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 Wyldhunt wrote:
Not directly related, but I just recalled that in one of the arbites novels, a psyker tries to psychically attack a high-ranking arbite by making her think she's in an alternate version of her life where she's clumsy and out of shape, and her response is to start doing some exercises.

It's neither the guard nor even "reality." However, the implication is that a scenario where an arbite could be notably clumsy and out of shape (iirc I think the text may have suggested that she was a little pudgy in this scenario) was considered realistic to not be immediately illusion-shattering. I know that some specialized arbites have desk jobs, but I still feel like your average low-ranking arbite (which is what she was in this scenario) would still need to meet certain physical requirements. I'd be kind of surprised if those requirements weren't at least in the same ballpark as the requirements for the guard.

So if we're comfortable assuming arbites have requirements similar to the guard, and if being clumsy and out of shape isn't a disqualifier for being an arbites, then a reasonably in-shape woman probably meets the requirements for being in the guard.

Worth remembering that like the Adeptus Sororitas, Commissariat and Storm Troopers? The Adeptus Arbites (so not local law enforcement often referred to as Arbites) recruit from the Schola Progenium. Whilst not exactly “slap up feeds”, those growing up in that August Institution are very well fed (nutrient dense) and trained from childhood physically and mentally.

Also interesting to note that in Cain’s opinion, those assigned to the Storm Troopers/Tempestus Scions are those not smart enough for other branches. Whether that opinion holds any weight in entirely up to you!

 Wyldhunt wrote:


So if we're comfortable assuming arbites have requirements similar to the guard, and if being clumsy and out of shape isn't a disqualifier for being an arbites, then a reasonably in-shape woman probably meets the requirements for being in the guard.

Makes sense I suppose.
If you think about it, the reason why we have military standards isn't just for combat effectiveness, but so those recruits don't just immediately die and have a good chance of coming back alive.
The Imperium doesn't care that much about the latter and they tend to take a quantity over quality approach to warfare, so I wouldn't be surprised if their recruitment standards are much lower compared to ours overall.

It is a theocratic regime. The main requirement to being in the Guard is likely how much you can suck I mean praise the Emperor and His Regime.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Given that the majority of the characters in any of the novels with the IG are male(not just named characters, all people in a novel period)

I suppose you must also think the vast majority of Space Marines are Ultramarines, Space Wolves, and Black Templars?

and extrapolating from real world compositions of military forces throughout history I am confidant that it is the case. It is on you to provide sources saying they are not.

So the answer is no, right? You don't have a source for your assertion, and as such it can be discarded wholesale, correct?

Good talk.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Given that the majority of the characters in any of the novels with the IG are male(not just named characters, all people in a novel period)

I suppose you must also think the vast majority of Space Marines are Ultramarines, Space Wolves, and Black Templars?

and extrapolating from real world compositions of military forces throughout history I am confidant that it is the case. It is on you to provide sources saying they are not.

So the answer is no, right? You don't have a source for your assertion, and as such it can be discarded wholesale, correct?

Good talk.

Thats the thing. My position is backed up by the real world, and absent of information directly contradicting it that 40k is different we can extrapolate. Doubly so since 40k is supposed to be our world 40k years in the future.

Again, you must provide evidence that things have changed. Not some vague assertion that "they must have changed".

Its like you asserting that the Gravitational Constant is somehow different in 40k than it is IRL. We'd need evidence that gravity has changed in 40k for you to assert that, I wouldn't need evidence to say that gravity is unchanged.

The real world is the baseline assumption. Changes only exist where they explicitly or implicitly say they have changed. Nothing explicitly says that humanity's sexual dimorphism, be it biological, psychological, or societal, has changed. And there is plenty of evidence that it remains. The Adeptus Sororitas's very existence actually suggests that there are still defined gender roles and expectations, because otherwise the loophole that enables their existence wouldn't exist. The Ecclesiarchy wouldn't have made the argument and the Imperium wouldn't have accepted it.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Incorrect. The ASVAB test is not an IQ test, it is designed to test your skills to determine what service you are best suited for. It is an aptitude test, not a test to try and evaluate general intelligence.

It isn't an IQ test but you could kinda convert the results from it into one and if you are below 80-83 IQ, somewhere around there, you won't be able to get a good enough grade on the ASVAB test to pass. So there are indirectly a minimum IQ requirement and most people know what IQ is so for the sake of discussion it is a more useful metric to use.

Btw, if I need citations for my posts that is mostly based on our own reality and assuming 40k is working the same unless directly contradicted then I would love to see you demand citations on everyone else that out of thin air assume the differences between the sexes is smaller in the far future and that it could be almost a 50% representation of women in the imperial guard. I would love to see those sources.

In my guess it is probably single digit % women in the imperial guard. Not rare nor a small number in total when considering the size of the Imperium. Some worlds have way more women than others but in general I don't see why it wouldn't be like in our world that men, for many many reasons, make up the vast majority of soldiers in ground combat roles. In the entire war machine if we include logistics then it could easily be much closer to a 50/50 split. Even if men were to join or get drafted at a higher rate they would also suffer a disproportionate amount of casualties in combat while support and logistics which most likely have a higher ratio of women wouldn't.

Have you considered that having things be exactly like our reality is boring as hell?

Or that people arguing so ardently that women shouldn't have equal representation to men in a fictional setting where it had been stated multiple times that there is a much greater sense of equality due to the uncaring and cruel nature of the ruling human government is contradictory the the background and continues to foster the idea that Warhammer is a "boys club"?

You can throw around "logic" and "reality" all you want but if all you can do to prove your points is use IRL examples to claim a fictional setting with circumstances massively and almost impossible different to modern Earth goes by your way of thinking then sorry but that's just silly.

I think 40k is quite interesting as it is and that a lot of things are also the same as in our world deepens it and thus make the differences that do exist feel more real.

I don't think Warhammer is a "boys club". I don't really think wanting or not wanting more female cannon fodder is a good metric on if people think the hobby itself should be for boys only. Dying in battles in war is perhaps a "boy activity" but I don't see the need for it to be more equal. Depending on how you view it it can be seen as quite messed up and misogynistic to want more suffering women.

