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This topic as come up before, and while reading "For the Emperor" (Which I am very much enjoying, thanks for the suggestion Kroothawk) I came across this footnote: "It was hardly unprecedented for men and women to serve together in the Imperial Guard. Notable units in which was the norm included the Omicron Rangers, Tanith First, and Calderon Rifles. However with women making up fewer than ten per cent of the total number under arms, and the vast majority of those serving in single-sex regiments, it wouldn't be surprising if the 597th excited a certain amount of curiousity among the onlookers present." ( Mitchell, Sandy. Ciaphas Cain Hero of the Imperium, pg 66.)

The 597th Valhallan are the focus of the story, and they are a mixed (edit) sex unit. Suggested reading, enjoy!

I don't get it...
Almost all the arguments concerning this have used this as a point already...

You say mixed race but are talking about the gender of the Guardspeople.

Anyways, this has been talked to death before.

Guard have both female and male presences. Women are not necessarily "super common", but they're not unheard of either. Most of the females seem to be working in logistical or strategic roles, or get seconded to the Navy or any number of circumstances where they're not on the frontlines.

Just read the passage and thought about someone bringing it up before.
Figured I would quote it directly, for interested parties.

Race/sex edited.

I'd imagine there is quite a lot of disparity between various Imperial worlds when it comes to their culture - and gender roles as a part thereof.

I wouldn't all be surprised if the planet Xenan and its "famed warrior women" would send only females to the Imperial Guard whereas the men stay at home, to bring one Codex-sponsored example as a stark contrast to what would seem to be most common (i.e. only men).

In the end, the only thing that matters is that the various worlds manage to "pay their tithe" and that the troops sent to become IG are fit to fight.

You don't see it as often on the table, but you totally should.

Kanluwen wrote:You say mixed race but are talking about the gender of the Guardspeople.

Anyways, this has been talked to death before.

Guard have both female and male presences. Women are not necessarily "super common", but they're not unheard of either. Most of the females seem to be working in logistical or strategic roles, or get seconded to the Navy or any number of circumstances where they're not on the frontlines.

I really don't see this.

The difference between the strength of a human male and a human female is pretty irrelevant in 40k. There is literally no difference in any of the rulesets or the games where they appeared (hell, in SM, she was probably the most badass human on the planet), or the lore, either.

Remember, this is science fantasy. You can always justify it by saying it's 40k years in the future genetics have changed yada yada yada.

Slightly OT, does anyone have any good female Guard conversion kits?

In terms of race, I imagine it doesn't matter on a continental bases anymore, but is instead measured on a planetary scale with different planets being different races.

Melissia wrote:You can always justify it by saying it's 40k years in the future genetics have changed yada yada yada.

And bias, of course. There are instances of female warriors who have fought as remarkable as male ones in our history's distant past, and female soldiers have again begun to combat service in nations around the world. Just because our culture is still largely influenced by prejudice doesn't have any meaning for the 41st millennium at large, though it is entirely possible (perhaps even likely, just because it'd seem more backwards and grimdark) that a large number of worlds in the Imperium follows a strict gender separation. There would still be sufficient exceptions, of course, both for mixed gender regiments (Cadia?) as well as fully-female ones (Xenan?).

Vampirate: What would you consider "good"? There's the conversion kit from Shadowforge (I wouldn't use the torsos, but some of the heads look promising), though I have a feeling you already know about it. Most conversions seem to be made with custom pieces. The only thing that you'd really need to swap would be the heads, anyways, though I've seen some fantastic custom full-body casts like this one (WIP pic).

A lot of worlds prefer not to give up their women to the Imperial meat grinder...For obvious reasons. That said, there are plenty of women serving in the Guard.

Melissia wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:You say mixed race but are talking about the gender of the Guardspeople.

Anyways, this has been talked to death before.

Guard have both female and male presences. Women are not necessarily "super common", but they're not unheard of either. Most of the females seem to be working in logistical or strategic roles, or get seconded to the Navy or any number of circumstances where they're not on the frontlines.

I really don't see this.

