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 Wyldhunt wrote:

It is not sexist to say that in the real world women tend to avoid military service. It is a fact. Why is it the case? Nobody really knows why, just that it is true. Nothing indicates that this would have changed by the 41st millenium, so it would be wise to presume this remains the same.

We do know why though, right? As others have pointed out earlier in this thread, they avoid military service due to cultural factors. And as has been pointed out and argued, culture in the 41st millennium is pretty different from modern cultures including in some very significant ways that currently depress the percentage of women in the millitary.

It is not sexist or pseudoscience to say there are physical differences between men and women that lead a moderate edge in physical and combat related activities for men, its basic biology. Does this prevent women from doing those things? No. It just means they aren't as good at it all else being equal.

But what is the % impact of that sexual dimorphism? Again, as we've pointed out elsewhere in the thread, physical strength doesn't seem like a huge factor in the 41st millenium so long as you can hit those minimum requirements. And it seems like there are plenty of women in the 41st millenium who would meet those requirements. Quoting myself from earlier:

I mostly agree with this. While I think the impact of sexual dimorphism has been overstated in this thread, I wouldn't be surprised if it had *some* measurable impact on the gender gap. Generally speaking, I get the impression that the physical requirements aren't especially high (see: anecdotal evidence about the arbites plus examples of guard from planets with notably lithe populations) and that the galaxy seems to be absolutely full of physically fit women. That is to say, I don't think there's a shortage of women capable of meeting whatever the physical requirements for the IG are.

But on worlds without something in place to shrink the gap, sexual dimorphism does lend the average man a slight edge in physical strength over the average woman. If there are systems in place that reward that edge (ex: planets that put recruits who can do more pushups into more glamorous units that are more likely to be tithed), I could see the impact of sexual dimorphism being non-zero on the overall gender gap within the IG.

I'd still be reluctant to assert a 40% maximum though. For all I know, the impact of sexual dimorphism might only create a 1% gap.

I am mostly asserting it because the one constant for those 40k years is human biology, and given that humans are still a mostly cohesive species across the whole galaxy it seems that enough has stayed the same that whatever biological norms exist today will still exist in the 41st millenium. At least for the humans that are still considered human, not the abhumans or those who have diverged enough to be considered mutants.

This would all conglomerate in women making up a smaller % of the Imperium's forces. But since the Imperium is egalitarian in the broad senses, this would still lead to a significant portion being women. In my estimate, this would line up nicely with real world military forces that are egalitarian. Roughly somewhere around 30%, plus or minus 5% to account for fluctuations and local planetary customs.

Where are you getting 5% from? Is it just your gut estimate? Why does it make sense to you that the gender representation in a setting with dramatically different cultural norms would line up so well with real-world culture? Wouldn't the expectation be a major departure from today's stats?

It feels like you're dismissing the impact of cultural norms (which I feel would be a bigger factor than sexual dimorphism) by just going, "No one knows!" (Even though we kind of know.) And then you're suggesting that we should default to the gender gap matching up with the modern world for some reason?

Is that reason cultural factors (which you seem to be handwaiving away and thus not accounting for the differences between the modern world and the imperium) or biological factors? If the latter, then I don't think biological differences alone are compelling evidence for asserting a specific range of 25%-35%.

EDIT: Reminder, my main beef here is not that women might be less common than men in the IG; it's that you seem to be making some really specific assertions about % using arguments that seem to fall apart under scrutiny.

Yes, it is a gut estimate. But I would say that Warhammer's cultural norms are really not terribly out of line with what humans have done in the past. It's just the best and worst parts of humanity on a galactic scale. The more humans change, the more we stay the same. Nothing in the Imperium is new or strange to humanity as a whole. Its just happening on a million worlds instead of 1.

My argument is that biology has remained mostly the same, given that humans still are human in 40k. So the effect that biology seems to have on human culture will still exist in 40k. This must be our default assumption unless it is directly contradicted. We cant just assume its different.

Now, we are directly told that there are no barriers to women made by the Imperium itself. This would line up with some modern countries which also have no barriers. I took the 30% figure from Israel which has the largest ratio of women in its armed forces of any country and even has women eligible for conscription. That is the best equivalent we would have for the Imperium's gender neutral policy. Even better since Israel is a country which faces a lot of threats and could easily be faced with a dire all hands on deck situation and potentially need to have everyone who could fight do so.

Yet even they, surrounded by enemies on all sides where any invasion or loss of territory is an existential crisis due to their small land area, still only have women make up around 30% of their armed forces. If any country on the planet was going to have a 50/50 split, Israel would be one to have it. Yet they do not, and its not because some anti-women forces are conspiring to make it that way.

So honestly I feel that is a good place to be sticking our estimate for the Imperium. But there are a lot of unknowns so I feel that adding a bit of margin of error around 5% is appropriate. Maybe you feel that it could be a little more, thats fine. So IMO it could be as high as 35%, I could see arguments for close to 40%. But more than that would be too much IMO. At that point we would need a lot of evidence for human culture to have drastically changed, enough that what we do see of human culture in 40k doesn't support it. We'd need to see human culture looking a lot more like Star Trek then Warhammer for me to think 40-49% was where it was at.

