annum. So on a planet with 1 trillion people on it, that would add up to around 4.5 billion babies born than die every year.

[eldargal]

Hm, less than I thought. How did I get 24bn from half a trillion then, lol. I shouldn't do math in the morning.


The highest population growth rate on earth ATM is 4.5% per annum. So on a planet with 1 trillion people on it, that would add up to around 4.5 billion babies born than die every year.

[Kahoolin]

If you ladies's maths are correct, and there are millions of worlds in the Imperium (many of which we can assume are hives, as unless a planet has a specific purpose it will eventually turn into a hive), then the guard is *ahem* freakin enormous.

Looks like the nids aren't the only race who can fight a war of attrition with limitless meat shields. And it really puts into perspective how weeny the Tau are. If there weren't bigger fish to fry (heh heh, fish eadz) the Imperium would have just rolled over them ages ago.

[eldargal]

In terms of planetary populations I really thnk someone needs to pay more attention to written fluff. Cadia is given a population of 250 million, which in todays terms ranks between Indonesia and the United States. This for the most heavily fortified and IG recruitment heavy worlds in the Imperium. 250 million soldiers would make sense.
But yes, even if the first lot of figures I worked out are completely rubbish, I suspect the Imperium could easily* maintain the Imperial guard at around one trillion men, taking into account death and attrition. Add to this PDF and mass conscription during serious crises.


*Not including supply and logistics.

[Melissia]

Hm, less than I thought. How did I get 24bn from half a trillion then, lol. I shouldn't do math in the morning.

You were doing birthrates, not population growth rate. Birthrate = just the amount of people being born. Population growth rate = the amount of people being born compared to the amount of people dying.

[eldargal]

Of course, I feel silly now. Nothing new there.
I do think that with an Imperium encouraging large families and basic health needs met a decent hive world could maintain a larger than 4.5% growth rate. I'm sure I read somewhere that the growth rate in some Jewish populations in Israel (ultra Orthodox or some such) was around 16%.


You were doing birthrates, not population growth rate. Birthrate = just the amount of people being born. Population growth rate = the amount of people being born compared to the amount of people dying.

[gorepants]

GW writers use two different scales for population. When talking broadly you have the teeming billions across the galaxy, but when writing about something specific this number drops to about 20 people in the whole galaxy. This is most evidient when they talks about the scale of conflict. They talk about massive Napoleonic/WWI size battles, then say that a few hundred died on a bad day. When you compare that to the sort of attrition that occured in the Napoleonic wars, a few hundred was a very good day, and a bad day was upwards of tens of thousands (nearing 10% of forces; The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes is where I got most of this, largely about the Iberian campaign, good book), or 60,000 British in the worst day of fighting in the Somme (wikipedia). Most imperial armies are listed as smaller than these!

Probably a combination of the inability of the human mind to really understand large numbers and the tendency of modern warfare to consist of much smaller battles ( the sort of thing that's been in the media for the last 20-30 years).

[AirHorse]

In general the fluff describing the imperial guard is talking about fairly elite regiments, cadians are pretty damn well trained, even gaunts ghosts and all the regiments they tend to encounter are pretty capable regiments despite the attempts to label them as fairly generic.

We never really hear much about generic *** end of space hive world no 4's 10th regiment. Massive "scumy" hive worlds whos main problems come from overpopulation and all the problems that will entail will likely send out massive guard regiments on a regular basis just for them to be shoved into fairly standard meat grindery campaigns that we will never hear about because they arent epic enough for us.

And I agree with gorepants(thats a phrase I never expected to see myself writting :P), it mainly seems to be due to the writters ability to grasp and visualise the numbers of men that 40k talks about. But its understandable, guard novels wouldnt be that interesting if there were 700 characters for you to get to know out of the 20,000 strong regiment that the novel is focused on.

It also doesnt help that in the guard novels ive read so far the basic guardsmen puts out a performance on par with your average space marine making the concept of proper meat grinder tactics kind of pass by you without any kind of actual though about the true scale of casualties that would really be taken by these regiments.

[Gnoblar with Pointy Stick]

Ewww... What if the gender disproportion is because the Imperium releases a drug in the water that makes 75% of all births male...

I don't know what's creepier, that, or the possibility that the general exclusion of females in 40K is a calculated effort by the writers...

[eldargal]

The Imperium wouldn't do that because it would destroy their recruitment base within a century. Even a relatively small increase in the proportion of males to females in a population had a dramatic effect on birth rate.


Ewww... What if the gender disproportion is because the Imperium releases a drug in the water that makes 75% of all births male...

I don't know what's creepier, that, or the possibility that the general exclusion of females in 40K is a calculated effort by the writers...

[harrybuttwhisker]

I would imagine its because the majority of there customers are male and as such a male reader would feel more able to empathise with a male character. Similar to how they do there best to avoid writing stories were the main characters are aliens, again as humans how do we empathise with an alien character and indeed how does the author portray an alien psyche so that it reads as alien yet be understood and empathised with by the reader. I doubt its quite up to tolkeins level of misogyny, now there is someone who really hated women lol

[Gnoblar with Pointy Stick]

The Imperium wouldn't do that because it would destroy their recruitment base within a century. Even a relatively small increase in the proportion of males to females in a population had a dramatic effect on birth rate.

Unless they had horrible experiment victims chained up in laboratories who were modified to to be baby factories and...

I'm going to stop this idea right there. The Imperium is so effed up that it can cause the mind to wander into icky places...

[harrybuttwhisker]

Have you not read "dead sky, black sun" lol

[Melissia]

I would imagine its because the majority of their writers are male

Fixed.

[harrybuttwhisker]

So your jumping from the assumption that they are targeting to a specific market, to the assumption that because the writers are male they for some evil reason don't want to include women?

Yes the writers are male yet have managed to portray strong female characters very well, tona criid, the inquisitor from ciaphas cain or indeed the very female cast of faith and fire, or even the adeptus arbites female lead character for a trilogy of books. So obviously they are happy to and are capable of writing about females in there work. I believe my original statement was indeed correct and its far more likely that the workers are writing to there briefs to hit there target demographic and not because being male = being a sexist pig.

[Melissia]

People write what they know. I find it easier to write female characters, for example, and most of my fluff revolves around them.

