Gender Roles - Female Warriors/Defenders

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142

Let us not forget that if we did not exist, the last woman would have died childless in Neolithicum. The game would be a very short without women. And it could be concluded that, apart from high child mortality, generally short life, mothers with miscarriages and other natural handicaps, the goal of the game will be to keep as many women as possible and a few healthy, productive men alive. Or?
Otherwise it will not be long, with our tribe.

And then what each member of the tribe can contribute to survival, growth and development should be playable. Few women in dangerous missions - short game. Many homosexual connections - very short game. Survival in a rather hostile nature requires a good strategy, that is, also a superior handling of resources.

Really, our civilization has obviously been cooking and keeping reserves, producing surpluses. Women usually had the greater part of this, often unconsciously and accidentally. Therefore, however, no less valued. The role of these women was a lot more important, in the game, of course, less fun than an Amazon. The fact that in case of an attack every woman has resisted against rape, enslavement or death, is obvious.

I believe, the roll distribution in the Neolithic was much more relaxed than in our days… :wink:

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The female viking warrior theory has already been refuted by the majority of the archaeological community as well as several members of the team who made the discovery. The bones were excavated over one hundred years ago and were simply on a shelf labeled as having been from near that grave. There is no real evidence of female warriors outside of Boudica(whos to say she ever even lifted a weapon at that), and I believe Tacitus mentioned a tribe of females who dressed in armor and lived “as men”, which may or may not have been reality, and is probably where the myth of the Amazonians comes from. There is no mention of shield maidens in Norse mythology, and the only truly abnormal thing worth mentioning is Thor impregnating himself to birth a horse. As much as I believe this game should have the freedom to have civilizations emerge as matriarchal, I don’t think it should be common and it should be extremely difficult for the player to establish. Somewhat like Hearts of Iron where you can lead Nazi Germany into being a Democracy, but it is almost impossible to get to because that just was not meant to be. Women were created, whether by god, aliens, or evolution, to birth more children; and their lack of testosterone would simply make most women not interested in being aggressive(fighting, raiding, battling), or being competitive(leading armies, hunting, leading tribes, etc…). What I believe would be more interesting than simply pandering to feminist desires for women to be as men, would be to have an available evolution path for your society to have a shamanistic “great mother” sort of figure that the entire tribe would look to for guidance. This seems, to me a better and more realistic alternative to creating some fantasy warrior queen from the Conan the barbarian universe.

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You have stated a large number of positions that I don’t think most folks here (certainly not me) hold, such as an Amazon Society or a fantasy Warrior Queen. This has not been the primary focus of this thread, which instead seeks to ensure women are given proper place in a Neolithic game and not excluded from the possibility of exceeding gender roles, which are normative not exclusive.

Many games do not even allow women to lift weapons, but women probably aided in small game hunting and fishing, which typically require weapons. Some would probably assist in the defense of the tribe. I assume you have no problem with this as it is more realistic.

I also reject the assertion that testosterone is required for the interest in leadership and competition. Go to any female sports team and inform them that they don’t have interest in leadership or competition due to low testosterone. Simply put, aggression is not the only motivator towards martial tendency and aspirations of leadership, nor is hunting exclusively martial in nature.

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Oho, do not be so sure. Women are also with very little testosterone unrelenting opponents. Especially when alcohol is in the game …:wink:
And the already very early kingdoms were dominated by women, seems to be occupied.
A strong argument could be the fact that games like AC actually attract a high proportion of female players. Had many years ago a conversation with Linda Breitlauch (lecturer at the Games Academy) about the game behavior of female gamers. Conclusion: they are more brutal and more consistent than many men and want to fight. And not only to win, they want to destroy.:smirk: Beware of female players in mmo’s !!

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Of course statistical data would probably be better for such determinations. The problem with Ancient Cities is that it truly is a different sort of game then almost any out there. One might classify it as a typical strategy game, but it has a special appeal based upon it’s beautiful Aesthetics as well as its prehistoricity. From my perspective, I’m not sure enough data exists to make a determination of how many players will use it, with respect to gender.

One major problem with studies involves the fact that women typically hide their gender and video games. This is extremely common, mostly due to harassment. The second you reveal yourself as a non CIS male, people immediately begin with the attacks.