The difference between the strength of a human male and a human female is pretty irrelevant in 40k. There is literally no difference in any of the rulesets or the games where they appeared (hell, in SM, she was probably the most badass human on the planet), or the lore, either.

Remember, this is science fantasy. You can always justify it by saying it's 40k years in the future genetics have changed yada yada yada.

You're assuming that this is simply based upon "the strength of a human male and a human female".

It's very likely not--but it can be boiled down to one important factor.

That factor is simply that the Guard are an eclectic mix of traditional and modern military forces. Without going too much into it: this is a pretty good read, even if you think the whole "women can't be soldiers" thing is bunk(which I do agree with. Women, properly trained and equipped same as their male counterparts can be just as good at soldering as men). It's interesting to note that Israel removed women from the frontlines not because females were incapable--but because of the male reaction to females being wounded.

Which isn't a problem in female-only regiments, really. I was mostly taking issue with the "seconded to non-combat positions" bit, which is something I have not read.

Melissia wrote:Which isn't a problem in female-only regiments, really. I was mostly taking issue with the "seconded to non-combat positions" bit, which is something I have not read.

I haven't read it, either, though purely through anecdotal evidence, I'd say the bulk of BL fluff displays women in non-combat positions. A lot of adjutants, liaisons, strategic and tactical officers, etc.

It also displays them as leading squadrons of attack fighters, sergeants in Gaunt's Ghosts, etc.

Here is my answer repeated from previous discussions on this topic:

The Imperium has no official policy or discrimination against women. Women can serve in many functions in the Imperium as nurses in hospitals, various jobs of the Sororitas, Astropath, fighter pilot, Rogue Trader's, Imperial Navy captain's, Adeptus Arbite's as per the Shira Calpurnia books, Ecclesiarchal Cardinal as per the DH books etc. The Imperium simply prefers to keep men in all male regiments and females in all female regiments for simple pragmatic reasons known as Battle Couples. Mixed regiments have problems of sooner or later expecting relationships, infidelities and babies. To avoid all this hassle the IOM simply keeps them separated.

Less women in the guard because you only need one man to make lots of babies, but you need lots of bellies to put said babies.

"run's from feminist rage"

My point here is, population is the one true strenght of the IOM and women have a far more important and fragile purpose in this.

You also have to remember that the Imperial Guard are made up of the best warriors of a planet's regular force (If there are enough of them at least, if their fairly sparse they take what they can get) and in most realworld millitaries male soldiers see direct combat situations more often then women, and therefore would be more likely to be considered the best the regular planetary forces can offer. This on top of the fact that men in general are more likely to enlist than women (note this is irrelevant on places like Cadia and Catachan) means that the Imperial guard is probably more male dominant than a regular planetary millitary.

Obviously some matters of certain planets views on gender roles matter and I agree that there should be at least a few women in the IG, but there are a few reasons why women would be less common in the guard.

Soladrin wrote:Less women in the guard because you only need one man to make lots of babies, but you need lots of bellies to put said babies.

Depends on the demographics, though.
I remember having read about a fictional alien species where the male population only makes up a tenth or so of the total numbers, which resulted in a matriarchy where the right to get pregnant was something you'd have to earn.
Not saying there's anything like that in 40k - just see this as an example of the myriad of possibilities that could influence the subject. What seems to be scientifically true is that climate does affect the ratio of successful male/female births - for example, a quick glance at wikipedia brings us to an article that states that "causes of stress during gestation, such as environmental temperature and maternal malnutrition generally appear to increase fetal deaths particularly among males, resulting in a lower boy to girl ratio at birth." In other words, you'll have more girls than boys in areas where it's hot and where people don't have a lot to eat. I could imagine many such places in the IoM, which are much more different from our real-life Earth and thus could be capable of "skewing" this ratio even more.

Of course another solution for this would be to simply introduce polygamy, but who's to say that all worlds would be doing the same thing? And then there could be women on some planet who are simply unable to get pregnant due to mutation and/or industrial pollution.