And, by the way, by most I mean every single Black Library writer save one, whom is an assistant writer to her husband, is male.

[AirHorse]

totaly, if you want to get feminist then 40k aint the place to do it tbh :P

[Melissia]

It's nothing to do with feminism, merely that women can also be badasses in 40k, and there's just not enough of that. Amberley Vail in her power armor comes to mind... friggin' tossed a truck onto a pair of genestealers.

[Paul]

It's nothing to do with feminism, merely that women can also be badasses in 40k, and there's just not enough of that. Amberley Vail in her power armor comes to mind... friggin' tossed a truck onto a pair of genestealers.

That's very badass indeed.

The problem with the portrayal of females in 40K, though, isn't one of the writers being male. I think if the writers were female, they'd write male stories. Because they're writing for a bunch of twelve-to-eighteen year-olds who are, I would guesstimate, 85-95% male. They don't want to hear about Amberley Vail tossing a truck. They want to hear about either the:

1) mere humans like Mkoll obliterating poor Chaos troopers in Necropolis

2) Supermen who fight hand-to-hand with daemons from the warp and come out on top, like Dark Adeptus.

It's not that what Amberley Vail did isn't badass. It's that the readers (not writers) don't think she's manly enough to deserve their worship. So they play marines.

And they keep playing marines. And then more come. And then there's more Marines. And marines...and marines...and marines . . . *explode*

[harrybuttwhisker]

@paul careful there not a good idea to put forward a well reasoned argument in this here parts pardner lol

[Melissia]

... and they're getting more than enough of that crap with the rest of the fiction. Let the prepubescent little boys have their superhuman super-soldiers slaughtering slaaneshi slaves, they can still produce that AND have awesome female characters in a story, especially if it doesn't focus on Marines to begin with. I don't see why they're mutually exclusive, especially with this huge universe to write about.

[Paul]

... and they're getting more than enough of that crap with the rest of the fiction. Let the prepubescent little boys have their superhuman super-soldiers slaughtering slaaneshi slaves, they can still produce that AND have awesome female characters in a story, especially if it doesn't focus on Marines to begin with. I don't see why they're mutually exclusive, especially with this huge universe to write about.

Oh, they're not. Which is why you get characters like Tona Criid, from Necropolis, or that Eldar shining spear lady from Warrior Coven, or Thalassa from Dark Adeptus.

But those are all support characters for the manly-men, unfortunately, so they don't get the spotlight.

[Commissar Lewis]

Yeah 40k needs more badass chicks. Real life had a ton, like Blenda, Lydia Litvyak, Irina Sebrova, and many more on badassoftheweek.com.

Personally I like badass chicks, and 40k needs more of em.

[Kahoolin]

I doubt its quite up to tolkeins level of misogyny, now there is someone who really hated women lolOr Frank Herbert. "Women are manipulative witches who can control you with their voices! And they control birth so only the people they want get born! And they're everywhere and secret and there's nothing you can do! (Except Paul Atreides, who's a man that is better than all the women at their supposedly female powers)"

I have a love/hate relationship with Dune.

[Melissia]

Tolkien's fiction was kind of a mixed bag. There was one particular moment that was particularly wallbanger near the end of Return of the King though..

[Commissar Lewis]

Tolkien's fiction was kind of a mixed bag. There was one particular moment that was particularly wallbanger near the end of Return of the King though..

Wallbanger, high five for the trope reference Mel.

Though I've never read LotR, myself. Should get on that once I've worked through Lovecraft's works.

[Kahoolin]

Though I've never read LotR, myself. Should get on that once I've worked through Lovecraft's works.If you are still sane mwahahaha!

[AirHorse]

It's nothing to do with feminism, merely that women can also be badasses in 40k, and there's just not enough of that. Amberley Vail in her power armor comes to mind... friggin' tossed a truck onto a pair of genestealers.

Pretty much all the women in 40k are portrayed as badasses tbh... theres not very many women in the fluff or novels ive read who cant handle themselves. I personally think women get a pretty good representation in terms of badassery, I dont see the women getting unfairly represented at all.

Of course the numbers arent even, but then that is purely a representation of the fanbase, there is no disputing that, and if you are trying to then quite frankly what I said before is a perfectly valid comment :)

also as a side note, for someone who seems to hate the popularity of superhuman uber warriors thats an odd choice of example in favour of women :P

[Gnoblar with Pointy Stick]

Because they're writing for a bunch of twelve-to-eighteen year-olds who are, I would guesstimate, 85-95% male.


The word "guesstimate" makes my organs want to crawl out of my body and go throw themselves in front of trucks. That being said, you are correct.



Personally I like badass chicks, and 40k needs more of em.

I think you guys are thinking on strictly Imperial terms here. There are plenty of awesome women in Xeno armies. The "Imperium of Man" kind of makes sense as a sexist society. Eldar Society, for example, does not.

[Melissia]

"Man" is an overarching term for humanity (similar to Mankind), and has been for quite some time in English-- while some people would go on a feminist rant about it I'm sure, I don't see it as sexist myself. It is not, however, "Imperium of Male", which refers only to one gender.

The Imperium isn't necessarily sexist IMO anyway, it's just the (majority of) writers GW employs aren't very good at portraying the universe they talk about save for suped-up superhuman super soldiers Space Marines.

[Commissar Lewis]

Yeah there are a few good writers but a lot of em are a bit less than stellar.

[harrybuttwhisker]

The Imperium isn't necessarily sexist IMO anyway, it's just the (majority of) writers GW employs aren't very good at portraying the universe they talk about save for suped-up superhuman super soldiers Space Marines.

This I can agree with, even ignoring the gender issues sometimes I feel they would be better served having less uber pimpage regular humans, they seem to treat them the same way as space marines perpetrating all sorts of uber feats of doom. Its supposed to be a dangerous unpleasant short lived universe yet some characters waltz through without a scratch. Surely if you want to make your reader care about your characters you should make them interesting, vulnerable and put in peril were it isnt obvious if they will survive.

Look at band of brothers, not fiction I know, but the way characters are lost sometimes heroically, sometimes due to random pointless tragedy etc the characters become more real and vivid as you become more gripped in the short snapshots afforded of them.

[Commissar Lewis]

Yeah Band of Brothers is a god-tier show.