Wanting to change a fictional IP to be different just to fit your own personal ideal world view or politics is even more silly. You say it is very different than our modern world, and I do agree to that, but only in a way you want it to. But! There isn't anything that points that those differences really works in the way you want it to. It could equally be in the opposite direction since we don't know.

I personally wouldn't really care if the background changes a bit and it would turn in that direction. In some ways it is more grimdark if more women are thrown into the meat grinder of constant war. But we don't have that background, yet.

Klickor wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Incorrect. The ASVAB test is not an IQ test, it is designed to test your skills to determine what service you are best suited for. It is an aptitude test, not a test to try and evaluate general intelligence.

It isn't an IQ test but you could kinda convert the results from it into one and if you are below 80-83 IQ, somewhere around there, you won't be able to get a good enough grade on the ASVAB test to pass. So there are indirectly a minimum IQ requirement and most people know what IQ is so for the sake of discussion it is a more useful metric to use.

No, you can't, because it is not what the test is measuring. Any attempt to try and convert it into an IQ test is pure junk science.

Why not? Does it matter what the test measures if the minimum requirements to pass it correlates directly to another measurement more people understand?

I never said they did an IQ test for soldiers but there is a minimum IQ needed to be a soldier. Without sufficient IQ/intelligence you won't be able to understand or pass the test even if none of the actual things tested are stuff that show up in a normal IQ test. How well you do on the test isn't necessarily correlated to IQ but it will weed out those who are too low.

If you need 70 IQ (made up number) to fire a gun in the right direction and they test if a person can follow the instruction to do that correctly and they need to be able to do that to pass then there is a 70 IQ minimum to pass. If you need 100 IQ to be able to pass all the things required of you to be a pilot then the minimum IQ needed is 100. But just because you have 100 IQ won't mean that you are suitable for being a pilot.

Like if you need to be a certain weight/mass for something then you could also use height to weed out a lot of people without having them step on a scale. If too short then they are too light and if they are too tall then they will be too heavy. But even if within the minimum and maximum height you still would need to have enough of your weight be muscle for example or have some other skills. In practice you have put a height requirement despite mostly looking for a certain amount of (muscle) mass. Which is what I did with using IQ.

To add a specific reference relating to possibly the most well known (out of universe) all female Regiment:
...the 296th [Valhallan]; a rear echelon garrison command, which, just to throw promethium on the flames, was one of the few all-women regiments raised and maintained by that desolate iceball'.
For The Emperor in Ciaphas Cain: Hero of the Imperium, pg.38

Grey Templar wrote:My position is backed up by the real world, and absent of information directly contradicting it that 40k is different we can extrapolate. Doubly so since 40k is supposed to be our world 40k years in the future.

Again, you must provide evidence that things have changed. Not some vague assertion that "they must have changed".

Its like you asserting that the Gravitational Constant is somehow different in 40k than it is IRL. We'd need evidence that gravity has changed in 40k for you to assert that, I wouldn't need evidence to say that gravity is unchanged.

The real world is the baseline assumption. Changes only exist where they explicitly or implicitly say they have changed. Nothing explicitly says that humanity's sexual dimorphism, be it biological, psychological, or societal, has changed. And there is plenty of evidence that it remains. The Adeptus Sororitas's very existence actually suggests that there are still defined gender roles and expectations, because otherwise the loophole that enables their existence wouldn't exist. The Ecclesiarchy wouldn't have made the argument and the Imperium wouldn't have accepted it.

Klickor wrote:Btw, if I need citations for my posts that is mostly based on our own reality and assuming 40k is working the same unless directly contradicted then I would love to see you demand citations on everyone else that out of thin air assume the differences between the sexes is smaller in the far future and that it could be almost a 50% representation of women in the imperial guard. I would love to see those sources.

That's the problem. You're basing your arguments in reality, and that's just not how 40k works. This is a setting where the chainsword is considered a fully valid weapon. Where's your sources that chainswords function any different to reality? Or are we just accepting "okay, that's a thing, cool"?

Jumping back to Templar's comment about the gravitational constant changing - I mean, it surely must have? Otherwise, how you explain Titans functioning? Or Space Marine aircraft? Better to assume that "if GW say it's a thing, it's a thing, and don't try thinking about logic".

And actually, we have PLENTY to suggest the Imperium's attitudes to sex/gender are different. There is no restriction visible on women as HLOT. The Sororitas are only all women because of a legal loophole brought on by the misuse of gendered language. They're not recruited because "we don't normally have women soldiers!!", they're recruited because the Imperium used the archaic term "men-at-arms". Does that imply the Imperium also doesn't have non-binary soldiers, because they said "men-at-arms"? Patently false, as a majority of Admech characters that GW have written lately are non-binary.

Again, lets look at the *facts* - all women regiments exist. In GW's own model range, we're seeing femme-presenting faces and bodies in the Guard. In their written material, we're seeing a wealth of women in the Imperial Guard. None of this suggests that it's THAT hard or unusual for women to be in the Imperial Guard.

Meanwhile, I want to see your assertions on why women wouldn't be so present - using only the logics presented in 40k. No real world logic, no arguments based on what *we* currently experience - unless you want to then argue why chainswords are present, or why Titans don't just crumple under their own weight.

Klickor wrote:I think 40k is quite interesting as it is and that a lot of things are also the same as in our world deepens it and thus make the differences that do exist feel more real.

So, women need to only be in single-digit percentages of the guard, or 40k doesn't feel real? We can have orks, daemons, and chainsaw swords, but women being 10% present in the famously utilitarian, uncaring, and meatgrinder-ish Imperial Guard would make 40k less interesting and unrealistic?

I don't think Warhammer is a "boys club". I don't really think wanting or not wanting more female cannon fodder is a good metric on if people think the hobby itself should be for boys only. Dying in battles in war is perhaps a "boy activity" but I don't see the need for it to be more equal. Depending on how you view it it can be seen as quite messed up and misogynistic to want more suffering women.

