Gender Roles - Female Warriors/Defenders

I was talking about the genre thing.

“Think” is like #wolf in the way that the she-wolfs are exactly equal important for the wolfpack. In fact the wolfs have a complex social estructure, that includes to take care of the elder wolfs.
In a wolf-pack each wolf counts, for sure in the ancient tribes was the same.

Oh, my apologies. You were making an analogy. I misunderstood.

Continuing the discussion from Gender Roles - Female Warriors/Defenders:

I agree. The mechanics of the game must be exactly that of the debate of this topic that they are debating. WOMEN can participate in all activities. Really rented activities they are in higher number in others in smaller. THE REPRODUCTIVE VALUE OF THE WOMAN IS INCALCULTABLE TO THE SOCIETY. They may observe that women in the past or present in general were spared from dangerous activities; hunting, war for example. But women were given freedoms to agriculture, religion, manufacture like weaving, etc. This is in safer territory. But yes women should have the freedom to play in any functions but their avatars have a lower physical power, but have more manual and other skills. It’s not about prejudice, it’s about simulating reality. Of course societies should be represented as they were; Roman society, Greek women had less power, WAR was out of place. But Celts, Bretons, it seems to me more liberal for women to go to the battlefield. These details are important. It will allow the female player to decide whether her avatar will be from a more patriarchal or matriarchal or egalitarian society. And understand egalitarian means having women participate in lower rates as archeology seems to confirm, although 30% as I have just read, is a very expressive number in military terms. Much bigger than today.
I think you got the definition right. Being necessary statistics and defining which group of societies women have been more active in military matters and replicate these rates for systems of random generation. In the future multiplayer, the thing would be different, each player or player chooses the career that wants. Although I think it is important to keep women in the most prohibitive positions in battles, for they did exist, right. But the girl will then be able to choose other, more militaristic societies. It would make the game perfect and realistic.

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Continuing the discussion from Gender Roles - Female Warriors/Defenders:

@Grigor - I thought about your post on the theme about “gender and women warriors.”
I agree . I think the solution are to adjust sliders to women’s freedom or female power.
Being:
90% to 100% - radical feminism. Men excluded from almost everything.
51 to 89% - feminism supremacism. (Matriarchy)
50% - egalitarianism. Everything has 50% of men and women.
11% - 49% Male supremacism. (Patriarchate)
0% - 10% - Male radicalism. Women excluded from almost everything.

As for what it reads on the topic, it seems that the EURASIA steppe societies were the ones that most had warrior women at a rate of up to 30% of army warriors if so the adjustment in patriarchy contemplates, simply adjusting the proration you want . Each society could have defined values for each attribute of sliders: economy, politics, etc. Being this slider of “female power” fit within Politics or population. Simple.

Slider games that use the attribute “female power”.

In my opinion as a contributor, Grigor, found the perfect solution to the issue.
Thank you.

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Well, it still remains a fact of life. On the other hand, this also means, that men have LOW reproductive value. They are expendable. But so what?

Nevertheless, my point with this was, that choice should be free… But there should also be a price to be payed. If you want women to fight, you can. Just let´s not forget what the costs are. Especially, that we are talking about the neolithic. All the weapons you´ve listed on your picture, men (in general) are superior with, compared with women (in general). That would translate to higher casualty rates in the ranks of fighting women. Although, this is mostly important in relation to the size of the population. If you have a dozen amazons fighting in your ranks, but your population has 10-20 times that much women in total, than it probably wouldn´t be detrimental if you lost all of them in a fight. On the other hand, if they are half of your female population…

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On a second thought, I imagine there could be a situation where a majority of women would take up arms. As I see it, the male dominant societies probably come from the fact, that, from the point of view of the community, males were a low value asset from a reproductive aspect, while women were a high value asset. Logically, this would lead to the more and more sheltering of women from danger (basically banning them in the end from any kind of dangerous activity). But what would happen, if for some reason a high percentage of the male population would be wiped out (warfare, disease, etc)? I think, it would be logical, that the society would shift to female dominance even to the extent of banning men from dangerous activities. And since societies can become rigid, this could become the norm even after the population stabilizes. And BAM! Amazon society!