I contend that any man that doesn't like BoB needs to have his balls revoked.

It's true, though. Having characters in danger of actually dying makes them more real and adds more shock if they die. Such as the Gaunt's Ghosts series.

[LoverzCry]

In the IG novels actually they repeatedly say that their women are kept on the homeworlds for breeding soldiers. There is one female warrior in the IG in the book Ice Guard that I know of and the only reason she's not a breeder is because her goods are spoiled. : / The same could happen to other women, and thus beside the Sister of Battle there usually aren't many women outside the kitchens.

[Melissia]

This would be the first I've heard of it. Women are regularly conscripted into the Guard (not as regularly as men, but it's not uncommon to find female-only regiments for example), they participate in the Mechanicus as techpriestesses, they're administratum agents, governors, royalty, etc. Aside from Dark Heresy, there really isn't an in depth description of the life of a common person and what perils they face that I've seen. Dark Heresy has this to say on the subject: "On some planets, however, as the GM determines, being a female will present its own extra challenges." Basically stating "some" planets meaning that they are in the minority.

[Paul]

You know, one of my favorite 40k characters in all the fluff is a woman.

Adept Zeth from Mechanicum. Mostly machine, the rest woman. With an ordinatus weapon hidden in the middle of her personal abode.

Also, the inventor/co-inventor of wireless internet. XD

[Kahoolin]

Look at band of brothers, not fiction I know, but the way characters are lost sometimes heroically, sometimes due to random pointless tragedy etc the characters become more real and vivid as you become more gripped in the short snapshots afforded of them.Band of Brothers is not fiction?

[Melissia]

It's... VERY loosely based off of actual history.

[L192837465]

This would be the first I've heard of it. Women are regularly conscripted into the Guard (not as regularly as men, but it's not uncommon to find female-only regiments for example), they participate in the Mechanicus as techpriestesses, they're administratum agents, governors, royalty, etc. Aside from Dark Heresy, there really isn't an in depth description of the life of a common person and what perils they face that I've seen. Dark Heresy has this to say on the subject: "On some planets, however, as the GM determines, being a female will present its own extra challenges." Basically stating "some" planets meaning that they are in the minority.

Careful... you never know, soon woman will be able to vote. God help us if that happens.

[originoo]

You know, one of my favorite 40k characters in all the fluff is a woman.

Adept Zeth from Mechanicum. Mostly machine, the rest woman. With an ordinatus weapon hidden in the middle of her personal abode.

Also, the inventor/co-inventor of wireless internet. XD

And in the same novel Dalia Cythera is one of the non-badass-female characters, who play the main role.

[LoverzCry]

It's nothing to do with feminism, merely that women can also be badasses in 40k, and there's just not enough of that. Amberley Vail in her power armor comes to mind... friggin' tossed a truck onto a pair of genestealers.

The Black Library isn't going to point out and expand on every single possibly important or "badass" female character in the fluff because there just aren't that many of them. Look at the military as it is now, how many women do you see getting hardcore missions compared to men? Or how often they're portrayed in the photographs for enlistment? This isn't me being sexist here, but it's how it is. Women aren't typically seen as "belonging" on the battlefield. When people think of the word "War", they don't think of huge ripped women swarming through the battlefield, but a mass of men. Getting a little off topic and more into the human physiology, men are built stronger and more durable than women, built for war. I will agree though, it's awesome to come across a female badass every once in a while as you're flipping through the pages of a tome from the Black Library. ; P

[Melissia]

Look at the military as it is now, how many women do you see getting hardcore missions compared to men

No, you dip****, because women aren't allowed to. Although I should note women in the Air Force have actually done some very badass things. One in particular had her A10 take ridiculous amounts of damage, but through sheer skill managed to pilot it to a perfect landing in an airfield several hours away, with damaged hydraulic systems, disabled flight controls, no landing gear, and no stabilizer or breaks.

What have YOU done that's that badass? Nothing, I reckon.

Or how about Lieutenant Lyudmila Pavlichenko, a sniper with over 300 confirmed kills, making her in the top five snipers in the entire history of sniping? And she did it in the chill of winter, and the only reason she stopped there is because the Soviet government wanted to use her for propaganda purposes and so pulled her off the line.




As a side note, I've actually heard it argued that women are biologically better built for being pilots, as our bodies are better able to handle high Gs. A cursory google search does not provide me with much reputable information on this subject (merely that it was being investigated), so I'll just leave it at that.

[eldargal]

When two of my brothers were at Sandhurst, I asked a chap ('m not going to say who) there at a party about this, and he said it was widely accepted that women made better pilots, submariners and snipers than men, but not so good as front line infantry, or artillery. It was just afriendly conversation and he didn't cite sources, so take it for what it is.


No, you dip****, because women aren't allowed to. Although I should note women in the Air Force have actually done some very badass things. One in particular had her A10 take ridiculous amounts of damage, but through sheer skill managed to pilot it to a perfect landing in an airfield several hours away, with damaged hydraulic systems, disabled flight controls, no landing gear, and no stabilizer or breaks.

What have YOU done that's that badass? Nothing, I reckon.

Or how about Lieutenant Lyudmila Pavlichenko, a sniper with over 300 confirmed kills, making her in the top five snipers in the entire history of sniping? And she did it in the chill of winter, and the only reason she stopped there is because the Soviet government wanted to use her for propaganda purposes and so pulled her off the line.




As a side note, I've actually heard it argued that women are biologically better built for being pilots, as our bodies are better able to handle high Gs. A cursory google search does not provide me with much reputable information on this subject (merely that it was being investigated), so I'll just leave it at that.

[Just_Me]

As a side note, I've actually heard it argued that women are biologically better built for being pilots, as our bodies are better able to handle high Gs. A cursory google search does not provide me with much reputable information on this subject (merely that it was being investigated), so I'll just leave it at that.

That is a theory I have heard as well, it seems to be based on the fact that women on average can withstand slightly greater g-forces than men. I don't know whether it has been born out by further testing.

Quite apart from that, the whole "men built stronger" argument is a bunch of bullcrap. While it is true that the average man has greater strength than the average woman, in truth that applies only to upper body strength, men and women have comparable lower body strength, and women may actually have proportionally greater lower body strength (it has to do with the hips, women generally have slightly wider hips which provides greater leverage, but again we are talking about fairly large generalizations and minor differences).

