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Coming off a question in another thread, the question was asked is the Imperium patriarchal?

In my articles on civilian life I wrote:

Women

The Imperium is an explicitly patriarchal society where, all things being equal, leaders are expected to be male. After all the Emperor and his Primarchs were men (the 'Sanguinia Heresy' notwithstanding) thus proving man's natural role as master. Certain Imperial texts even make the biologically unlikely assertion that woman cannot accept Space Marine geneseed due to the gender difference.

Other women may serve alongside men as Guardsmen, laborers, farmers, scribes or even nobles but there is always a subtle attitude that women are expected to take a secondary role. They are usually relegated to traditionally female jobs such as cooking, cleaning, teaching or caring for children.

Only superb political connections, breeding, patronage, skill and luck can allow a woman to rise to the top in most Imperial organizations. But rest assured those who do, are forces to be reckoned with.

However with constant war draining manpower, there are whole towns and cities in the Imperium where the population consists entirely of women, children and the elderly. In environments like this women are able to prove themselves. At least until the next generation of young men come of age.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Civilian_Life_in_Warhammer_40%2C000_AD

I based it on a couple of things. 40k is based on the Roman Empire and Middle Ages which were patriarchal. I even tossed in a pseudo religious reason cribbed right from the Catholic Church.

Women are almost completely absent from GW fluff, artwork and models (FFG's role playing games do a much better job of including them). When they do appear they tend to be part of an all-female unit or clan like the Sisters of Battle or the Esher in Necromunda.

None of the other Necro gangs had female models (IIRC, and certainly if there were exceptions they were few and far between) and there's only been 2 female IG models since the days of Rogue Trader. The recent Chaos Cult models (which are supposed to be Imperial citizen in revolt) has 20 men, no women.

Few Black Library books would pass the Bechdel test (2 women, named characters, have a conversation, that's not about a man). Abnett again is a noteworthy exception but even his books are 80% male.

Stepping outside the fluff this is probably a combination of marketing to 12 year old boys (girls are icky), an outdated mindset among designers and artists (young boys don't like strong women) and lack of imagination. Plus I'd wager 90%+ of the writers, designers, artists and sculptors are men.

All that to me indicates that the Imperium is a society where, all things being equal, men do the work, the fighting, the ruling, and women stay home to raise the next generation of warriors. If they don't they're off on their own creating a female dominated society .

Of course when things are not equal rank trumps gender. A noblewoman is infinitely more powerful than a tradesman or worker. They'd be risking their lives even talking to her. And even the most sexist guardsman will quickly be put in his place by a female commissar or officer. But among peers they might find themselves expected to serve tea or take notes.

And it doesn't mean being a man is a picnic. Men go to the factory, the mine, the trenches. Women guard the hearth.

Obviously me writing this don't make it true and don't mean I thing that's how the world should be, any more than I think Inquisitors should be torturing unbelievers. And of course among the million worlds of the Imperium there would be exceptions.

Anyway, thoughts?

Many governors are female, there are some very high ranking Inquisitors and Tech Priests that are female, it just so happens that we only really hear about male characters, because the hobby has a mostly male playerbase, and they relate better to male characters.
Also geneseed is keyed to require a Y chromosome, being partially based on the Emperor's genetics.

Also, there is a matriarchal world in one of the Cain novels. Women are the dominant sex socially, and they have a female governer.

Above that, there can be female High Lords. The Abess of the Adepta Sororitas can be a High Lord, and other High Lords can be female. The Inquisitor High Lord, for example, could be a woman.

Again, no one saying it's impossible. Russia, Japan and England had female Queens/Empresses. India and Pakistan had female Prime Ministers.

It's just going to be a lot harder for a woman, even one born to a high rank, to get ahead.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Again, no one saying it's impossible. Russia, Japan and England had female Queens/Empresses. India and Pakistan had female Prime Ministers.

It's just going to be a lot harder for a woman, even one born to a high rank, to get ahead.

Why? It's all dependent on a given world's culture. On a matriarchial world, a man would have a harder time getting into high office.

In Dawn of War 2, Derosa, a woman, inherits governorship of a world. No consideration of her gender, as the former governor's second, she is the most qualified to take up governership.