Pardon, but what?? It's "misogynistic" that women go through the same warfare that men do in 40k?? What next, it's misandrist that male guardsmen get sent off to die? Who gets recruited then? Non-binaries? That's enby-phobic. Agender people? Also discriminatory. What on earth is that sort of logic - "you shouldn't want women guardsmen, because you just want women to die and suffer"?

I'm not saying that's necessarily YOUR argument, but whoever is making that argument should be ridiculed. That's truly nonsensical.

Wanting to change a fictional IP to be different just to fit your own personal ideal world view or politics is even more silly. You say it is very different than our modern world, and I do agree to that, but only in a way you want it to. But! There isn't anything that points that those differences really works in the way you want it to. It could equally be in the opposite direction since we don't know.

Women existing isn't political. And, yes, it IS very different to our modern world, BECAUSE IT IS. See again: fungi monsters, psychic powers, daemons, and chainswords.

Meanwhile, the ACTUAL FACTS of the setting say that women are clearly around enough that they show up in nearly all guardsmen stories, have entire mono-sex regiments, and this is never remarked on as unusual. So, actually - there's PLENTY that points to those different as being how we're describing. There's absolutely no evidence on your end that it works in the opposite direction, unless you use real world logic, which, as we've pointed out, is stupid in 40k.

I personally wouldn't really care if the background changes a bit and it would turn in that direction. In some ways it is more grimdark if more women are thrown into the meat grinder of constant war. But we don't have that background, yet.

Yes, we do. We literally *have* background of all-women regiments. We *have* multiple models of women guardsmen. We *have* a plethora of women guardsmen, who aren't marked out as being "unusual" for being women.

On the contrary, we don't have any background that suggests that women suffer to a dramatic degree of not being able to be recruited into the Guard. The only argument you've made for that has come from the Real World, not the background.

Now, if you want to argue that the background should be changed, and that it's also still an arbitrary creation, and that women SHOULDN'T be able to be recruited, you can certainly try.

Klickor wrote:
Why not? Does it matter what the test measures if the minimum requirements to pass it correlates directly to another measurement more people understand?

I never said they did an IQ test for soldiers but there is a minimum IQ needed to be a soldier. Without sufficient IQ/intelligence you won't be able to understand or pass the test even if none of the actual things tested are stuff that show up in a normal IQ test. How well you do on the test isn't necessarily correlated to IQ but it will weed out those who are too low.

If you need 70 IQ (made up number) to fire a gun in the right direction and they test if a person can follow the instruction to do that correctly and they need to be able to do that to pass then there is a 70 IQ minimum to pass. If you need 100 IQ to be able to pass all the things required of you to be a pilot then the minimum IQ needed is 100. But just because you have 100 IQ won't mean that you are suitable for being a pilot.

Like if you need to be a certain weight/mass for something then you could also use height to weed out a lot of people without having them step on a scale. If too short then they are too light and if they are too tall then they will be too heavy. But even if within the minimum and maximum height you still would need to have enough of your weight be muscle for example or have some other skills. In practice you have put a height requirement despite mostly looking for a certain amount of (muscle) mass. Which is what I did with using IQ.

Er... Because tests measuring different things are not typically comparable and often do not correlate reliably. Transfering between scores is extremely difficult to do scientifically and requires large sample sizes to do reliably. It also requires comparable populations.

IQ as a measure is fraught with issues, not least that it is not solely innate on existing tests and practice and familiarity improve scores. But the military test is not trying to derive some kind of underlying general intelligence level, it is looking at a person's capabilities in specific areas at the time of taking the test.

 Gert wrote:
Have you considered that having things be exactly like our reality is boring as hell?

Or that people arguing so ardently that women shouldn't have equal representation to men in a fictional setting where it had been stated multiple times that there is a much greater sense of equality due to the uncaring and cruel nature of the ruling human government is contradictory the the background and continues to foster the idea that Warhammer is a "boys club"?

Its not exactly like our reality, there is other stuff in the setting that is different. If the fact that it conforms to our reality in a specific area makes it suddenly boring for you, well that is your problem not the settings.

Equal opportunity doesn't mean equal representation. Again, nobody is saying "Icky, no girls allowed!". We are saying that 40k human society still has the same gender norms distribution as our real world, with variation from planet to planet of course. Are there any specific rules preventing women from doing specific tasks within the Imperium as a general rule? No, but there clearly are still systemic biological and social customs which would result in fewer women in the Imperial guard.

In the real world, women are just inherently less likely to choose to serve in any armed forces outside of places where service for everybody is mandatory. But even in places which have universal conscription, men make up the clear majority of the armed forces. Because very few women choose to either volunteer or continue on past any mandatory service. This is something not in society's control, but just how women behave and make choices. Again, to say that this has changed by the time of 40k would need direct evidence.

And that is what equality actually looks like. Equal opportunity doesn't mean you'll have equal representation, it just means people are allowed to freely choose. And people don't choose purely randomly. The only way you could get a 50/50 split would be if someone was arbitrarily forcing it to be 50/50, either via quota or by a truly random selection method with no exceptions being granted(highly unlikely).

You can throw around "logic" and "reality" all you want but if all you can do to prove your points is use IRL examples to claim a fictional setting with circumstances massively and almost impossible different to modern Earth goes by your way of thinking then sorry but that's just silly.

Yes, the person arguing using logic and reality itself is being silly... Not the guy saying that "Its a fictional setting, so it MUST be different from reality in every way"

Again, you seem to have forgotten that warhammer is set in our worlds future. This means we have a lot of baseline assumptions built into the world building of the setting. Namely that the humans in the setting are humans, like from the real world. The various laws of physics work as IRL too, except where bent and changed thanks to future technology/space magic.

Any fantasy world or universe carries over baseline assumptions from reality, otherwise the fictional setting would be devoid of any coherency.