The idea that men's bodies are better suited to warfare is a holdover from ancient times and can be traced back to two major factors. First, in pre-firearm warfare, the defining factor in combat was who could swing a large chunk of (possibly sharpened) metal/wood at another guy's head with greater force. For this purpose upper body strength was quite important, so women would have been at a disadvantage. Even this isn't a hard rule, training can make a huge difference here, I'm 6'3" and the three most formidable martial artists I have ever trained with were all MUCH smaller and one of them was a women. Second, in the days before modern medicine it was quite common for women to die in childbirth, this meant two things; that there would tend to be more healthy men of age available to fight, and that women represented a limited and vital "resource" in the breeding population, so risking additional mortality rates in combat would be unwise.

By contrast, in modern combat the defining physical requirements are the ability to move quickly through terrain on foot and aim and fire a rifle. Because women have roughly equal lower body strength to men they just as capable when it comes to marching, and differences in upper body strength are essentially irrelevant to using a firearm. As a case in point target shooting is one of the very few sports where men and women compete against each other, and women perform just as well as men, for example I'm a fairly skilled marksmen, but two of my sisters are at least as good if not better than I am. It's true there might be some slight differences in performance, but such differences should fall well within the range expected in variance between individuals.

In short, no matter how you slice it there really is no rational argument based on physiology for saying that women cannot/should not serve in combat in modern military forces. Any argument to the contrary can only be based on shortsighted biases or enduring social preconceptions.

[The_Ancient]

When two of my brothers were at Sandhurst, I asked a chap ('m not going to say who) there at a party about this, and he said it was widely accepted that women made better pilots, submariners and snipers than men, but not so good as front line infantry, or artillery. It was just afriendly conversation and he didn't cite sources, so take it for what it is.

I can understand that women may make better snipers and pilots on average (probably to do with multi-tasking skills and patience) but as far as i was aware women aren't even allowed to be sub-mariners in the armed forces something to do with high pressure and its affect on the womb.

but as to women as soldiers i think it is to do more with the mindset of women as opposed to physical limitations. In general women are less aggressive and competative than men not to say their aren't exceptions but if you were to pick 100 people off the street for service I think more men in the sample may make better soldiers than the women (although the women in the sample that are good may be better soldiers).

in 40k however I think the black library has quite a few bad *** female characters (althoughrarely are they protagonist). The women portrayed in 40k often fall into two catagories:

the powerful aging matriarch: guard commander/ship captain/planetary governor etc or....

sexy mystery woman: inquisitor, circus performer,psyker etc

which exposes the writings target audience :teen boys
who can boil these characters down to

ya Mam

or that bird at school you fancy.

just my two penneth;)

[Melissia]

I don't buy the idea that women are less competitive than men...

I'm very competitive, myself, and quite frankly the competition that girls in high school go thorugh is fierce and oftentimes just plain vicious...

Hell even in 40k this is true. Ciaphas Cain basically said the ruling champs on the sports field at most schola progenium institutions were actually the Adepta Sororitas Novitiates, whom were downright MEAN to their opponents in how competitive they were. Not all of these Novitiates would become Sisters of Battle.

[Faultie]

As a side note, I've actually heard it argued that women are biologically better built for being pilots, as our bodies are better able to handle high Gs. A cursory google search does not provide me with much reputable information on this subject (merely that it was being investigated), so I'll just leave it at that.
This is one of those suppositions that's been suggested at some point and carried forward without significant evidence. Most studies I've read (granted, only about a half-dozen) have said that the difference is either insignificant, or in fact the opposite. The mechanisms of why/why not are somewhat understood, but there really isn't a great sum of research out there (that I'm aware of).

I think it's just another one of those accepted-as-fact myths, like the idea that extreme aerobic conditioning (like a serious runner/swimmer/triathlete/etc.) leads to decreased G tolerance. There no evidence to support it, but I've noted its mention in multiple places.

All that said, I'm sure you could make a case either way in a scifi book by using technobabble and handwavium. There's little fluff-reason why there aren't more women in the books, but there's plenty of marketing reasons.

[Melissia]

Given the number of males who play females in MMOs, I dunno about the marketing thing. Marketing itself has a bunch of widely accepted beliefs that may or may not be true (either ever, or just anymore).

[Fellend]

Okay: I know this is going to sound sexist and what not but I base this on actual reality.
Women are not as strong as men. Tought luck. Having done military service with one fourth of the plutoon being female I can tell you that they do not possess the same strenght as a man.

Standard combat test required to go abroad and do service: Run 2 km with full combat gear in under 11m 15 sec. for men. Sucess rate 94.4%
For women 12m 25 seconds. Sucess rate 0,8% And that includes all female officers.

Basic Combat rescue. Sucess rate male 100% Sucess rate female 0%
Basic Hand to hand combat Sucess rate male 100% Sucess rate female 50% (only based on my own plutoon)
Basic Tactical advance Sucess rate male 80% Sucess rate female 25%

I could go on. Before you say that military service is just running and shooting a gun. Actually do it. it's running with loads of equipment on your body, it's carrying your fallen mates, its digging huge holes, it's carrying huge equipment, it's getting this equipment set up. It's really, really, really heavy work. Something most women aren't cut out for. And I can tell you, all of the women that entered were trained way above the average man. I respect everyone but one of them and they did a great service. But will they ever be frontline infantry? No. The female body isn't cut out for that. Do they make great radio operators? "Techpriests" "Engiseers" Support staff, field medics and other support roles. Yes, yes they do.

There's a reason as to why most women in the army end up in support roles, it's because they can't handle the physical requirments to pass the combat duties. And before you go on and say that "Oh but I could" Go on. please run 2km with about 30 kgs on your back, in bad boots and preferably bad weather. carrying a 5 kilo stick. It'll be great fun...

So is there a reason as to why the imperial guard isn't putting women on the front line, yes. Real world terms. they are worse soldiers. Especially if we take into account that they do actually have to march like a Napoleon army, and go into hand to hand combat with... well everything from Nid's to Chaos Space Marines.

That is not taking into the account that for women to have these babies and for the babies to grow up and become good soldiers they need to be safe and protected. Women fighting are not it. A proper breeding program would actually keep the women home or back on ship so they can breed in peace while the men do the dying. You think there's a reason as to why it's always been like this in history? Maybe because it works.