Oriallis wrote:You also have to remember that the Imperial Guard are made up of the best warriors of a planet's regular force (If there are enough of them at least, if their fairly sparse they take what they can get) and in most realworld millitaries male soldiers see direct combat situations more often then women, and therefore would be more likely to be considered the best the regular planetary forces can offer. This on top of the fact that men in general are more likely to enlist than women (note this is irrelevant on places like Cadia and Catachan) means that the Imperial guard is probably more male dominant than a regular planetary millitary.

The common troops are usually made up of the planet's best, but the officers often come from the nobility and have earned their place by virtue of blood, not skill. Then you could have worlds which just came up with some weird rule some time ago. Like the Vostroyans, who give their firstborn sons to the Imperial Guard - regardless of how he actually turns out, or if his second-born brother wouldn't maybe make a much better soldier. There could easily be a planet that has a rule like "firstborn child", regardless of gender. And an amazon planet has at least been referenced in the IG Codex.

As for the real world military comparison, remember that this is still dominated by culture and bias. Male soldiers see more direct combat, yes, but why is that so? There's still a huge mental barrier in the male-dominated hierarchy, and every single position apparently has to be fought for to be "unlocked" (ironically, this barrier becomes much thinner in dire wartimes, when it's suddenly fine to have whole companies of female snipers and squadrons of female pilots - who get dismissed as soon as the war is over, in spite of having scored an equal or even higher efficiency than their male counterparts in these roles). Same thing for the enlistment rates. Men and women still grow up getting pressed into a specific gender role, less by their parents but surely by the media and their general environment. Perhaps more women would be inclined to "sign up" if they'd be raised just like boys? There's still thousands of years of sexist indoctrination to overcome - but there's nothing to say that this needs to be an issue in the 41st millennium.

Generally I would very much agree on women being an overall minority in the Imperial Guard as a whole, though, if only because the concept of "baby machines" and many planets holding on to bias is very grimdark. What would 40k be without such social setbacks?

Just my interpretation, of course. There's countless ways on how to twist the topic into either direction - all we can do is throw in suggestions.

Lynata wrote:
As for the real world military comparison, remember that this is still dominated by culture and bias. Male soldiers see more direct combat, yes, but why is that so? There's still a huge mental barrier in the male-dominated hierarchy, and every single position apparently has to be fought for to be "unlocked" (ironically, this barrier becomes much thinner in dire wartimes, when it's suddenly fine to have whole companies of female snipers and squadrons of female pilots - who get dismissed as soon as the war is over, in spite of having scored an equal or even higher efficiency than their male counterparts in these roles).

Well, no.

Females have been fine in aviation for quite a while, and it hasn't been an issue; there's a discussion about front line infantry combat because, like it or not, the average male is physically stronger than the average female, and the average female would have a more difficult time hauling a wounded average male out of a firefight than an average male would have.

For a sec when i read this my adolescent mind did something with the title yeah.....

But anyway cool idea really can't get involved with it. Because lets face it does say for Imperial Guard, men and women facing the horrors of the xenos.

Male or female, doesn't matter. If they are willing to fight and die for the Emperor, then grab a lasgun and throw on your flak armor, we got the Imperium to defend!

Seaward wrote:Females have been fine in aviation for quite a while, and it hasn't been an issue

Depends on the nation you're looking at, and the specific role in aviation. Huge difference between being a tanker or a fighter pilot. I understand "combat aviation" in the US is open to females since 1993, though, with the first actual combat mission flown in 2003. That comment was more aimed at the situation during WW2, where several armies weren't shy of putting women into combat roles, but later pushed them out again even where they performed better than their male counterparts. Pretty damn thankless, imo, but not surprising given our culture's view. Military service has long been seen as some sort of "ritual of passage", a "man's thing".

Seaward wrote:there's a discussion about front line infantry combat because, like it or not, the average male is physically stronger than the average female, and the average female would have a more difficult time hauling a wounded average male out of a firefight than an average male would have.