None of the circumstances that are different in 40k suggest that they have completely abandoned the natural human tendancy for men to mostly be the sex that goes to war. They don't prevent women from going to war, but they certainly won't be enforcing any sort of pairity. Just letting the chips fall where they may. And history and reality in the real world would suggest that this would result in a majority male armed forces, with room for potential exceptions here and there. This is also backed up by what few glimpses we have of normal imperial society, along with the existence of the Adeptes Sororitas*

*To repeat myself, the fact that the Sororitas is notable for being all female and is so for a very specific reason reinforces the idea that there are still gender roles in Imperial society. Are these roles loose and breaking them is not considered taboo? Yeah, obviously since we do have many notable female characters in Imperial society and military forces at high stations and nobody makes a big deal about it.

You can still have a norm that most people follow and not have society consider that breaking it to be taboo or unusual.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
To add a specific reference relating to possibly the most well known (out of universe) all female Regiment:
...the 296th [Valhallan]; a rear echelon garrison command, which, just to throw promethium on the flames, was one of the few all-women regiments raised and maintained by that desolate iceball'.
For The Emperor in Ciaphas Cain: Hero of the Imperium, pg.38

The questions raised from that is: does that imply that Valhalla raises few all-women regiments, or that the Imperium raises few all-women regiments? The language is ambiguous as to if this is relegated to Valhalla or the wider Imperium.

Second, all-women doesn't preclude mixed-sex regiments.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
To add a specific reference relating to possibly the most well known (out of universe) all female Regiment:
...the 296th [Valhallan]; a rear echelon garrison command, which, just to throw promethium on the flames, was one of the few all-women regiments raised and maintained by that desolate iceball'.
For The Emperor in Ciaphas Cain: Hero of the Imperium, pg.38

The questions raised from that is: does that imply that Valhalla raises few all-women regiments, or that the Imperium raises few all-women regiments? The language is ambiguous as to if this is relegated to Valhalla or the wider Imperium.

Second, all-women doesn't preclude mixed-sex regiments.

I think that sentence reads quite specifically as referring to Valhalla alone, not the Imperium at large. Apparently Valhalla (according to Cain) also does not raise mixed-sex regiments.

Grey Templar wrote:We are saying that 40k human society still has the same gender norms distribution as our real world, with variation from planet to planet of course. Are there any specific rules preventing women from doing specific tasks within the Imperium as a general rule? No, but there clearly are still systemic biological and social customs which would result in fewer women in the Imperial guard.

... except there aren't - "with variation from planet to planet, of course".

I mean, that's a massive cop-out, because EVERYTHING in the Imperium is varied from planet to planet! You might as well be arguing the exact opposite, because the Imperium simply doesn't really have a standardised response - which, actually, in term, makes the Imperium pretty blind to issues of gender, sex, and race. Again, look at the HLOT - plenty of women. Look at the existence of the wealth of women serving in the guard - who aren't remarked on as unusual for being women.

You say the Imperium has the same gender norms distribution, but there's no proof of that beyond you assuming so. And that's without even getting into the massive gaping hole in your logic that "variation from planet to planet" represents, which torpedoes the idea that there is even a common "40k human society"!

In the real world, women are just inherently less likely to choose to serve in any armed forces outside of places where service for everybody is mandatory... Again, to say that this has changed by the time of 40k would need direct evidence.

WE HAVE IT. All women regiments, women models being integrated in the standard Cadian boxes, no characters remarking on women guardsmen being unusual.

And that is what equality actually looks like. Equal opportunity doesn't mean you'll have equal representation, it just means people are allowed to freely choose. And people don't choose purely randomly. The only way you could get a 50/50 split would be if someone was arbitrarily forcing it to be 50/50, either via quota or by a truly random selection method with no exceptions being granted(highly unlikely).

You can throw around "logic" and "reality" all you want but if all you can do to prove your points is use IRL examples to claim a fictional setting with circumstances massively and almost impossible different to modern Earth goes by your way of thinking then sorry but that's just silly.

Yes, the person arguing using logic and reality itself is being silly... Not the guy saying that "Its a fictional setting, so it MUST be different from reality in every way"

Unironically, yes. Because the logic and reality you're argument from simply *aren't present in 40k*. All the while ignoring the in-universe logics and realities presented that say that "women guardsmen isn't unusual".

Again, you seem to have forgotten that warhammer is set in our worlds future. This means we have a lot of baseline assumptions built into the world building of the setting.

Yes, assumptions which are quickly disproven by women guardsmen not being seen as unusual in the setting.

Namely that the humans in the setting are humans, like from the real world.

Ignoring that 40k has MULTIPLE worlds then.

The various laws of physics work as IRL too, except where bent and changed thanks to future technology/space magic.

So, the laws of physics DON'T work as IRL then. Good to know.

Any fantasy world or universe carries over baseline assumptions from reality, otherwise the fictional setting would be devoid of any coherency.

That's simply not true though. Coherency comes from INTERNAL congruency, not its ability to mirror ours.

*To repeat myself, the fact that the Sororitas is notable for being all female and is so for a very specific reason reinforces the idea that there are still gender roles in Imperial society. Are these roles loose and breaking them is not considered taboo? Yeah, obviously since we do have many notable female characters in Imperial society and military forces at high stations and nobody makes a big deal about it.

Sisters are notable for being all female because they're a loophole of archaic language, not because the Imperium doesn't employ female soldiers - and the Imperium went along with it, because it's known for being hidebound by archaic language and dogma, not because it's institutionally sexist. In a sensible world, the Imperium never uses the term "men-at-arms", because it's an anachronism - but the Imperium isn't sensible.

And, remember - Sisters of Battle were the Brides of the Emperor first, and still mono-gender.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Haighus wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
To add a specific reference relating to possibly the most well known (out of universe) all female Regiment:
...the 296th [Valhallan]; a rear echelon garrison command, which, just to throw promethium on the flames, was one of the few all-women regiments raised and maintained by that desolate iceball'.
For The Emperor in Ciaphas Cain: Hero of the Imperium, pg.38

The questions raised from that is: does that imply that Valhalla raises few all-women regiments, or that the Imperium raises few all-women regiments? The language is ambiguous as to if this is relegated to Valhalla or the wider Imperium.

Second, all-women doesn't preclude mixed-sex regiments.

I think that sentence reads quite specifically as referring to Valhalla alone, not the Imperium at large. Apparently Valhalla (according to Cain) also does not raise mixed-sex regiments.