Futhermore there's the reason that the author doesn't like to write about women and children dying. men are okay to die in droves, we are faceless masses. But when women and children die it is more emotional.
There's also the fact that warhammer is a story about war, war and more war. Women add a factor of possible romance and emotion that doesn't really belong in the warhammer world. In most 40k books i've read it's basically just "oh great, you are pretty, sex, yeah we never see each other again, because i'm off to die somewhere else" (Eisenhorn being a refreshing change)

Even space marines who apparantly doesn't have much in the way of romantic emotions have to deal with it as soon as some pretty thing comes along. yeah you could just ignore it, but... that would be just as annoying are we to believe that all humans have no romantic emotions anymore?

There are in the end alot of reason as to why there aren't alot of women in the books. but in the end I'm going to go with people want war, war, war and more war. preferably cool looking war. And if you ask most males who they would rather see doing war. They'll say males. if you want girls fighting write your own stuff. Hell I've read some of your stuff Melissa, it's good.

[Gooball]

As a side note, I've actually heard it argued that women are biologically better built for being pilots, as our bodies are better able to handle high Gs. A cursory google search does not provide me with much reputable information on this subject (merely that it was being investigated), so I'll just leave it at that.

Actually it's the other way around (i dont really care about the arguement here) women are not suited to high Gs because their uterus detaches . . .
Random and unhelpful but oh well im full of facts that means nothing!
As for the whole men/women thing it depends on the individual really, if you're lazy and don't excercise then you aint gonna be built like a tank (I sure as hell aint) the whole men stronger than women probably comes from men being more inclined to actually go out and do stuff like that. ( I avoid effort like a skaven)

[Melissia]

Actually it's the other way around (i dont really care about the arguement here) women are not suited to high Gs because their uterus detaches . . .

... no. That'd be like saying men can't withstand high Gs because their ballsacks tear.

[Gooball]

Which doesn't happen.
But apparently that thing can happen at high Gs (im talking 'bout those planes that are Reeeeaaallllyyy fast here)
As it is ... meh who really cares? if you as a person want to go for it then go for it, theres nothing stopping ya'
I agree with the marketing thing, some people really just write books cos it's a good career and for a good career you need money :P

[Melissia]

I never saw a single report of what you claim happened actually happening when I did my research, even cursory as it was I'd think it would have shown up.

[harrybuttwhisker]

women are g resistant as have a shorter heart to head distance so is easier to pump blood under g reducing chance of black out, women make good snipers because they have a more shallow respiratory rate and less. forceful heart beat which means a steadier aim.

Men make better from line soldiers due to higher muscle density allowing better hand to hand combat strength, throw things further i.e. grenades, carry more ammunition and are able to carry wounded more easily.

Im in pretty good shape, mostly muscle but still rock in at 18stone and most women just couldnt handle dragging or carrying me as deadweight. However Im capable of carrying two average size women fairly over reasonable distances. This could be a potential problem in a mixed unit.

However its sci-fi not real life, i say why not have some uber-broads lol

[Melissia]

And I'm stronger than the average male, doesn't really mean much. The average, untrained person isn't very strong to begin with-- they can barely lift their own weight, if that much, male OR female.

[Melissia]

After doing a bit more research, I found an article (here (http://www.saunalahti.fi/~fta/physiolo.htm)), which seems to indicate one of the biggest problems that female pilots (in the US) have is that the high-G suits just don't fit their bodies properly, and therefor they are not able to handle high Gs as well. The problem isn't the uterus (which makes no sense from a biological standpoint), but rather tha neck.

Other (http://www.websciences.org/cftemplate/NAPS/archives/indiv.cfm?ID=19990230) articles state there is not enough consistent differences between the performances of the two genders, even under adverse conditions (sleep deprivation in this case) to justify preventing women from flying.

Similarly, in another study (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18849869), female soldiers were shown to have only very small differences from male soldiers except in the area of upper body strength, but in overall fitness females actually performed slightly better than males (lacking, again, primarily in upper body strength).


So basically women would have slightly better stamina, while men would have better upper body strength. The real reason blocking women from service isn't biology so much as it is culture, which IMO would be far less prevalent in the Imperium with its countless trillions.

[Faultie]

Uterus detaching? Really? That's, perhaps, one of the most absurd claims I've ever heard. If there is even one recorded case of such a catastrophe, I'll go eat a lime. Whole.

I've seen those articles Melissia cites, and know of a few others (I'll look for them if anyone's actually interested in reading). They all pretty much agree. Ill-fitting flightsuits was an issue some years ago (maybe a decade?), but the only physiological reason I recall had to do with the endurance levels of the techniques fighter pilots use ("pushing", etc.) to keep blood flowing so they don't black out. Males had an advantage in terms of being able to keep this up for extended periods, but if I remember correctly, it was a very small advantage (<10%?). I would assume that with proper conditioning, this would be alleviated as an issue.

Heart-to-head distance, detached-uterus...I'd love to see a legitimate research article with evidence for detaching uteri in female fighter pilots. I can't think of any physiological reason such a thing would happen. The craziest, most far-fetched idea I can think of is rapid decompression causing some sort of severe barotraumatic injury and rupturing the uterus...but that sounds ridiculous even as I type it. (As an aside, you'd also suffer ruptured eardrums, sinus hemorrhaging, and pulmonary barotrauma...in other words, you're boned, whether you're male or female).

Back on topic: More female characters!

[eldargal]

Ok, I found a book on Aerospace medicine and it says that uterinal rupture COULD occur (no available studies to show if it has) in a pregnant pilot in her second or third trimester. First trimester might result in an aborted fetus with little harm done to the mother, leaving her capable of flying and landing the plane. This is in relation to 'women flying high performance military aircraft or performing aerial acrobatics'.

Fundamentals of Aerospace Medicine, Davis, Johnson, Stepanek & Fogarty, 2008ed, Lipincott, Williams & Wilkins, Philadelphia.


Bear in mind that the way the Imperial Guard operates varies from planet to planet. Some planets may maintain a stringent level of quality control like modern Western militaries which would make it difficult for most women to meet basic fitness standards (if that premise is correct), others might just be happy if you can point and fire a lasgun. We know Cadia recruits female women, and they guard the Cadian Gate.