Absolutely, but this discussion is also tainted by bias (especially concerning the CMR and its flawed reports). It shouldn't even be about "averages" but about actual performance. When somebody can do a job, then he or she should get it, regardless of gender or race. I'm also pretty sure that there's quite a number of male soldiers in the military which will have trouble with the hauling - or being hauled, depending on their weight.

In the end, just like women on average will undoubtedly have disadvantages (physical strength and stamina), they also have advantages (positive impact on group morale, ranged weapons accuracy due to hand-eye-coordination, smaller body size for better mobility in CQB), and these could well be used to increase a unit's overall strength. According to studies, women make better fighter pilots because their bodies are better able to endure the G-stresses, and they're slightly better at shooting and driving as well. So just make them fighter pilots, snipers and drivers and put all the men in the line infantry and you're good ... joking, of course, the best way would simply be to use everyone where his or her skills are best suited.
Here's an interesting article on the subject, btw.

Although, now that I think about it, a gender-based army role assignment system sounds kinda 40k'ish... might be fluffy for a mixed Guard regiment that includes both sexes, but still has them limited to a specific position, heh.

Anyways, I didn't want to detract from the original topic, on which I've already said my piece. Although I think/hope that this discussion could also be of use as inspiration or at least justification for female IG, in case anyone really wants to.

Considering female IG exists in canon, including both mixed and all-female regiments, I would hope this thread isn't needed for inspiration.

I believe a certain game quote summarizes it... the Imperium demands of the Imperial Guard a single thing-- that they live and die fighting the enemies of the Imperium.

Lasguns and flak armor are far, far lighter than modern equivalents, while also being more effective-- so are most of the Guard equipment pieces described in the DH supplements. So the differences between strengths men and women are much less important to the Imperial guard because though the level of equipment is often similar the equipment itself is lighter yet better than the equipment we have.

Nevermind that we're using modern culture to describe it. The Imperium has no use for weak people... men or women. The weak suffer and die. The Imperium, culturally speaking, doesn't like weakness. Assassination is a viable political tool, for example, and being able to counter assassins is considered a prerequisite for any noble or governing body.

Not forgetting that the notion of women being weaker or less effective than men at pretty much anything is outdated now, in 38,000 years there will be no difference.

I don't see how there is any way for the Munitorum to possibly regulate the gender of the forces they'd recruit. They have enough difficulties imposing standards of any sort (doctrine, equipmnet, etc.) on the Guard, gender is going to be the least of their concerns.

so the makeup/gender ratios of a Guard unit ought to be completely dependent upon the world/regions they arise from, and whatever standards they set. That means they could be all male, all female, both but in segregated units, or mixed-units, or possibly any combination of the above. On top of that you can throw in added confusion from conscript units (hasitly raised guard units to plug gaps and fill out numbers in an emergency - I doubt they're going to waste time sorting forces when they need any bodies they can get) and penal legions (there are male and female prisoners, and they're all regarded as fodder).

I would even go so far as to say that mixed units are perhaps more common in the guard than single-gender units are. Consider the number of Necromunda or Armageddon like hive worlds in the Imperium. Consider that the bulk of the military tithe (if not the military itself) is likely to come from the underhives (gangers, especially.) Especially in conscript raisings. We know (especially in the Necromunda case) that both male and female underhivers can be quite effective, even brutal fighters the equal of any man (with guns or blades or whatever.) Given the number of hive worlds and their population densities, they are going to make up a considerable percentage (if not majority) of guard recruits, and so if there is any sort of "standard" applied they are likely to do it.

The second most likely source is from civilized worlds (the most common type IIRC the planet classification right) and they tend to be quite numerous in their own rights. Civilised worlds are more diverse than hives, though, so they also have much more leeway in the kinds of units that might be raised.

As far as "For the Emperor" goes, while I'm not saying what is said is flat out wrong, its hard to treat it as being an absolute across the Imperium. They don't know the exact number of worlds they have. Thye don't know how many Space Marine chapters there are or their numbers. They dont know the exact number of people they have. Hell the Munitorum doesnt even know for sure how many guardsmen they have at any one time. There's lots of leeway in there for misinterpretation or error when trying to apply trends and patterns to the larger galaxy.