And really, why would the Imperium care about a world's gender equality as long as the world pays its tithes and worships the Emperor?

A soul is a soul at the end of the day ... all the same when it's going to be eaten by a demon.

The wiki mentions that it's a bit harder for women to become priests due to the fact that the emperor was a man.


Other than that, it'd vary by planet to planet but would probably mirror real life history for most of them simply because in the end, these planets are occupied by humans, thus their histories would likely at least have some similarities to the actual history of humanity in the real world. Especially considering the Imperium has an even more hands-off policy than normal for any planet in its infancy of colonization (at least, while the planet's in the feral stages).

The greater Imperium itself doesn't have any laws whatsoever about men or women to my knowledge. So once an Imperium DOES start mucking around with a planet's direct affairs a bit more, it's doubtful that it will influence a planet's gender view very much by then.

So I'd say for any planet who's civilization hasn't reached our own real world modern stage, they're probably patriarchal. They likely become a bit less patriarchal than that as time goes on, just like the real world, although of course this will vary from planet to planet.

Inherently patriarchal imo, whether from the early GW policies (boys like big tanks and guns, girls wont buy that) to the fluff (the Emperor and his Sons, few notable female leads) to the tabletop game itself (war, combat, testosterone et al).

Its possibly a very Western (and British construct). Nothing wrong with that per se imho but yes it is Patriarchal.

Even the Xenos races (which due to it being sci-fi and based entierly on an authors views have multiple great possibilities for females) are Patriarchal.
Expand that to Warhammer and the Black Library series. Regular female leads/characters/possibilities?

Name 5 strong and regular female "leads" in the 40k Universe:
1. Lylieth
2. SoB characters
3. Dominatrixis - if we ever see them
4. Tau special character (cant recall her name)
5. ?

Tough to get 5 or even more?

GW know their audience and it appeals to males. Sure, you can have female/matriarchal characters but at a very base level "boys will relate to boys".

Simple. Its a world where regular humans are second rate soldiers to superhuman soliders who require a male Y-chromosome to become that. Also, men can't carry the child (naturally) and therefore, putting the source of their most important, useful and vital resource, manpower, on the front lines, is simply moronic. You don't build ammunition and gun factories in the trenchs of WW1 right?

Also, it eliminates the possibility of relationship in 40k, and thus, sex which is not suitable for little Timmy. Which is silly considering DE and Slaanesh are all based on psychosexual imagery and concepts, not to mention Repentia.

 Ratius wrote:
Inherently patriarchal imo, whether from the early GW policies (boys like big tanks and guns, girls wont buy that) to the fluff (the Emperor and his Sons, few notable female leads) to the tabletop game itself (war, combat, testosterone et al).

Its possibly a very Western (and British construct). Nothing wrong with that per se imho but yes it is Patriarchal.

Even the Xenos races (which due to it being sci-fi and based entierly on an authors views have multiple great possibilities for females) are Patriarchal.
Expand that to Warhammer and the Black Library series. Regular female leads/characters/possibilities?

Name 5 strong and regular female "leads" in the 40k Universe:
1. Lylieth
2. SoB characters
3. Dominatrixis - if we ever see them
4. Tau special character (cant recall her name)
5. ?

Tough to get 5 or even more?

GW know their audience and it appeals to males. Sure, you can have female/matriarchal characters but at a very base level "boys will relate to boys".

Tell me, is there any studio fluff that agrees with this viewpoint? I don't mean the mass of male protagonists, but a piece of studio fluff which outright states that the Imperium is patriarchial in nature. I certainly haven't heard any.

Again, trying to generalise the Imperium like that doesn't really work, given the massive variety of worlds it encompasses. Also, we have several examples of female leaders and soldiers. Honestly, I can't see how this viewpoint holds up, myself.

 Ratius wrote:
Tough to get 5 or even more?

An interesting wager. I shall list all strong female leads I can think of and we'll see how high we get. In the interest of meeting your criteria of "regular", I shall only include those the appear in more than one piece of fluff or are a major part of 40K history.