[Faultie]

We know Cadia recruits female women, and they guard the Cadian Gate.
I call BS on female women in the Cadian guard. :p

[RogueGarou]

There are physiological differences common to the female gender which have not been taken into account when designing pieces of military gear. As noted above, flight suits and particularly the g suits were not originally designed with a woman's frame in mind. The positioning of stress points, joints, distribution of physical mass, musculature configuration, weight, and a typically shorter and/or slighter skeletal framework could all contribute to some variance in gender performance under a high g stress.

However, there are differences in the physiology which may equal or tip the scales in favor of one gender or the other. Over time the male body has been conditioned to be more expendable than the female. Males can typically endure brief bouts of high stress or sudden spikes in stressors. This may be a more psychological development than a physical development, though. The female body is more capable of withstanding longer-term stress and coping with the associated side effects of extended stresses than the male body. I would think that in the case of a fighter pilot this would not come into play on either gender as the high g's encountered during combat manuvers are limited to several seconds.

A couple of examples of the physiologic differences and their effect or lack of effect could include the following. Astronauts being transported to and from orbit are exposed to a high g environment for a longer time than fighter pilots. I have not heard of any reports of women experiencing severe physical damage during spaceflight. Additionally, due to the unique design of the hips and load bearing of the body frame, women are typically at an advantage when firing a rifle from a conventional standing position. That bit of information came from one of my rifle instructors on the range one day. So, as a pilot, with equally well designed gear and flying the same aircraft, a woman may have a slight advantage under certain circumstances and a man may have one under other circumstances. Basically equal. Also, reclined seats afford either sex a better ability to handle and recover from high g stresses on the body. In a ground combat situation, you may see similar occurrences. In some ways each gender may have a slight advantage. Those advantages can often be overcome with training and discipline, though. So in pretty much all regards, we have a fairly equal baseline.

Where the difference in gender becomes problematic is in the psychological perceptions and ideas ingrained into people and the design of the equipment being issued. It has been demonstrated that wearing the conventional body armor issued to troops works quite well for men. We are generally a fairly simple geometric design with variances based on size or the frame and those geometries remain fairly constant. A woman's body is not a man's body and in some instances wearing the standard issue body armor could be akin to a death sentence. For example, one of the more obvious differences between the genders is the presence of pronounced mammalian glandular development, or breasts if we can all agree not to act like teenagers and begin snickering. The presence of breasts changes the way body armor disperses energy from an impact across the thoracic region. This can cause a catastrophic failure of the armor allowing it to be breached more easily. It can also result in additional trauma even if the armor maintains structural integrity. This additional trauma could cause a shock to the heart, lungs, soft tissues and other organs. One report I had read on the matter even cited a couple of instances of a rifle round not penetrating the armor but causing such a significant impact to the chest as to stop the heart.

Additionally, the breasts and differences in shape of the body and proportions can cause oblique (side) protection to be compromised. It can cause some pieces of equipment to be uncomfortable to wear or carry and could in extreme cases be as debilitating as gear in use before design was perfected. For example, the boots used by the Pathfinders of Great Britain were essentially a forty year old design and many of the Pathfinders were buying commercially available footwear to keep from breaking their ankles during airborne deployments. Or the poor design of the WW1 era packs which were uncomfortable and practically useless if needed to be packed and unpacked quickly.

Women can certainly fulfill combat roles effectively. The Israeli and Soviet militaries have a history of allowing women into combat roles and they have performed their duties as required.

[eldargal]

Hey, it was something like 2am when I wrote that.:P Insomnia ftw.


I call BS on female women in the Cadian guard. :p

RogueGarou makes some very good points. Re armour, I seem to remember either the IDF or US Marines started issuing specially designed female only body armour to their female soldiers (may be the men if they asked nicely?) for the reasons RogueGarou mentioned.
I tried on some body armour once, made for a small sized male. It was tight at the chest and too big at the waist and was incredible uncomfortable and I wuld not have been let near a battlefield in it.
I did hear one reason why the US were trying to keep their women out of front line roles was the damage done to unit morale when women they knew were killed in combat. I vaguely remember hearing about a truck load of female marines being blown up, and the morale of a couple of hundred other marines suffered significantly for it.

[RogueGarou]

I forgot to add that as these physiologic differences are being studied, production of better equipment is resulting. Some manufacturers of body armor have already begun offering protective gear designed for a woman's torso. There is more customization required as the body shapes and types introduce more variables into the design and construction of the armor but it is well worth the increase in protection and reliability.

I will now move my comments away from the serious and back to our chosen hobby. I want female Imperial Guard troopers. I have purchased pretty much all of the female Guard models, if not all of them, since Rogue Trader. I notice that they do not have armor. There is even the silly Last Chancer model in a Xena-style skirt and a tank top wearing a helmet. They really do not fit in with my Cadians or Tanith. Except the female Tanith who is equipped like her male counterparts. The female Commissar also fits to a degree as most Commissars are not wearing combat armor, just a great coat and cap. A real plastic or metal female Cadian trooper would make my day. Even better, a sprue. Even available only direct from GW or Forgeworld would be acceptable. But, aside from some artistic license, I would want the models or sprues to be somewhat realistic.

I am also a fan and player of the Sisters. I like the models, even though they are a bit (lot) exaggerated. I see other armies with female models in plastic and metal. And I see other manufacturers making good female models who seem to have no problem finding more than three ounces of armor so why can't GW, with all of their resources and talent, provide a few female models for the Guard?

Here endeth the rant and my two cents in the thread.

[RogueGarou]

Hey, it was something like 2am when I wrote that.:P Insomnia ftw.



RogueGarou makes some very good points. Re armour, I seem to remember either the IDF or US Marines started issuing specially designed female only body armour to their female soldiers (may be the men if they asked nicely?) for the reasons RogueGarou mentioned.
I tried on some body armour once, made for a small sized male. It was tight at the chest and too big at the waist and was incredible uncomfortable and I wuld not have been let near a battlefield in it.
I did hear one reason why the US were trying to keep their women out of front line roles was the damage done to unit morale when women they knew were killed in combat. I vaguely remember hearing about a truck load of female marines being blown up, and the morale of a couple of hundred other marines suffered significantly for it.