Agreed, that's how I see it too. And hell, Valhalla might be a world that *doesn't* have many women soldiers in it! And that would be totally fine - because the Imperium isn't a monolithic organisation. For each Valhalla that doesn't have many women soldiers, we have Cadias, Catachans, and Mordians.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Again, you seem to have forgotten that warhammer is set in our worlds future. This means we have a lot of baseline assumptions built into the world building of the setting. Namely that the humans in the setting are humans, like from the real world. The various laws of physics work as IRL too, except where bent and changed thanks to future technology/space magic.

Go back just 120 years and the idea of women serving in the armed forces at all was not a thing; women weren't even allowed in most industries! Go back about 2-300 and women were considered inferior in MANY ways. They couldn't do advanced mathematics; they couldn't do industry work; they couldn't fight in the armed forces. All those things were impossible for women to do. The 100% physically and mentally same women we have today (because that time span for humans is way to short to have vast genetic changes).

In just a few hundred years our attitudes have shifted insanely dramatically.

40K is set tens of thousands of years in the future. It's mindbogglingly far into our future that society today should not define it at all. Society today isn't defined by cavemen societies .



Heck lets ignore the fact that even today we have multiple different societies with very different social attitudes. In some countries homosexuality is still illegal; in others its legal. In some women cannot leave the house without covering up entirely; in others they can go down to a beach bikini. That's all present today in the world we live in. Social and cultural attitudes vary a lot and that's in 1 time span on 1 planet full of humans in numbers below that of single Hive cities in the 40K setting

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:My position is backed up by the real world, and absent of information directly contradicting it that 40k is different we can extrapolate. Doubly so since 40k is supposed to be our world 40k years in the future.

Again, you must provide evidence that things have changed. Not some vague assertion that "they must have changed".

Its like you asserting that the Gravitational Constant is somehow different in 40k than it is IRL. We'd need evidence that gravity has changed in 40k for you to assert that, I wouldn't need evidence to say that gravity is unchanged.

The real world is the baseline assumption. Changes only exist where they explicitly or implicitly say they have changed. Nothing explicitly says that humanity's sexual dimorphism, be it biological, psychological, or societal, has changed. And there is plenty of evidence that it remains. The Adeptus Sororitas's very existence actually suggests that there are still defined gender roles and expectations, because otherwise the loophole that enables their existence wouldn't exist. The Ecclesiarchy wouldn't have made the argument and the Imperium wouldn't have accepted it.

Klickor wrote:Btw, if I need citations for my posts that is mostly based on our own reality and assuming 40k is working the same unless directly contradicted then I would love to see you demand citations on everyone else that out of thin air assume the differences between the sexes is smaller in the far future and that it could be almost a 50% representation of women in the imperial guard. I would love to see those sources.

That's the problem. You're basing your arguments in reality, and that's just not how 40k works. This is a setting where the chainsword is considered a fully valid weapon. Where's your sources that chainswords function any different to reality? Or are we just accepting "okay, that's a thing, cool"?

Jumping back to Templar's comment about the gravitational constant changing - I mean, it surely must have? Otherwise, how you explain Titans functioning? Or Space Marine aircraft? Better to assume that "if GW say it's a thing, it's a thing, and don't try thinking about logic".

Again, lets look at the *facts* - all women regiments exist. In GW's own model range, we're seeing femme-presenting faces and bodies in the Guard. In their written material, we're seeing a wealth of women in the Imperial Guard. None of this suggests that it's THAT hard or unusual for women to be in the Imperial Guard.

Meanwhile, I want to see your assertions on why women wouldn't be so present - using only the logics presented in 40k. No real world logic, no arguments based on what *we* currently experience - unless you want to then argue why chainswords are present, or why Titans don't just crumple under their own weight.

Your chainsword analogy is dumb. Here is why.

The chainsword works in the setting, chainsaws would be terrible weapons IRL. The contradition is covered by "space technology/magic". Same with gravity. Gravity is the same, but technology has allowed for the cheating of gravity.

Women's role in the Imperial armed forces is not contradicted by anything in the setting. You are completely misrepresenting our argument, and being incredibly stupid in saying that Real world examples are invalid.

The existence of female characters and all female regiments doesn't contradict the assertion that in the Imperial guard as a whole men make up the majority(based on the real world and how human societies function historically and presently). In fact, the existence of an All-female regiment would suggest that, in the same way that the existence and special nature of the Adeptus Sororitas does, those sort of regiments are rarer. Rare but not uncommon and nobody thinks it is strange or such within the setting.

And actually, we have PLENTY to suggest the Imperium's attitudes to sex/gender are different. There is no restriction visible on women as HLOT. The Sororitas are only all women because of a legal loophole brought on by the misuse of gendered language. They're not recruited because "we don't normally have women soldiers!!", they're recruited because the Imperium used the archaic term "men-at-arms". Does that imply the Imperium also doesn't have non-binary soldiers, because they said "men-at-arms"? Patently false, as a majority of Admech characters that GW have written lately are non-binary.

The fact that legal loophole exists within Imperial legal precedent is predicated on there being a difference. If the Imperium was truly a post-gender society in every way then nobody would have noticed the loophole at all. Men-at-arms would have been viewed with the rules as intended reading and not the rules as written. Men-at-arms would be read to clearly mean human soldier, not male soldier specifically. Heck, the continued existence of gendered language at all suggests that it still matters to some people in-universe, even if only on a subconscious level.

Take a step back and read what we are actually saying,

We are saying that there are no specific blockages against women in Imperial society. However, biology still would assert itself upon human behavior and choices. This would result in the same effects we see on modern military force compositions in countries where there is gender equality. The US military has no barriers to women joining and is an all volunteer force, its still 18% women and 82% male. The IDF is the most open and even deliberate in getting women into the military, and they're still only in the 30%ish range.

Can we say what the actual ratio in the Imperium is? Of course not. We can guess. I would say that overall it is probably somewhere between 20 and 30% women in the IG overall, which would line up with the real world quite nicely. That 20-30% would be spread out, some in mono-gender regiments but most of the Imperium's regiments would be mixed I would say. Probably upwards of 90-95% of regiments.