Even the high % of IDF being women is also not representing the amount of women they have in front line duties. That seems to be way lower. That number is something I do think will go up in the future since there are still social and cultural barriers preventing women from front line duty that will most likely be eroded by time.
"Amidst the 2014 Gaza War, the IDF stated that fewer than 4% of their female soldiers were enlisted in combat positions, such as infantry and helicopter/fighter pilots, and that they were instead concentrated in a variety of "combat-support" positions.[11]"

PDF are more unlikely to see combat compared to the guard so is probably a better representation for that and I would expect PDF to have close to a 50/50 while the guard have a more clear majority men vs women.

Steering clear of % discussion, but similar to modern militaries, the Guard is not just front line infantry. Plenty of roles for individuals of all capabilities in support, logistics, sensors, comms, intelligence, flight crews, vehicle crews, lay mechanicus roles, support battery crews, gunnery, observation, close support spotters, training, liaison, mess, laundry, latrine digging, etc etc. That and the aforementioned ability for widespread genetic tinkering, mechanical augmentation and general jiggery pokery with baseline humans makes me think that the only relevant part of the conversation is the societal rules of individual planets. Of which there are a million. which is a bit hard to generalise. Because they are fictional.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'm going to stake ground in the "more than some, less than all" camp

Can we put you down for 25-50%? Will you take a % stand?

Putting specific numbers down just seems to make people angry though, and its too close to Christmas for that

I mean, one of the primary traits of the Guard is that it is tremendously varied world by world, regiment by regiment. There should be all male orgs, all female orgs, mixed orgs, mixed orgs but non-integrated, differences by branches, roles etc. Literally anything goes.

Guessing at the gender mix of the Guard as a whole accross the galaxy is largely academic and really kind of pointless imo, as the only thing that really matters is how you write/build your own.

Exactly. Finding a specific ratio is going to be pointless. It will vary world by world; region by region. The main core is that women being in the Guard is, by and large a normal thing that isn't really remarked on by the majority of the Imperium. In fact worlds/areas where it is a rarity is likely to be more remarked upon by the Greater Imperium.

OK, sorry for the late reply, but was busy IRL...

Altima wrote:

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


But as I said: the reason why we rarely see female-majority IG regiments in the books is because they are rare in real life, and authors are inspired by real life. And there are very good reasons why they are rare in real life.

Which doesn't mean that they can't be more equal 40,000 years in the future. After all, it wasn't all that long ago where women couldn't have professional careers, own property, or even vote, because they were considered physically or mentally more unfit than men.

Sure. But you cannot just say "it should be so". You should also explain WHY.

"Inequality" didn't spring from nowhere. So if you want to remove it, you need to adress the root causes.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


I cannot, because 40k WRITERS live in the reality. Therefore, they will be heavily influenced by it.

Except science fiction writers typically write for...not reality? Think of writers in the 20's and 30's writing about female doctors or lawyers. Or hell, writing about things like satellites or computers or smart phones.

Most of science fiction is basically a portion of reality blown up to massive proportions and with better tech. That's it.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

But for IG, from what we know of the setting, it actually does make sense to recruit best of the best.

Well, that depends on what one considers 'the best of the best.' The Tanith regiments, for example, are considered exemplary light skirmish troops not because of their physicality but because of their minor mutation that they never get lost. That doesn't seem gender locked.

No, but so long as baseline humans in Imperium are assumed to not be mutants compared to modern-day humans, majority of IG will be men.

Ogryns are unintelligent to the point where some of them can't even reload anything but the most basic of weapons. Ratlings are more slender thanks to their low-grav origins.

I think one could make the argument that the Astra Militarum is such a large organization that they can find a place for anyone, even all female regiments.

Now this actually is a good argument. IIRC, Starship Troopers has women serve as starship crews.

But complete equality can only exist in a society of genderless clones.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


Uh, Salvar Chem Dogs are a) a penal legion that b) only came into existence due to the exact same circumstances as I had described as being a logical reason to waive any standards.

Tanith recruitment standards will be based on their own world - they will obviously be different from what standards would be on e.g. Catachan. In fact, having same standards for both would make no sense. Tanith are basically rangers, so their requirements will be based more towards endurance and stealth whereas Catachan obviously value physical strength due to the way they fight.

As mentioned before, the uniqueness for Tanith is their mutation which was far as I know, isn't gender specific. Though given the state of Tanith, it's unlikely we'll find out.

Catachan's uniqueness is that their origin is an infamous death world, which last I checked isn't populated solely by men. It's entirely possible that women from Catachan are just as deadly as their male counterparts, or close enough that it doesn't matter.

Maybe. And if they are, then female Catachan regiments would make sense.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

As for all-female and mixed sex regiments, I have already pointed out that they will exist. After all, it isn't that ALL women will be incapable of military service. Rather, so long as you apply equal standards, men will outnumber women by a significant amount.