Yes, ma'am, you are correct on both your observation and what you had heard about morale. In a previous life I helped women with self-defense and had quite a bit of experience with firearms and protective measures. I don't recall many, if any, women saying the armor was comfortable. And this was primarily civilian model Kevlar, SpectraShield and the like. It is better than the alternative, though. Like riding a motorcycle. There is always the one in a thousand fall in which wearing a helmet will snap your neck and kill or paralyze you. You wear the helmet for other 999 falls.

The effect on morale is partly due to ingrained stereotypes and gender roles, even somethings that have been hammered into our skulls for hundreds or thousands of years. Men are fairly simple. We have been raised and bred for generations with the instinct to mate and the instinct to kill. They are primal things in our psyche. We have also been raised by our mothers. In times when the father would be working from before sunrise until after sunset tending a farm, hunting, or away waging war or sailing or whatever else was required, it was the mother who raised the children, tended farm near the homestead, and was imprinted upon our mind more than the father. Somewhere in our brains we have picked up that women are to be protected to guard our genetic legacy, that they are to be possessed, and that they are more important than men. Ask many a man what they treasure and they will mention a woman, whether their mother, sister, wife, girlfriend, or just females in general.

To see someone associated with something they treasure die in a brutal manner or be maimed could very well affect the psyche of a soldier greatly. A recent example of the dynamic involved would be the young woman who was captured in Iraq and rescued from an Iraqi hospital. The way she was treated seemed different than the way a returning male soldier would be treated. In both cases the returning soldier would be treated with respect but in her case there was considerably greater attention, from the media definitely, to her comfort and condition. Any wounded soldier should be treated with the greatest respect and care by their countrymen and women but how much of this was an attempt to salve the subconscious pain at seeing a woman injured in such a way?

There are definite psychological differences in how a person reacts to seeing combat and those differences will extend to how seeing the opposite gender harmed in combat will impact the soldiers around them. As well as addressing the physical needs of a woman in uniform, the psychological needs of the men and women around them must also be accounted for, considered, and mitigated.

I am not trying to sound like a jerk, I am just saying that we big, macho men will probably have a problem with seeing a woman disemboweled or maimed by anti-personnel weapons for a very long time. I fully support any woman who understands the risks of being a combat duty soldier and meets the proficiencies required for the role she selects. As pointed out above, women typically have less upper body strength than men but it only takes a few pounds of pressure to pull a trigger. And I have seen women (wo)manhandle(?) a M-249 as well as many men.

Anyway, now I have probably stirred up enough of a hornet's nest within both genders. Time to kiss my daughter, son, and wife good night. I guess this endeth my four cents in the thread for the evening. And please do not take what I say offensively. I am just positing some ideas for discussion and not trying to rile anyone up.

[Melissia]

Males can typically endure brief bouts of high stress or sudden spikes in stressors.
News flash, the female body is designed specifically TO handle that. Birth is not a gentle, painless procedure. There is a physiological difference, but our culture exaggerates the differences far too much.

[Kahoolin]

News flash, the female body is designed specifically TO handle that. Birth is not a gentle, painless procedure. There is a physiological difference, but our culture exaggerates the differences far too much.With all due respect Mel, giving birth is precisely the opposite of a brief spike of high stress. It is a long drawn out stress.

I'm pretty sure it's well known scientifically* that males and females have different sorts of pain and stress tolerance. If a female is prepared for a pain they can endure it far better than a male can. On the other hand, if something unexpected happens quickly, a male is unlikely to feel it until afterwards whereas a female will feel it as it happens, which is likely to compromise their response. But yeah, probably a miniscule difference and not worth worrying about really.

*No, I'm not going to research and cite something, because that's what I do in my work, and the day I do that in an informal discussion on a wargaming forum is the day Hell freezes over! :D

[Fellend]

I like how I'm just ignored =P But really, high G's is that something the guard even have to face alot of? with exception to maybe the initial landing they fight on the ground. And once again, on the ground women make for worse soldiers than men.

I'd add that maybe the women are more common in PDF's because they can stay home, breed and still do their duties while the IG goes off world and is more elite (due to more strength)

If nothing else it's basic math, The average male weighs around 85kilos, the average women weighs around 60 kilos, military gear weighs around 30 kilos (probably slightly less as i'd image las cells weighs less than actual bullets) Which means that women are from the start carrying about half their body weight while the men are only carrying 1/3. Does that make a huge difference? Yes yes it does.

[Gooball]

Seriously >.< This has got to be one of the most skewed threads i have ever read.
I've played WoW though so i have seen people get from overpriced items to Chinas economy o.O

[Gnoblar with Pointy Stick]

"Man" is an overarching term for humanity (similar to Mankind).

I FRIGGEN' KNOW THAT. Jeez. Sarcasm....
That would be the most retarded sexist conspiracy ever.
"Let's use an existing piece of terminology to be cruel towards women, but not change it!"
"How will people know if we don't change the term?"
"They wont! That's the beauty!"
'So it's pointless?"
"Yes! We'll just think about the terminology differently, so as to be mean!"


The Imperium isn't necessarily sexist IMO anyway, it's just the (majority of) writers GW employs aren't very good at portraying the universe they talk about save for suped-up superhuman super soldiers Space Marines.
With a great deal of respect, bull-freakin'-sh*t.:D
The Imperium would exhibit every "ism" and "schism" known to "man"kind. That's kind of the point. I look at the Imperium's struggle in the universe as a people fighting evils that they've brought on themselves with the same evils that got them in trouble in the first place. You know, like the Democratic party in America (not to be confused with its more evil twin, the Republican Party).

Where was I going with this?
Oh, yeah. Regardless of whether or not it's in the fluff, something like the Imperium couldn't exist without being sexist, racist, classist, speciesist, homophobic, heterosexist, pachydermist, genreist, hydrophobic, etc. It's an evil, patriarchal society. I say patriarchal because of the MALE GOD EMPEROR!

Oh, and I too have seen the research you cited Melissia. It's all legit.
I once tried to write a paper on the physiological differences between men and women and their effects on society. It was the hardest paper I've ever written. I read all this stuff in scientific journals like "Men are more sensitive to high temperatures" only to have the next journal say "Men are more sensitive to high temperatures, but only in liquid." By the time I read a research article that said "This just in! Women are more sensitive to high temperatures!" I was like **** this **** and just wrote a paper on ridiculous myths like the aforementioned "detaching Uteri." It's much easier to prove something is wrong in science to prove it is correct.