This would definitely still be a majority male IG, but with plenty of women in it as well.

Grey Templar wrote:Your chainsword analogy is dumb. Here is why.

The chainsword works in the setting, chainsaws would be terrible weapons IRL. The contradition is covered by "space technology/magic". Same with gravity. Gravity is the same, but technology has allowed for the cheating of gravity.

Aka, you can ignore logic when you want to. Why one, and not the other? Explain to me how technology has allowed for the cheating of gravity, using IRL logic.

And actually, we have PLENTY to suggest the Imperium's attitudes to sex/gender are different. There is no restriction visible on women as HLOT. The Sororitas are only all women because of a legal loophole brought on by the misuse of gendered language. They're not recruited because "we don't normally have women soldiers!!", they're recruited because the Imperium used the archaic term "men-at-arms". Does that imply the Imperium also doesn't have non-binary soldiers, because they said "men-at-arms"? Patently false, as a majority of Admech characters that GW have written lately are non-binary.

The fact that legal loophole exists within Imperial legal precedent is predicated on there being a difference. If the Imperium was truly a post-gender society in every way then nobody would have noticed the loophole at all. Men-at-arms would have been viewed with the rules as intended reading and not the rules as written. Men-at-arms would be read to clearly mean human soldier, not male soldier specifically. Heck, the continued existence of gendered language at all suggests that it still matters to some people in-universe, even if only on a subconscious level.

No, what it says is that the Imperium is bound up in so many legalese and power-grabbing that very clearly obvious errors and mis-words can be weaponised and used.

The Imperium isn't "post-gender". Post-gender would be more akin to Orks. The Imperium *recognises* gender as existing, but doesn't care too much about what genders are expected to do. What it *does* care about is legitimacy, legalese, and bureaucracy - and so when a piece of writing that uses an archaic definition (which the Imperium is FULL of) gets passed as law, it is taken literally, instead of every sensible person realising "hey, that's REALLY stupid, we clearly didn't mean that".

The existence of gendered language is likely because of the game being written by real people, and their own unconcious biases and gendered language being used in their writing of the lore. Let's not forget when 40k was created, and how a lot of nuances of gendered language weren't as recognised as today.

Hell - us even saying "guardsmen" is gendered language! Yet, we do both recognise that women serve in the guard! This more suggests that the people who created the game are the ones where the buck stops with, not the fictional world they created.

However, biology still would assert itself upon human behavior and choices. This would result in the same effects we see on modern military force compositions in countries where there is gender equality. The US military has no barriers to women joining and is an all volunteer force, its still 18% women and 82% male. The IDF is the most open and even deliberate in getting women into the military, and they're still only in the 30%ish range.

People used the same argument 100 years ago to say that women could never fight. How long until that changes again?

Considering Cadia, when it stood, had everybody born there in the guard, the number one primo example guard force would be just about equal in men and women. According to the real world, 4 billion men and 3.95 billion women were alive in 2022, meaning that if Cadia has similar ratios (which there's no guarantee of, but we'll use these numbers) it'd be about 49.7% women and 50.3% men.

I have wrestled with the term guardsmen before, primarily because guardswomen or guardspeople are just long words and guard sounds too ambiguous... so I tend to use trooper instead these days

We are saying that there are no specific blockages against women in Imperial society. However, biology still would assert itself upon human behavior and choices. This would result in the same effects we see on modern military force compositions in countries where there is gender equality. The US military has no barriers to women joining and is an all volunteer force, its still 18% women and 82% male. The IDF is the most open and even deliberate in getting women into the military, and they're still only in the 30%ish range.

The main problem I see with this argument is that you seem to be assuming that gender cap is the result of biology and not cultural pressures. Or perhaps that you're assuming that 41st millenium cultural pressures are extremely similar to modern-day ones.

That is, in the modern US, it is still pretty common for girls to be discouraged (or at least less encouraged) to engage in traditionally masculine activities. This can include things like "playing soldier," but it can also apply to combat-unrelated hobbies, interests, and expectations that can all factor into making the millitary seem less welcoming to women than it is to men.

A modern US woman's great grandmother may not have had the right to vote. Her grandmother may have been expected to be a housekeeper and have required her husband or father's permission to withdraw money from her own bank account. Her mother might have been the first woman many of her coworkers ever interacted with in their office.

An imperial woman's great grandmother might have been a PDF hero who helped hold off the ork invaders. Her grandmother might have used that reputation to rise to prominence in the local millitary and join the guard. Her mother might have opted for an administratum job, but she still raised her daughter on tales of her ancestor's glories. And when she watches a holovid put out by the imperium to serve as war propaganda, she's probably seeing plenty of woman as well as men in the ranks of those guardsmen.

Both of these women are legally allowed to enroll in the millitary, but you can see why one might be more likely to do so than the other.

So culturally, the imperium is pretty dissimilar from the modern world. I certainly hope we can agree on that. That being the case, you can see why a culture in a setting where aliens are constantly invading and your society has to churn out an absurd number of soldiers is more likely to promote a culture that makes it easier to churn out those soldiers. It seems to me that a culture in the 41st millenium that discourages people from joining the millitary is less likely to come about than one that promotes it.

If you want to double-down on biological factors, I think plenty of people in this thread have made solid cases for why physical strength is unlikely to prevent a woman from joining the guard. So what are the specific biological factors that you think would cause 20%-30% fewer women to join the guard than their male counterparts?

Or, and this is not an attempt to put words in your mouth, do you think that gendered language existing at one point in time in the imperium is sufficient evidence to assume that the cultural norms of the imperium as a whole skew towards discouraging women from participating in military service?

This is a weak, vibes-based argument, but men and women both seem to be pretty evenly represented among commissars, inquisitors, arbites, enforcers, gangers, and naval personnel. Like, I didn't go through and count every named and gendered character to hold those positions, but examples of women in each of those roles come to mind. And no one ever seems to freak out about any of them being women. So it really feels like the guard would have to be kind of an odd duck to be one of the only parts of imperial society to have a large gender gap where no such gap appears to exist elsewhere.