Black Desert is probably the best example. Just watch General chat on most servers and you’ll quickly find out why many women don’t play, or hide their gender. As a result, men will then say “women aren’t interested in playing games”

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True, many female players seem to use male avatars. Conversely, this happens, but less frequently. The question arises whether the game offers too little exciting roles for female avatars or whether there are other reasons.
In a building sim, e.g. Age of Empire or anno this should play a subordinate role, because you are a people plays. Perhaps numbers of these games or banished could give an impression. Often, it is also just a setting, which gives the rendition, e.g. “Children of Niles” with the Egyptian subject. Let us surprise…

Think this problem affects mmos. In single player, the risk is low that the bully NPC.

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I would not be so sure. There is evidence of woman leader like Tomyris Tomyris - Wikipedia who kill the great Persian king Cyrus. There is even a list : Women in ancient warfare - Wikipedia

Concerning testoterone I am sceptical that it is a must have to be a leader. Cunning is also a trait that make good leader and it is not link to brawn.

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their lack of testosterone

Also, women do not lack testosterone. Testosterone occurs at lower levels in women and is hardly diagnostic of leadership capability.

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I’ve never said that testosterone is “required” for leadership or that women have 0 testosterone. I simply stated that the lack of testosterone would make most women not interested in these sorts of roles. In the case of combat this could even make them incapable even if they were interested. Men evolved to be hunters/warriors for a reason. There is even a link between men being hunters and the evolution of our eye sight: “Females are better at discriminating among colors, researchers say, while males excel at tracking fast-moving objects and discerning detail from a distance—evolutionary adaptations possibly linked to our hunter-gatherer past.”. If women were so prevalent in combat or hunting you would think this would be a more general human trait instead of one only men posses.

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I already said something of this subject : Gender Roles - Female Warriors/Defenders - #130 by louis.mervoyer. Short version : Be carefull about biology interpretation. It is not always biology which create the roles it could also be the reverse.

Evolution could be very fast : between 1800 and 1900 French canadian women lower the age of their first pregancy by 4 year (from 20 to 16) : http://www.pnas.org/content/108/41/17040.full due to societal behavior.

Another example : in Gambia (between 1955 and 2010) the trend influence the woman number of children. In 1955 small women with high weigth index have statistical more children now it is tall women with low weigth : The Demographic Transition Influences Variance in Fitness and Selection on Height and BMI in Rural Gambia - PMC

My point is : nowadays differences (if really genetic and no link to social behavior : boys are encourage to practice sport which develop tracking fast-moving objects and discerning detail from a distance and girls encourage to read, draw and play with doll which can help to discriminate among colors) can not be transpose to men and women who live thousands (if not tens of thousands) years ago.

One of my favorite scientific paper of the subject is : http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/jvt002/BrainMind/Readings/Laland2010.pdf

Please, quote your reference when you say that otherwise your point has no value.

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I’m not sure that women’s age of their first pregnancy is “evolution”, and if it is, I wouldn’t say it is on the same level to that of the evolution of the human eye. The two are incomparable.

I’m also unsure of what you mean by boys and girls being encouraged to do different tasks. Boys have been learning and reading books since the at least the Hellenistic period of ancient Greece. Boys would learn philosophy, reading, writing, as well as military strategy, and martial arts. Women weren’t allowed to go to school and thus didn’t do much book reading/arithmetic until nearly modern times.

The paper I’ve quoted is one by professor Israel Abramov from Brooklyn college. I can’t find the paper anymore, but there is a natgeo article about the study. National Geographic

I’d also like to address your earlier post on historical female military figures. I study history so this is more my area as compared to biology, and genetics. First off “Tomyris” was written of by the Greeks, who would have loved nothing than for one of the greatest kings of their chief rival be killed by a woman. As the article you posted states “Xenophon, on the other hand, says that Cyrus died peacefully in his bed,[12] and a number of other sources report different causes of death.” This woman would have been in her middle years by the time of this battle, and she had already bore children. Even though I won’t argue her being their leader as I don’t know much about her, I can say that she had general who would have been the ones fighting. I highly doubt she ever set foot on a battle filed, let alone killed a great Persian king. So she may have been a queen, but there is nothing saying she was a military leader or a warrior.