1. Alicia Dominica
2. Sister Miriya
3. Shadowsun
4. Governer Derosa
5. Amberely Vail
6. Colonel Kasteen
7. Saint Celestine
8. Saint Sabbat
9. Kae Drusil
10. Lelith Hesperax
11. The Masque
12. Tyranid Norn Queens

It would have been higher had I not limited myself in regards to regularity, but meh. High enough.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Deadshot wrote:
Simple. Its a world where regular humans are second rate soldiers to superhuman soliders who require a male Y-chromosome to become that. Also, men can't carry the child (naturally) and therefore, putting the source of their most important, useful and vital resource, manpower, on the front lines, is simply moronic. You don't build ammunition and gun factories in the trenchs of WW1 right?

40K is not WW1. Servitors can operate the factories. Also, there is an excess of women making babies on the more peaceful, "inner" worlds. If you're on a world that's under threat or near a threat? What's between your legs is irrelevant, if you have working arms and legs you can use a lasrifle and go be cannon fodder.

Tell me, is there any studio fluff that agrees with this viewpoint? I don't mean the mass of male protagonists, but a piece of studio fluff which outright states that the Imperium is patriarchial in nature. I certainly haven't heard any.

Granted there is not. Is your question - would GW ever state it openly? No, imho.
Hence the word inherently, or perhaps intrinsicly


1. Alicia Dominica - SoB
2. Sister Miriya - SoB
3. Shadowsun - Tau
4. Governer Derosa - not official GW fluff
5. Amberely Vail - unknown to me
6. Colonel Kasteen - unknown to me
7. Saint Celestine - SoB
8. Saint Sabbat - SoB
9. Kae Drusil unknown to me
10. Lelith Hesperax - DE
11. The Masque - hmmm female within the relatively hermaphrodidic world of Slannesh
12. Tyranid Norn Queens - Nids

So most of them I have listed above within the sub - genre. Still not a lot out of the 10 and 10s and maybe hundreds of Male "leads".
I dont discount your efforts but in the realm of fluff/rules/characters and background females are a tiny % of Gws thinking/leads.

"boys will relate to boys"

 Ratius wrote:

Granted there is not. Is your question - would GW ever state it openly? No, imho.
Hence the word inherently, or perhaps intrinsicly

So you admit that it's influenced by external, out of universe forces such as male-focuses marketing rather than anything actually in-universe? Remember, "the Imperium" is a strictly in-universe thing. We can examine how external forces influence it, but GW marketing man saying to focus on boys does not mean the the in-universe Imperium is patriarchial.

Meanwhile, the various examples of female soldiers and leaders in 40K fluff lead us to believe that the Imperium has no real problem with women fighting or leading. Again, they have bigger problems than gender equality.

Also, regarding your comments about "not GW fluff" for some of my examples, you didn't say that earlier, to be fair. You said "40K universe", which I took to mean things beyond studio fluff.

Kasteen and Vail are characters in the Ciaphas Cain novels, by the way.

To my knowledge, there is no fluff anywhere that states the Imperium is patriarchal, besides the fluff (if it exists. It's from the wiki) saying it is easier for men in the ecclesiarchy to move up because the Emperor was a man (this fluff, should it exists, specifically applies only to the ecclesiarchy, though)

Anything beyond that regarding whether or not the Imperium tends towards patriarchism is completely based on assumptions. Many of which are quite logical, but in the end, are assumptions and nothing more.

(and no, lack of female protagonists doesn't count. The writers are male and thus many of them wouldn't write about a female protagonist. That's the equivalent of saying Abaddon and the Eldar are failures just because the writers never write any good stories about them, even though the OFFICIAL word is that Abaddon's plan is proceeding nicely and Eldar are masters of manipulation)

So you admit that it's influenced by external, out of universe forces such as male-focuses marketing rather than anything actually in-universe? Remember, "the Imperium" is a strictly in-universe thing. We can examine how external forces influence it, but GW marketing man saying to focus on boys does not mean the the in-universe Imperium is patriarchial.

Of course it is, everything ingame/influff is influenced by the external factor i.e. GW writers/sculptors/fluff artists et al.
I see your point but its again almost like stating the obvious.
Its like saying Roddenberys Star Trek Aliens and factions arent influenced by his own ideas about Humanitys future or Asimovs etc etc.

One can try and seperate the two but then you end up with a radically different Universe and setting than what exists.

Meanwhile, the various examples of female soldiers and leaders in 40K fluff lead us to believe that the Imperium has no real problem with women fighting or leading.