It would be like finding out that 80% of all chefs in the imperial navy are men because sexism is prevalent in the modern culinary world.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:Your chainsword analogy is dumb. Here is why.

The chainsword works in the setting, chainsaws would be terrible weapons IRL. The contradition is covered by "space technology/magic". Same with gravity. Gravity is the same, but technology has allowed for the cheating of gravity.

Aka, you can ignore logic when you want to. Why one, and not the other? Explain to me how technology has allowed for the cheating of gravity, using IRL logic.

I don't know how the Imperium's technology cheats gravity, it is obviously fictional. But it is patently clear that the Imperium has anti-grav technology(hover tanks and bikes and such).

This is different from you asserting that biology's effects on human social spheres has been eradicated.


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 Wyldhunt wrote:

We are saying that there are no specific blockages against women in Imperial society. However, biology still would assert itself upon human behavior and choices. This would result in the same effects we see on modern military force compositions in countries where there is gender equality. The US military has no barriers to women joining and is an all volunteer force, its still 18% women and 82% male. The IDF is the most open and even deliberate in getting women into the military, and they're still only in the 30%ish range.

The main problem I see with this argument is that you seem to be assuming that gender cap is the result of biology and not cultural pressures. Or perhaps that you're assuming that 41st millenium cultural pressures are extremely similar to modern-day ones.

You seem to be assuming that biology and cultural pressures are unrelated things. They are not.

The reason that most societies throughout history have combat/hunting roles being assigned to men is because of biology effecting how societies form their cultural practices. Women stay home to raise children and do jobs related to being near the home because for the majority of women in these early societies that is what they are doing. Men do hunting and gathering(and eventually warfare) because they are not tied down in the same way.

Human societies all across the world with zero cultural contamination from each other follow this basic cultural template. Uncontacted tribes in the Amazon or deep in Africa or on isolated islands in the pacific generally have these same norms with men hunting or raiding rival tribes while women remain closer to their homes. There is sometimes some overlap but there is a clear preference and divide, and since it can't be because of contact with other societies it must stem from a biological source.

This tells us that human biology is the root cause of society gender roles. Therefore, as long as humans have the current biological forms that we do it is going to cause our societies to develop along these lines. And if and when that happens, the creatures living that way won't truly be human anymore.

Since humans in 40k still look and seem to act identical to modern day humans, there is no reason to belive that anything in this regard has changed.


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 Wyldhunt wrote:

If you want to double-down on biological factors, I think plenty of people in this thread have made solid cases for why physical strength is unlikely to prevent a woman from joining the guard. So what are the specific biological factors that you think would cause 20%-30% fewer women to join the guard than their male counterparts?

Well, for one human women are still clearly needed for reproduction. So that right there precludes a chunk of human society from being enrolled in the guard. The Imperium will most certainly favor recruiting the unemployed or unoccupied portions of society, women who are staying home and raising children will be low on the priority when there are unemployed/underemployed men. The fact the Imperium has its huge population implies lots of women having children and all the responsibilities that go with it. Even if only half of women have/raise their children, that would still cut down how many women join the guard voluntarily by a massive amount. Plenty to reduce the IG to being roughly 20-30% women.

The only way you could get to 50-50 ratios is if the Imperium was deliberately taking women to meet a quota and allowed for zero exceptions to draft notices. IE: They would send draft notices randomly and not allow for people to get out of the tithe because they have children or have any other sort of condition that prevents them from getting drafted. The Imperium is heartless enough to do that, but that sort of behavior would only cause more trouble than it would be worth. It would just be easier to allow for those exceptions and end up taking mostly men. Sure, single unmarried women with no children will get drafted as readily as single unmarried dudes. But there will be a lot less women in that category than men. Men are ultimately more disposable to human societies, yet another reason why they tend to make up the bulk of soldiers.

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 Wyldhunt wrote:

This is a weak, vibes-based argument, but men and women both seem to be pretty evenly represented among commissars, inquisitors, arbites, enforcers, gangers, and naval personnel. Like, I didn't go through and count every named and gendered character to hold those positions, but examples of women in each of those roles come to mind. And no one ever seems to freak out about any of them being women. So it really feels like the guard would have to be kind of an odd duck to be one of the only parts of imperial society to have a large gender gap where no such gap appears to exist elsewhere.

Yes, and?

You could still have fairly even representation of named characters in books and still have only 20-30% of all IG be women. Disproportional representation because GW wants more female representation to boost sales/popularity/cultural brownie points.

But again, you don't want to just count named characters. The nameless mooks in the background count too, and I would bet that most of them be dudes in the GW artwork or various novels, even the new stuff. GW is just making an effort to ensure that more of them are women, for diversity and not because it would necessarily make sense in the setting.

But again, nobody is arguing that having female characters in these positions is counter to the setting. Just to remember that they wouldn't make up anywhere near 50% of the population in a military context due to the above factors which all stem from biological effects on human society and culture.

So, Space Magic allows women to fight with two chainswords in battle as seen in the Jackhals. But the Space Magic doesn't allow women into the guard because of biology?
Chaos is really a great place.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
So, Space Magic allows women to fight with two chainswords in battle as seen in the Jackhals. But the Space Magic doesn't allow women into the guard because of biology?
Chaos is really a great place.

Way to not read a single thing that was actually said.

Since you obviously can't be bothered, I'll simplify it for you.

The Imperium does not discriminate based on sex. However, biological norms still effect the behavior of humans within the Imperium. These norms will naturally cause a sex imbalance in the Imperial Guard because women will be less likely to choose to participate in armed conflict, and unlike men will have more opportunities to be exempt from conscription, as they have done in the millennia in the past and will continue to do so going forward into the future.

These factors will naturally depress the sex ratio from a hypothetically purely neutral one of 50-50 to something more like 70-30 or 80-20 without any outside forces getting involved. And since obviously the Imperium isn't going to bother with something as silly as sex quotas nothing will override this natural tendency to skew the population of the armed forces. This would still result in, assuming that all competency and promotions are done with even distribution among the sexes, between 1 in 5 and 1 in 3 officers and other high ranking individuals being women. That feels completely realistic and well within saying that there is gender equality and good representation in the Imperium.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
So, Space Magic allows women to fight with two chainswords in battle as seen in the Jackhals. But the Space Magic doesn't allow women into the guard because of biology?
Chaos is really a great place.