Implemented into the game, this would mean, that as we set tasks for the population the AI would have a negative selection preference on men for certain jobs (actually this could be done as a general rule in which case the society will naturally shift, depending on the circumstances, from male dominated (high female casualty) to egalitarian (app. equal casualty) to female dominated (high male casualty) and vice versa ). Unless the individual job selection is done manually by the player.

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I’m going to leave this conversation alone as it has now departed from Neolithic societies and the ability of women to hunt, take up defense of their village, and maybe on rare occasions even become agents of armed conflict.

I do agree that there should be benefits and weaknesses to any strategy with many variables in creating different types of societies, though I think it’s not a good idea to ascribe value to sexes or genders simply based on either physical strength or reproductive value. While those are definitely important characteristics, they are not always the primary characteristics nor do they take into account cultural and religious pressures, which can completely warp a simple biological dichotomy.

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Yes i agree.

Well, it looks like the scientific community has reevaluated the famous Viking Woman Warrior burial and affirmed that it was indeed a viking woman warrior.

On a side note, I doubt most male burials undergo this much (sexist) scrutiny.
It is turning out that woman were indeed warriors on occasion, but simply hidden from history by men and time.

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Hi guys, this may be out of scope of this project, however, what about making a mechanic of choosing your tribe’s policies and customs? In this way, you could just offer the player a choice of who can do what in the sense, that if you choose egalitarian society, everybody can do, what they want, if matriarchal, employments can be egalitarian again, except for example leadership or religious positions, etc.

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This was discussed at length and I recall it garnering wide approval has the proper way to proceed, though I don’t know if the devs agreed.

Likely, wide varieties of societies existed for many different reasons, both cultural and environmental. Having the ability to change your society’s stances on various issues sounds like a great way to build the game \o/

Nvm…

In my opinion, I do hope that the developers decide based upon the knowledge and educated guesses of archaeologists (whichever way they go) and not on the speculations of forum members and not even make diplomatic compromises. If there are inconvenient truths regarding the life of the ancient people, then in my opinion, those truths should be modeled accurately or in accordance with the majority opinion of archaeologists. In my opinion, at least this game should be based in realism and not escapism like 99% of the games. If certain knowledge is too inconvenient for rating agencies and modern politics, then the second-best option I see is grouping gender-based roles into realism DLC along with human sacrifice, cannibalism etc. if applicable.

If the following short excerpt on hunter-gatherers from Wikipedia is correct, then in my opinion it should not be ignored for reasons of political correctness, diplomacy and hurt feelings:

Judging by the article on hunter-gatherers on Wikipedia, hunter gatherers were largely egalitarian, but settled hunter-gatherers were an exclusion. Despite being egalitarian, they still had some gender-based roles such as men concentrating on big game hunting and women on gathering and preparing food. However, there were a small minority of cases to the exclusion. Egalitarianism subsided with the agricultural revolution.

If this is wrong, then of course it should be ignored.

As said, these are just my opinions.

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I find myself primarily in agreement.
Also, this is a good time to use my archaeologists memes which confront these topics lol

One thing to consider:

There is a difference between what most archaeologists will tell you and the consensus of archaeologists within a general specialty. For example, if you found 10 archaeologists from random archaeological pursuits, I suspect (my guess) that 8 would say Neolithic people wore woven fabric tunics most of the time. However, when actually reading the research for the leading experts in this field, e.g. E.J.W. Barber or Ian Gilligan, you soon learn that this is an old idea long displaced by evidence and in depth analysis.

This also is a problem with archaeologists claiming anything associated with women is always fertility related, another problem being challenged by scholars, such as A. Mayor and E. J.W. Barber (same as above).