That was never in question - ofc there are great female leads and chacters in the 40k Universe - that is a given
The OPs question was :

Is the Imperium patriarchal?

Inherently it is.

To my knowledge, there is no fluff anywhere that states the Imperium is patriarchal,
Anything beyond that regarding whether or not the Imperium tends towards patriarchism is completely based on assumptions. Many of which are quite logical, but in the end, are assumptions and nothing more.

Again, yes there is nothing openly stating this but heres that word again Inherently it is.

The original post does not have the word "inherently" anywhere in it. Therefore, your comments about whether or not the Imperium is INHERENTLY patriarchal based on the context of your reply is irrelevant to the original question.

...also, I'm pretty sure you're using the word "inherently" wrong.

 Ratius wrote:

So you admit that it's influenced by external, out of universe forces such as male-focuses marketing rather than anything actually in-universe? Remember, "the Imperium" is a strictly in-universe thing. We can examine how external forces influence it, but GW marketing man saying to focus on boys does not mean the the in-universe Imperium is patriarchial.

Of course it is, everything ingame/influff is influenced by the external factor i.e. GW writers/sculptors/fluff artists et al.
I see your point but its again almost like stating the obvious.
Its like saying Roddenberys Star Trek Aliens and factions arent influenced by his own ideas about Humanitys future or Asimovs etc etc.

But Roddenbery/Asimovs are different. Their motivation was to explore their chosen themes in new ways, while the GW workers are going to be influenced their target audience (boys and young men) and their own company being mostly men. A desire for a company to increase profits by focusing on its (percieved) target audience does not translate into the universe itself. Unless there is in-universe, studio fluff stating that the Imperium is patriachial, then we can put the focus on males down to the attitudes and motivations of GW's employees rather than any cultural patriarchy on the Imperium's part.

 Ratius wrote:
Inherently it is.

But what does this mean? I don't understand what you're saying. Lots of female leaders and soldiers. Were it inherently patriarchial, surely it would have a problem with these? Surely it would try to minimise these instances of these in favour of males?

Inherently

Existing as an essential constituent or characteristic; intrinsic.

Do you think the fluff/game and background to 40k fits that definition relating to: :

Is the Imperium patriarchal?

I hate yes or no questions but its all I can ask right now.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also inherently does not equal total.
Yes there are great female leads etc but overall its a Patriarchal Universse no?

Just like Roddenberys is supposed to be Utopian (even though quite a bit of it isnt).?

 Ratius wrote:

Inherently

Existing as an essential constituent or characteristic; intrinsic.

Do you think the fluff/game and background to 40k fits that definition relating to: :

Is the Imperium patriarchal?

I hate yes or no questions but its all I can ask right now.

Okay, so going by your definition, no. Men being considered better than women is neither essential, characteristic or intrinsic of the Imperium. We have too many examples of female soldiers and leaders, and far too many powerful organisations being indifferent to the gender of its members to say that the Imperium is essentially, characteristically or intrinsically patriarchial.

40K is a wargame and thus focuses on military forces. Space Marines are all male and there are reason why many imperial worlds might prefer to recruit predominantly males for their IG regiments. This is why we tend to see more male figures and characters in the game. However, one cannot conclude from this that the society as whole is patriarchal. For example the Inquisition is perhaps the most powerful organisation in the Imperium and they seem to recruit rather equally and do not have any problem with letting women in positions of immense power.

Ratius wrote:So most of them I have listed above within the sub - genre. Still not a lot out of the 10 and 10s and maybe hundreds of Male "leads".

"Sub-genre"?
How many male leads do we have left if we leave out the "sub-genres" of Space Marines and Imperial Guard?

I agree with Troike. How much and which sex may dominate another is entirely dependent on an individual world's culture - this is a fairly established fact in all of GW's writing. Where GW "fails" is to actually deliver (a somewhat equal number of) examples for powerful females, but I don't really see how this changes the rules? The 3E Guard fluff even tells us there's a female-dominated world (aptly named "Xenan" ) with female Guard regiments, and Necromunda's House Escher is utterly female-dominated as well. *shrugs*

tl;dr: The Imperium as a whole, led by the mixed-gender council of High Lords, does not care for local cultural distinctions, and the role of sexes is part of that.