By the by, what does "IMO" stand for?

[Melissia]

I would actually argue the Imperium couldn't exist without NOT being sexist. The Imperium would need to completely and efficiently utilize the entirety of its population, not just around half.

No, the Imperium isn't sexist. It oppresses both genders equally.

[L192837465]

Bunch of crap


IMO = In My Opinion.

I agree (and I cannot believe I'm saying this) with Melissa. The imperium oppresses everyone equally.

[Fellend]

Well they do opress everyone but not necessarily in the same way.

But I don't think gender equality is something that the Imperium cares about. If you can serve you can serve. Planetary customs might have more varied views however.

[Melissia]

They don't care about gender equality because they don't give a **** what gender you are, so long as you serve the Imperium loyally and aren't caught in the wrong place at the wrong time (which can mean anywhere an Inquisitor decides to show up or pay attention to or send an agent to or... well, anywhere at any time).

[Madness]

Yeah, but still, testosterone is testosterone, hanging out with army buffs is a job for a tough guy, and testosterone helps there.

[therealjohnny5]

i hate to say this as i haven't been following the most recent posts on this thread, so feel free to tell me it's been covered, but while i don't have a problem with the idea of female in the military, in the 40K millennium, it seems like one of two things would happen based on the ridiculous body count that seems to build up. Unless humanity has been genetically altered to be super fertile, then it seems to me either women would out number men and then need to be conscripted into the military or women would have to be forced to basically be breeders right? how else would the imperium manage to maintain the war of attrition they are known for?

[Melissia]

Yeah, but still, testosterone is testosterone, hanging out with army buffs is a job for a tough guy, and testosterone helps there.

I think you don't quite understand testosterone then... both genders require it, and oftentimes the female body produces just as much as the male body. Kinda like how Estrogen is vital in order for an infant male to develop a "male" type brain.

[LoverzCry]

Gyahaha, this was such a troll thread xD Everyone's wrong, nobody's right. Derp.

[Melissia]

This is not a troll thread. I was quite serious.

[Sparda]

It's like Just Me said, the writers seem like they normally think of our modern military where it's mostly male dominated, I've read quite a few BL books and got the feeling that there were to few women, So as Commissar Lewis said, "In the grim dark future, there are only sausage fests, I guess."

[Grubnar]

Maybe it's just the fact that the writers don't know what the crap they're doing, but it seems to me that there should actually be more women in the Imperium than men. A great deal of the men are conscripted into the Guard, or on certain planets killed off early in the attempts to find recruits for the Space Marines, or conscripted into the Skiitani, adopted into the Schola Progenium, or into the Arbites-- all of these organizations are depicted as mostly or entirely male in the fiction from what I can tell.

... and yet... somehow... most fiction that depicts civilians shows them as also mostly male (Dark Heresy, the Ciaphas Cain series, etc spring to mind). It doesn't really make much sense, apparently going by the fiction that there is Humanity in the year 40,000 is suffering from a shortage of women? Like out of every 100 citizen there's 30 females and 70 males? Personally I would think that this would mean there SHOULD be a disproportionate amount of women in the civilian population of worlds that are not entirely militarized (like Armageddon or Cadia), simply because of how many men they turn over to the Guard every year as tithes, and their own PDF as well which tend to be all-male in the depictions.

I know, thinking too deeply into science fiction (which itself is almost never internally consistent), but it always made me scratch my head at how stupid it seemed.

While you make a good point I must ask, have you even read the Ciaphas Cain novels??
I ask because I think there must be more female characters in those books than all the others combined.
Half the regiment he is with is made up of women, their general is a woman, the iquisidor he regulary meets is a woman, his arch-nemisis is a woman, and alot of the suporting characters he bumps into are women (he is a bit of a womeniser)

But yes, you are right. The drim darkness of the far future need more women!

[Subject Keyword]

I would actually argue the Imperium couldn't exist without NOT being sexist. The Imperium would need to completely and efficiently utilize the entirety of its population, not just around half.

No, the Imperium isn't sexist. It oppresses both genders equally.

Ummm... I'd say that, for instance, the diamond miners in South Africa are among both the worlds most "completely and efficiently utilized," and the worlds most oppressed. Oppressed does not equal "not utilised." In fact it means the precise opposite in most cases. And if the argument is that it oppresses everyone, you open up the whole "separate but equal" can of worms. I'd prefer not to do that.:rolleyes:


I think you don't quite understand testosterone then... both genders require it, and oftentimes the female body produces just as much as the male body. Kinda like how Estrogen is vital in order for an infant male to develop a "male" type brain.

Hah! Yeah, you should see what happens to the male body when it has an estrogen deficiency. Sex drive and appetite disappear, you start getting hairs in places YOU DON'T WANT HAIRS, you smell awful. Women with low testosterone have a VERY difficult time getting wet during sexual stimulation (which is super important). Pretty much nothing would be any fun if men were full of testosterone and women were full of estrogen.:p

[Majorcrash]

i cabt believe no one else has figured this out. Servitors, all the women are servitors. obey automaticly, pliant, QUIET, and there when you need them. the perfect woman. ok just kidding. really just a joke.

[Gnoblar with Pointy Stick]

i cabt believe no one else has figured this out. Servitors, all the women are servitors. obey automaticly, pliant, QUIET, and there when you need them. the perfect woman. ok just kidding. really just a joke.

You're going to a terrible terrible Hell for that joke. Right next to teachers who give tests on Saturdays.

[Melissia]

Hah! Yeah, you should see what happens to the male body when it has an estrogen deficiency.

Actually, yes... without estrogen, males would be unable to get it up, and be infertile (or less fertile, low sperm count), their arteries would harden, increased acne, and they'd become fat because of a lower metabolism, amongst other things.


The male and female bodies aren't THAT different in the end...

[murrburger]

Wtf happened to this thread? I thought it started out as some stupid retcon thing, now it's this!?

How did this even happen?

[Melissia]

Because some people made arguments based off of faulty knowledge of biology, mostly.