As for the list of “women in ancient warfare”, it seems a lot of them weren’t doing much of the warfare part. A good number seem to be either like the earlier Tomyris, where they sat as queens and ruled, but it seems they were never warriors or led battles. Another portion are either legendary women whom it hasn’t been determined if they existed or not, or their only involvement in the battles was as a healer, a morale booster, etc… not as tacticians or warriors. Some are even, as the recent “female viking warrior” was discovered to be, just a misconception about grave goods. The second on the list is a good example: Ahhotep II was simply buried with some weapons. It was pretty common to be buried with weapons even as a non warrior due to their symbolism of power.

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Site Note
The Viking refutation was on the basis on indeterminacy and not explicit err, if I recall. This would necessitate a null hypothesis and not a serve as a proposition for the contrary belief.

Different Periods
I should stress that all of these discussions involve women living long after the Neolithic. The difference between the present day and the age of, for example, Tomyris (c. 530 BCE) is about ~2547 years. The difference between Tomyris and the Neolithic is between ~2500 and ~5000 years. The societies were much different. I tend to look at contemporary, or at least historically recent tribal society to get ideas for how Neolithic society may have been [not how it was, as we may never know].

Others have their own positions, but this is mine:

Women played a crucial role in Neolithic society, beyond that of just child care, farming and domestic chores. They took up arms if needed and some, though perhaps only a few, likely stood proudly as warriors. Woman are so forcefully shunned in games that it seems important to depict women hunting small game, fishing and taking up a spear or adze in defense of the tribe or her child.

Neolithic.jpg1420×2000 1.12 MB

Hunting
Women likely comprised a significant component of hunting. The nature of their game is smaller, but should not be discounted, nor should their use of hunting implements (e.g. Bow). The mistaken belief that hunting involves only large creatures, such as an aurochs or deer, is quite a misconception. Fish, fowl, and smaller game are numerous and provide plenty of needed food for a tribe. This can be seen throughout the Amazon tribes of today where women play and important role in fishing and small game hunting. Examples include the Yanomami tribe and the Mates tribe.

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Warfare
While probably uncommon, women were probably sometimes combatants, in a militaristic sense. This statement involves two scenarios:
Firstly, women were probably uncommon as offensive warriors. As examples of women warriors have occurred in history, we can suspect they may have occurred, but probably as rare exceptions. We see female warriors in many societies at a similar level of development of as Neolithic or Mesolithic peoples (though they are not analogue of each other and serve more as an example of occurrence, rather than an example of equivalent occurrence) Examples of tribal warrior women include Pine Leaf of the Crow (Woman Chief - Wikipedia) and Akkeekaahuush (Crow people - Wikipedia). Encyclopedia of the Great Plains | WOMEN WARRIORS
Secondly, women probably took up arms in the ad hoc defense of a tribe during attacks and raids. We see this demonstrated throughout the rest of history and humanity.

Leadership
Prehistoric Polynesian society contains words for female leaders and warriors, as do many Native American languages. Both groups have many examples of female leaders. Some of these may be myths and some are not, but such a lengthy series of female leaders and warriors may have a basis in history. I can gather an extensive list of such women, but they are readily searchable on the internet (be wary of mythical women vs. likely real women).

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Move the first pregnancy from 25 to 20 is not an evolution but from 20 to 16 it is because it imply an earlier puberty (remember it is an average age. Moving it by 4 years is huge). Evolution could happen in two way : mutation in the gene and modification in how the gene expressed. The later could be influence by environment stimulation (you can see it like lock that block the gene until something unlock it). So the eye evolution is not more important that puberty age. It is exactly the same mechanics

I was refering to modern society and current gender activity divide (debate between nature and nurture : is the difference due to gene or different activities ?)

So sad… The scientifics papers online duration is too short…
The natgeo article is a bit shallow, there is no gene identification which would be decisive, only hypothesis. That why I prefere the full scientific paper when available.