I would say the Imperium is not Patriarchal. Certain worlds may be, but the Imperium itself is not.

As the raising of Regiments is a responsibility of the world in question, they would determine who enters the regiment. The Imperium wouldn't care one way or the other, as long as there are bodies that can fight they are happy.

Thus if the majority of worlds do raise primarily male regiments and there is no motivation to change this nothing will change.


As for fluff examples, I would lay this on the writers of the fluff being too lazy to care. Its not a big issue, so why make it one?

The BL authors do a better job, having plenty of female characters in important positions.

I would also say that GW has created a female Inqusitor with in-game rules. Inquisitor Velaria. This is evidence that GW isn't totally deaf to this subject.

If the Imperium were Patriarchal on a basic level, such as a religious one, women would not be allowed to become Inquisitors. A rank that is so powerful that only the High Lords and other Inquisitors are above them.

From an in-universe standpoint?

No.

From a meta standpoint?

Yes.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The BL authors do a better job, having plenty of female characters in important positions.

For really reals. It's harder than it sounds in a lot of 40K stories, too. One of my fave (and thankfully frequent) slices of feedback is of the "My girlfriend loves your books" and "My boyfriend got me into 40K with your books" type, which usually cite the female characters as major reason, which I appreciate a lot. On the flip side, I once had an email that asked me why there were "so many girls and sandn*****s" in my novels. So it goes both ways.

But it's often pretty tough to get a decent balance of male/female characters in a 40K novel, because if you're writing Space Marines doing standard Space Marine things, an overwhelming number of your characters are already male and largely interact with other males in the same context. Let's be generous and say only half of a novel's characters are Space Marines, and there are loads of moments where they interact with human characters for various reasons (which, admittedly, many Space Marines don't do all that often). If you want to have an equivalent number of female characters, that means pretty much every other character needs to be female, which swings the other way: you're then up to your neck in a story that's unrealistically weighted to be only Space Marines and the women that serve them / populate every other position of human authority.

So you can even it out, and have half the rest of the characters being male, and half of them being female. Which means, right off the bat, you're down to only a quarter of the overall characters being female.

Now take a novel with a much smaller cast, centred around a few Space/Chaos Marines, and a few humans they hang out with. With the same averages, you're down to 1-2 females and 1-2 human males, outside of the single squad of Marines.

I'm always very conscious of this, but I worry about it looking artificial. Every one of my novels has a major female main character as well as the male Chaos/Space Marine protagonists, but every time I try to ramp up the numbers of females, it can easily start to just be male Marines in a world of women, which is just as disingenuous. I'm currently writing a Black Legion series, and as you can imagine it's heavily weighted towards Chaos Marines, who are all male. I'm finding it much easier to include females though, in the form of daemons; Traitor Guard; Dark Mechanicum priestesses; prophets; eldar ghosts, and so on - in ways that isn't necessarily open to an Imperial story. Which was a pleasant surprise, at least for me.

In that regard, I thank (of all things...) the Eye of Terror for levelling the gender playing field.

Dead Blue Clown wrote:


Now take a novel with a much smaller cast, centred around a few Space/Chaos Marines, and a few humans they hang out with. With the same averages, you're down to 1-2 females and 1-2 human males, outside of the single squad of Marines.

Well, ultimately it should be quality over quantity anyhow (I believe, and it's not a comment directed at your books, just generally)?

To name a book by one of your colleagues, I thought Canoness Errant Setheno totally stole the show in David Annandale's Space Marines Battles novel... and being an entry into the Space Marines Battles line, it probably fits the kind of books you described as being more "challenging" to include women.

In that book, she's certainly the only women (I remember), and a Sister of Battle on top, which may not be the most creative angle to add a female character. But she's well-written (if somewhat over-the-top, though I suppose that goes with the Space-Marines-Battles-Territory), gets a lot of limelight, an important role in the plot and is all-in-all a memorable character (arguably to the detriment of the actual protagonist, in this particular case).

That should be superiour to hundreds of nominally high-ranking Imperial women sitting on the sidelines of the story, no? To me, it's about having, occasionally, interesting female characters (though again, not necessarily in every book by some forced rule) in the story, rather than enforcing a quota for fictional women in the fictional higher echelons of the fictional Imperium of Man.

