Review: Two new books illustrate generations of prejudice against women

After their country was invaded by Russia in 2014, the Ukrainian government decided to let more women into the military. A military gender-equality law in 2018 gave women the same rights as men in the army, allowing them to fight on the front line. This proved fortuitous – by the time Russia invaded again in 2022, Ukraine’s armed forces were flooded with highly motivated female recruits, and today they have proportionally more women serving than nearly any other country. (Interestingly, New Zealand is on par with Ukraine – our defence forces also have comparatively high numbers of women.) But in her fascinating book, Sarah Percy suggests that in Ukraine, the reality of war in every street and field made old distinctions between male combat and female non-combat roles “useless”.

Vladimir Putin seems oddly allergic to the idea of women at the front line, even resorting to forced male conscription after running short on recruits. Perhaps he thinks women aren’t up to it.

Russia’s president is, Percy shows, flying in the face of history. Women have been elite fighters in Russia for more than 2000 years; the “forgotten warriors” of her title range from tattooed Scythian equestrian warriors to the “Night Witches”, a highly decorated Soviet Air Force unit of World War II.

When society changes, Percy argues, so do women’s roles in the military. If this might seem obvious, its corollary is less so; when women rise within the army, they gather power outside it. As professional female soldiers overturn antiquated gender roles within Ukrainian society, Russia’s overwhelmingly male army – and society – is kept that way by a repressive, authoritarian government and Putin’s “hyper-masculine” brand of politics. Soldiers with combat experience face becoming commanders, a route to political power. There are few women in senior roles in the Russian military, no surprise in a country that bans women from, at last count, 100 professions.

Women were once a surprisingly common sight on battlefields, writes Percy, a political science academic at the University of Queensland who has found in old war records stories of unsung courage, sass, adventure and tragedy.

She begins her book in the grave of a female Viking warrior and ends it in the trenches of 20th-century wars, charting women’s participation in war through the centuries, and the ways in which their contributions were minimised. Commanders as well known as Joan of Arc or Boudicca are romanticised curiosities, their military exploits treated very differently to those of men. Percy wraps up by asking how modern armies became so male dominated.

Although she accepts that women have always been a minority within armies of the past, and seldom pivotal decision-makers, they were more critical to the outcome of historic battles and sieges than traditional military histories allow. Women, belittled as whores and “camp followers”, she says, kept soldiers fed, watered and clothed, and often fought with them. They were professional caterers, laundrywomen, nurses, wives, foragers and fighters in the great army baggage trains of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries; now that this work is routinely done by men it is known as “operational logistics”.

Many female fighters during this era won awards for their heroism and large numbers of women dressed as men in order to fight. Some hid their identity for years. One wrote about her experiences at the end of the 18th century: “We messed 10 together, and slept all of us in the same room, yet I was not apprehensive of being discovered … I had an under-waistcoat and pair of trousers which I never pulled off for 15 months …”

Although cross-dressing women fighting in post-medieval Europe were sometimes able to retire as heroes on army pensions, Joan of Arc, captured by her enemies in the Middle Ages, was accused of blasphemy by “putting off the dress of the female sex”. Her male garb sealed her fate, writes Percy: five of the charges against her referenced her clothing.