In the end, evenif the difference is genetical, it is no clear if role divide influence genetic or the reverse. The only way is to identify the gene (if any) and date the mutation appearance (no easy but doable).

The last paper I quote in the previous comment show a gene–culture interactions so I do not think that role divide is purely due to genetic.

I also doubt that she was the one to actually slay the king but I think she could have lead the battle in which Cyrus was kill. I agree that ancient source are biase but if I remember correctly Cyrus did not fight the greek a lot. He mostly focus on mesopotamia and centrale Asia. However I am aware that beause he was the founder of the dynasty shaming him also shame all the kings that invade Grece.

A more recente example of warrior women : Dahomey Amazons - Wikipedia. These women use gun and a long razor blade to decapitate enemies. “By the mid-19th century, they numbered between 1,000 and 6,000 women, about a third of the entire Dahomey army, according to reports written by visitors. The reports also noted variously that the women soldiers suffered several defeats, but that the women soldiers were consistently judged to be superior to the male soldiers in effectiveness and bravery”

So I think warrior women were not the norm but they have existed throughout human history.

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This is another thing which bugs me. Women are constantly required to provide extra proof in these cases. If it had been the story of a man, would you have doubted he ever set foot on the battle field? Consider the Viking woman. If we cannot be sure her weapons/body were correctly paired, why does the consequent fall to the negative (not being a warrior)? This would be logically invalid as this isn’t a modus tollens argument, e.g. A or B, ~B :.A.
The proper answer is the null hypothesis.

When a man is said to have been a warrior, people tend to agree. When a woman is said to be a warrior, entire research theses are required, and these will be scrutinized with prejudice towards refutation.

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This should be represented in the game, if my village gets attacked everyone should be doing their part to defend their village, but perhaps adding a combat penalty to those who aren’t professional warriors. i.e. a Neolitic woman whose main combat experience consists of pricking her fingers while gathering food, or a Neolithic man whose combat experience consists of fending off the occasional animal while he garrisons the village. Versus a battle hardened adrenaline pumped warrior whose sole occupation for his tribe is bashing in the skull of another tribe’s battle hardened adrenaline pumped warrior in the heat of combat on the battlefield. Which if I had to use an arbitrary scale for the sake of discussion would be 9 times out of 10 a Neolithic man. Again the game should represent this.

Also I have a question for you unrelated to the topic if you don’t mind me asking Mr. Watson but why is it that in this character Ember looks the way she does. I mean she’s a neolithic woman, would she not be more suited to look like this?

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This image taken from Wikipedia, is a reconstruction of a typical Neolithic woman by the Trento Science Museum (MUSE) in Italy. Wouldn’t this be more accurate?

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I do agree!

I think 9/10 is being quite liberal lol
I’d suspect (though I do not know) that legitimate female warriors were probably supremely rare. I wouldn’t suspect more than one out of many thousands warriors, though keep in mind the Neolithic probably saw few dedicated warriors to begin with. Infrastructure to accommodate full warrior castes simply doesn’t seem to have been present, in general (has anyone seen evidence of this?).

As for Kaelu (Ember), the way she is rendered is partially due to the illustrators. I always try to impress upon them how much darker she should be, but I can never seem to get them to darken her enough.

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The woman in the picture has been re-created to be aesthetically representative of an actual person so much so that she may be thought of as analog. She also looks much older than Kaelu (she’s in her later teens-early 20’s in the books). The pictures for my books look more comic in style. If I hired somebody to draw Kaelu in a photorealistic manner, she probably would look similar, minus the eyes and hair of course.

There are a significant variety of garments and styles , and the woman in the picture only wears one. Kaelu prefers to wear a deer skin loincloth and sometimes Boots. Standards of modesty for her time will probably a bit different from now. She wears a long doeskin shirt when the weather becomes cooler. Her shirt was specially made to have sleeves to help keep her warm. When it gets very cold, she wears a fox fur coat, leather leggings an additional fur wraps as needed.

Also, the woman in the picture is dressed for a warmer climate. My second and third novels occur in Anatolia, Levant, Arabia and Indus Valley. aside from an unusually cold winter, the temperature would not be comfortable with what that woman’s wearing. Kaelu originally comes from near Mannheim Germany, a member of the LBK culture. The clothing on the woman showed probably matches what she would have worn.