Interesting question.

In general I would say a resounding no based on extensive reading of the various sources - Codexes, BL novels, licensed material such as FFG RPGs and even the comics.

Can individual worlds organisations be such - yes, but only in the same way as others have noted that equally worlds can be Matriarchal.

Arguably some of the most powerful (and independent) people in the Imperium are Inquisitors - a substantial proportion of which are women. There are three named Inqusitor characters in the most recent Grey Knights Codex - one of them, Valeria is a woman. Female Inquisitors appear in many BL novels, from the recent Grey Knights novel, to the recurring Amberley Vail in the Cain novels. Rogue Traders are also not uncommonly female, with daughters often in conflict with brothers for inheritance. Navigators are just as likely to be women......as seen in the excellent Night Lords novels

Its notable that the Cain novels do depict (usually, but importantly not always highly capable) women in pretty much all the major roles in the Imperium - So high Magos of the Mechanicum, Planetary Governors, Inquisitors, High ranking officers of the Guard and PDF, Commissars. Other authors also include similar characters, the trusted and highly effective captain of the entire World Eaters Chapter (pre and during the Heresy) is a woman. Dan Abnet has a multitude of powerful women from Lord Commissars to Inquisitors.

Obviously the only area where this does not take place is the Astartes - for obvious reasons - balanced by the same single sex segregation by the Sororitas.

The Imperium, ofr the most part, really does not care enough about people to discriminate on sex- in fact on many worlds, any discrimiation is likely to be by class - certainly a major factor in planetary governments, the military etc.............

Let me start by saying that I read Kid_Kyoto's civilian life in 40K stuff a while ago, and I liked most of it. The one thing that really struck me as off was the issue of the patriachalness of the greater imperium.

Most of the reasons for this (as posted at the top of the thread), I would argue steam, not from a deliberate intent by the developers to create a patriachal imperium, but rather as a by-product of the patriachal tendancies of our own society, (and to a certain extent, the table-top wargames industry).

In the end, Man or woman, Old or young, Adult or child, all bodies are perfectly suitable for the meat grinder.

Yes even your five year old, he'd make a lovely suicide bomber against that ravening Tyranid horde.

It's pretty rare to see the Imperium use child soldiers, though, isn't it? (besides Space Marine applicants, but that's kinda necessary since the process won't work on older people)

There are lots of male protagonists because most of the writers are male as well as today's modern society is still male-biased (arguably). Canonically speaking, however, is a different matter. It would kinda like how canonically speaking, Abaddon is actually doing well In the eyes of the gods (well enough that they haven't transformed him into a spawn or taken away his mark that shows he has their favor) or eldars are officially masters of manipulation even though we almost never see this in stories. Theretically, just because we don't see lots of female leads in stories doesn't mean they're biased against in the actual canonical (for a given definition of canon. This is WH40k, after all) universe.

Of course, in actual practice, WH40k novels have a LOT more female protagonists or strong female characters than most other mediums and stories, anyways, even if still not as many as the males (though it gets pretty close when you exclude space marines, who have to be male for biological reasons).

I've never seen an instance where the Imperium uses child soldiers. certainly not as suicide bombers.

Of course what the Imperium defines as a child and what we call a child may be different. You can probably join the IG as soon as your body has reached a certain development stage, so potentially as young as 12-13. With the time it takes to train and transport a regiment, they will probably be at minimum 14-15 years old before any actual combat occurs. Ignoring a planetary invasion.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Again, no one saying it's impossible. Russia, Japan and England had female Queens/Empresses. India and Pakistan had female Prime Ministers.

It's just going to be a lot harder for a woman, even one born to a high rank, to get ahead.

Maybe in your interpretation of 40K, but certainly not in mine. Not universally, at any rate. Will some worlds have a heavy patriarchal bend? Yes. Will others be matriarchal? Yes. Will still others be ruled by the sexless machine-priests who have sacrificed all gender-identifying traits, including the emotional receptors of their brains, in order to become closer to the Omnissiah and undergo the Rite of Pure Thought? Yes. Tell me, is Arch-Magos of Forge World Omicron-Theta Secunds THX-1138-Epsilon a male or female Tech-Priest?