Way to not read a single thing that was actually said.

Since you obviously can't be bothered, I'll simplify it for you.

The Imperium does not discriminate based on sex. However, biological norms still effect the behavior of humans within the Imperium. These norms will naturally cause a sex imbalance in the Imperial Guard because women will be less likely to choose to participate in armed conflict, and unlike men will have more opportunities to be exempt from conscription, as they have done in the millennia in the past and will continue to do so going forward into the future.

These factors will naturally depress the sex ratio from a hypothetically purely neutral one of 50-50 to something more like 70-30 or 80-20 without any outside forces getting involved. And since obviously the Imperium isn't going to bother with something as silly as sex quotas nothing will override this natural tendency to skew the population of the armed forces. This would still result in, assuming that all competency and promotions are done with even distribution among the sexes, between 1 in 5 and 1 in 3 officers and other high ranking individuals being women. That feels completely realistic and well within saying that there is gender equality and good representation in the Imperium.

Oh I read it. What I'm saying is I look at the models the background is based on and it's obvious to me that the "biological norms" don’t exist in 40K. It's a fantasy World through and through where unaugmented men and women wield two chainsaws and run screaming into battle. The same men and women can make up the Guard.

Biological norms are questionable in a place where there are humans that look like Ogres or Hobbits. In 40K 25000 years are enough to evolve a human into an Ogryn. And you're trying to tell me the minor differences between men and women that I consider mostly culturally influenced can't change in the same timeframe to produce a guard with 50% women?
And I don’t even touch the problem of old Cadian or current Catachan models that don’t look anything like a normal human.

Jakhals aren't exactly unaugmented. They're pumped full of magical blood-stimm juice.

 Grey Templar wrote:

You seem to be assuming that biology and cultural pressures are unrelated things. They are not.

The reason that most societies throughout history have combat/hunting roles being assigned to men is because of biology effecting how societies form their cultural practices. Women stay home to raise children and do jobs related to being near the home because for the majority of women in these early societies that is what they are doing. Men do hunting and gathering(and eventually warfare) because they are not tied down in the same way.

That actually seems to be at least partly a misconception. I did some research recently about hunter-gatherer societies for my primal D&D setting, and turns out they were surprisingly gender equal.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/early-women-were-hunters-not-just-gatherers-study-suggests-180982459/#:~:text=People%20have%20long%20said%20that,killing%20game%20as%20men%20were.

 Nevelon wrote:
Even if you have standards where men are going to out perform women, how high is the bar? If the average man is at 6, and the average woman is at 5, does it mater if the guard only needs you at 3?

Sure, they would prefer an army full of 10s, but they get what they get and use them.

Welcome to the guard, here is your lasgun and flack vest. Go die for the Imperium.

Problem is that average woman is lot lower than 5, and Guard (generally) needs you at lot higher than 6.

Average adult woman will lose in a fight against a 16 year old boy. That is a fact. The moment boys enter puberty, their physical ability vis-a-vis women skyrockets.

When I was in university, I once playwrestled with a female colleague... neither of us was in great physical shape, we were similar in size and build... yet despite that, it was like wrestling a kid. I had to be careful not to hurt her.

And sure, you don't need much physical strength to fight when you have a lasgun. Hell, even knights didn't need to be that physically strong - weapons are a great equalizer.

However, men, physically, simply have significant advantages over women.

Let's take a man and a woman of the same size - same height, weight and overall fitness level.

Man will still have far denser bones, thus significantly improving resistance to injury. And I don't mean just "breaking a bone", but also cumulative injuries under effort. It also means that said bones are better at protecting internal organs from injury - and that matters, because armor can only dissipate force, not cancel it outright (until you get into stuff like forcefields, which is no longer armor).

Man will also have far greater proportion of fast-twitch muscle fibers, meaning far greater ability to exercise force - in a fight or otherwise. Greater muscle strength relative to mass also means that he will be less likely to suffer injury during fairly normal activities - such as marching, setting up camp, digging trenches...

This greater proportion of fast-twitch muscle fibers also means faster reaction time, which means better ability to avoid getting hit in the first place.

Male brain is also better adopted to reading mechanical aspects such as speed, depth and distance (where female brain is better at reading faces and emotions). Thus, men will be better able to target the enemy.

Men are also psychologically more aggressive than women.

In short, a man that is of the same size as a woman will have far more advantages than, say, a man going up against another man much smaller than himself - and at the same time will have none of the disadvantages that come with increased mass.

Of course, as Mad Doc says, there are things to consider such as abhumans... but for baseline humans, which are the majority in the Imperium? No.

So to put it simply: there is no obstacle to there being women in the Imperium Guard. But it also makes no sense for them to be 50% or even overall a significant percentage of the Imperial Guard.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Not directly related, but I just recalled that in one of the arbites novels, a psyker tries to psychically attack a high-ranking arbite by making her think she's in an alternate version of her life where she's clumsy and out of shape, and her response is to start doing some exercises.

It's neither the guard nor even "reality." However, the implication is that a scenario where an arbite could be notably clumsy and out of shape (iirc I think the text may have suggested that she was a little pudgy in this scenario) was considered realistic to not be immediately illusion-shattering. I know that some specialized arbites have desk jobs, but I still feel like your average low-ranking arbite (which is what she was in this scenario) would still need to meet certain physical requirements. I'd be kind of surprised if those requirements weren't at least in the same ballpark as the requirements for the guard.

So if we're comfortable assuming arbites have requirements similar to the guard, and if being clumsy and out of shape isn't a disqualifier for being an arbites, then a reasonably in-shape woman probably meets the requirements for being in the guard.

There is no reason to assume that Arbites have the same requirements as the PDF, let alone the guard.

Modern police - excluding Special Forces - have physical test on entrance... and after that it is mostly chair and donut time. Most policemen are in no better shape than your average civilian office worker.