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By the way, the flax wolven armband she wears is something I have made before. In case you’re curious, it takes dozens of hours to spin flax and make this. Her dress would take me a month or two to spin andn weave.

FYI I used that very photo as a reference for how I envisioned Kaelu’s mother, East. That is exactly what her mother was supposed to look like. :slight_smile: She is missing body paints, oddly.

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Side note: I never go by Mr lol It doesn’t really fit my gender lol

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I love these discussions, and I learned quite a few things over the weeks…
I hope the game will be very accurate and flexible, with many, many hours of play to enjoy.

RD

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I think this kind of game really attracts female players as well as males. Looking around this forum, we see a fair share of female users around already, so the game is best off serving interests of both groups.

Saying that gender roles don’t matter in a society simulation sounds kind of weird. There certainly are numerous strategy games that deal with gender roles pretty badly (as in Cultures: Discovery of Vinland, where female sims only stay at home and reproduce; or The Settlers, where there are only male sims seen), if not at all (as in the Empires series or Anno series, for example), but I think those games have a different aspiration altogether, as in not trying to be an accurate simulation of a society (often focusing on warfare more than economy in the end). There are games like Banished, that have male and female sims do the same jobs and also take things like maternal mortality into account, but give no options for cultural or social development.

As a fan of the genre and female player myself, I do care about proper female representation, if only for the sake of realism. Humans are not uniform and so are their societies. If this game wants to make an effort to show individuality of their sims, something as major as gender should neither be left out, nor be standardised. To create a believable society, variation should be displayed. I think this regards jobs as well as bodies (Sturdy males as well as slim ones, curvy females as well as petite ones. That would be great!).

As for the question of realism regarding female guards, hunters, etc, I think demography plays a major role in it. There are times when for some reason, economy is weak (less big game to hunt, drought or pests on the fields…), so women have to take a bigger part in male domains (or vice versa), or times, when there simply are too few males around to cover for their jobs, or even too many. Plain necessarity may not be the only reason, but maybe the most common one, that even can’t be denied by defenders of strictly devided gender roles. When the males are away (to hunt bigger game or raid another tribe or do whatever ‘manly’ business), who’s left to defend the camp, provide the meat, or maintain the fields if not the women? What even if a great number of men die during the risky jobs (killed by animals or enemies)? Who does the gathering or cares for the kids when more women die from chidbirth (as pregnancy itself puts them generally at higher risk), or are stolen by another tribe, or are lower in number for any other reason? You get my point? Demography is everything but static, especially in rough archaic times, and jobs have to be done anyway. Rigid gender roles are, in that regard, kind of a cultural ‘luxury’ for prosper times.

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I have to say I totally agree with you.

Just a few comments:

[quote=“IncredibleRan, post:159, topic:581, full:true”]
I think this kind of game really attracts female players as well as males. Looking around this forum, we see a fair share of female users around already, so the game is best off serving interests of both groups.[/quote]

I think it’s easy to be biased on the number of female players around, as this is not plain visible with the nicknames used either voluntarily or not and hiding genre.
(Just for the fun: I’m always very reluctant using the adjective “female”. In French, that’s for animals only, while we use “feminine” for women. That’s quite a trendy point given the current content of newspapers those last weeks :blush:).

[quote=“IncredibleRan, post:159, topic:581, full:true”]
As for the question of realism regarding female guards, hunters, etc, I think demography plays a major role in it. There are times when for some reason, economy is weak, so women have to take a bigger part in it (or vice versa), or times, when there simply are too few males around to cover for their jobs, or even too many.[/quote]

One of the definitions of strategy (games) is making the best choices taking into account a limited amount or resources and opportunities. In this very case, men and women are the first and most important resources, that have to be evenly represented in the society for it to work.
So that’s why I plainly agree with you

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I can’t agree more. My worry was that AC would end up like those games you mentioned above (all male tribe or women stuck in a hunt with babies). I was also interested in men and women occasionally swapping roles as needed and necessity driven divergence from typical gender roles (e.g. women defending tribe if needed). \o/

Also… this line made me choke up my coffee lol