This is something to keep in mind.

Consensus within a relevant specialty is what I had in mind. However, it would be a fallacy to say that because professionals disagree, layman should pick. If for example, three surgeons disagree on the process to use during surgery, the second best thing to do is to listen to the majority. Further muddying the waters with the opinions of electricians and postmen does not help at all.

However, judging by what I found online, there doesn’t seem to be a disagreement regarding gender-roles in particular. What I can find is that hunter-gatherers were more equal than modern people by gender of leaders and material possessions because it is not possible to accumulate wealth before being settled. But it’s still not 50-50. One source mentions a Gini coefficient of 0.25 (speculative) which is like Denmark in 2007. Other sources mention that despite more equal position, labour was divided (with exceptions) and that this might have been one of the contributing factors of Sapiens getting an upper hand over Neanderthals due to higher efficiency due to specialization which Neanderthals had less off. I can find articles of how settling destroyed egalitarianism. I can’t find contradictory sources. But I used the paragraph on social and economic structure of hunter-gatherers on Wikipedia and some googling for now.

If there is a similar agglomeration of sources that would shift this seeming consensus, I would like to see it.

I agree entirely, but of course I’m specifically speaking about the consensus within a specialty as opposed to the general consensus of those outside of the specialty. If 4 cardiologist told you you had a heart problem, but six medical doctors who are not cardiologists disagreed, I think it would be smarter to follow before cardiologists.

While I agree to a point about the egalitarianism, the neolithic y-chromosome bottleneck is something which must be reconciled.


Neolithic men nearly killed themselves off due to, what appears to be, intertribal warfare.

I’m not sure you I understand this. Are you saying that those specialized in the relevant field should be overruled by a larger number of those who are not specialized? I would disagree with that as science is not a democracy. However, that is just my opinion.

Whatever the case, there doesn’t seem to be a disagreement regarding this specific issue (gender-based roles in Neolithic) between groups of archeologists. I can’t find a source that claims that women hunted same game alongside men in equal numbers except in several cases (Philippines etc.).

I agree. If in game there is a shortage of men, then women should take over all roles. Even if there is an equal number of men and women in the city, both genders should be involved in all tasks, but with different percentages depending on the task. Only my opinion based on sources I found.

No, I said the exact opposite.

For example, if 10 random scientists were asked about a phenomenon and 3 scientists who actually study the exact form of phenomenon in question were also asked, I’d listen to the 3 who were specialized in the exact subject vs. the 10 who were not.

I brought this up as there are several aspects of archeology where an incorrect, old fashioned view is pervasive through the community whilst actual specialists of the exact sub field haveee reached a differingg consensus.

In this case I was speaking of the problems with an egalitarian perspective, given they chromosomal issues of the late neolithic. This is an area of ongoing research.

Oh ok that makes sense.

Judging by new research, mathematical models show that lack of Y-chromosome diversity might have nothing to do with fluctuations in male population size, but rather only with fluctuation in reproducing male population size due to an accumulation of wealth and power among a small group of socially elite males. Thus signaling the decline of egalitarianism after agricultural revolution.

Technical source (Nature Communications)
Reader friendly summary (Sciencealert)

However, regarding the game’s male to female gender-based labour distribution, if anything, Y-chromosome bottleneck doesn’t seem to support equal task distribution. If it has anything to do with it at all. Unless we believe that there really was 17:1 female to male ratio and women took over all tasks. This doesn’t seem to be the case given the latest research. Also it seems weird to me that there would not be far more female bones found by archeologists pertaining to certain time periods if that were the case. The appearance of male elites seems to fit well with subsequent developments from late Neolithic onwards.

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I certainly argue for the ability of all genders to potentially take apart in all tasks, but as much as there is evidence supporting this as well as my own personal approval of such a system, one cannot deny that there is also evidence to the contrary, for example some of the things that you cited above. One must always follow the evidence regardless of whether or not it is appealing.