But even then, the math dictates that there will be females, unless cultural reasons dictate them not to be.

I will illustrate what I am saying - and HAVE been saying all along - on an example...

Let's take a civilized world, population 10 billion.

Assume relatively normal First World recruitment levels for PDF - so 0,5% of the population.

This gives us 50 000 000 PDF troops overall.

84% of women fail fitness test compared to 30% men:
https://work.chron.com/can-female-join-us-army-infantry-27891.html

This means that pass rate is 70% for men and 16% for women (so 23% of that of men). Meaning women will be 18,6% of the PDF, if we base it solely on the fitness test.

So we have 40 700 000 men and 9 300 000 women in PDF.

But only 10% make it to the Guard (if we take "tithe" as being literal). And assuming we have similar standards for the Imperial Guard as we do for the PDF, we now have another chokepoint.

If Guard fitness tests have similar recruitment outcome as with the original percentages, relative pass rate for men will be 49% compared to 2,56% for women.

This means that out of the 5 000 000 guardsmen, some 5% will be women - a ratio of 19 to 1. So you get 4 750 000 men and 250 000 women in the Guard batch in question.

Capisce?

The problem with this is that you're using the argument for standard humans on their home planet that's not in a state of total war.

Let me just throw a few wrenches into your arguments.

High grav worlds would naturally produce sturdier individuals. Yes, even women. An average woman who grew up in a 1.3g world could outlift and outperform all but the most dedicated males on Earth. Take it to a large enough extreme and you have ogryns that, while strong, would in no way pass even the most basic of exams--since even putting down their name is an issue for most of them.

Low grave worlds. Take the above and inverse it. Women on earth would most likely be far stronger than a male that grew up on a .7g world. Take it to extremes and you get ratlings--who *are* in the Guard and don't get a pass because of their diminutive nature.

Even on Earth, people who have grown up in high altitude locations tend to perform better physically than those not, which is why Kenya produces such excellent runners. People who have spent generations diving are able to hold their breath better, etc.

Then there's the bionic enhancements, chemical cocktails, and otherwise advanced medical technology available within the Imperium.

There's also the fact that on Necromunda, arguably one of the most dangerous and deadly hives in the Imperium, women are not only not considered inferior, there's a very successful House located there that's primarily made up of women.

1) True. But as I have pointed out, Imperial Guard takes IIRC top 10% or so of recruits from any given world. This means that standards of IG recruitment from said world will be based on said world's standards, thus making any differences between the worlds irrelevant for the purposes of recruitment.

2) I was talking about Imperial Guard recruitment, which is also the topic of the thread.

Whether world is in the state of the total war or not doesn't matter for the IG. Of course, if the world is in the state of total war for survival, then they will recruit everybody they can get hands on, every warm body, men, women, even cripples... into the PDF.

Not the Guard.

3) I do not recall such enhancements being implied to being used en masse.

4) That is politicking, not fighting...

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


As I said: fiction is always assumed to be like reality except for the parts where it EXPLICITLY is not. So unless baseline humans in 40k are fundamentally different from modern-day humans (of which I have seen no evidence so far) or Imperium employs large-scale enhancement programme for IG recruits (of which I have also seen no evidence so far), I see no issue with applying real life standards.

I know what Hive Cities are like. But Hive Worlds, despite their massive population, are not exactly a standard in the Imperium.

Except your arguments are based on our current reality but not the logical expansion of the 40k universe, in which there is genetic modification and mutations (unless you think no one ever bothered outside of the Space Marines, or that Tanith's mutation was purely unique). You've ignored the influence of gravity, of growing up in different environments, and the effect of the Imperium's effectively on-going total war stance, and the fact that they've just too big and bureaucratic to make any efficiency changes.

Yes, I do believe no one ever bothered outside the Space Marines. As I said, I do not recall any evidence of large scale usage of genetic enhancement in the Imperium. And enhancement they do use in Space Marines apparently depends on candidate's biological and hormonal makeup, making it unviable for women.

And no, I have not "ignored the influence of gravity, of growing up in different environments, and the effect of the Imperium's effectively on-going total war stance, and the fact that they've just too big and bureaucratic to make any efficiency changes.".

Let me explain... again:
1) Influence of gravity does not matter, because recruiting standards will vary from world to world. In other words, you won't have an Ogryn or a Catachan being compared to a Tanith. Rather, any comparison and differentiation will be done on the world itself. Guard merely takes the best 10% from the world, but what exactly constitutes the "best 10%" depends on the world itself.
2) Growing up in different environments... again, see point 1).
3) Total war stance doesn't matter, because Imperium is by its very nature incapable of being in a "total war stance" by World War 2 standards. Imperial Guard recruits through tithe, which if we take a traditional definition means that they take the best 10% of recruits from a world. Again, this argument would make sense if we were discussing a Planetary Defense Force... for PDF it may make sense to have a 50-50 split. Not so much for the Guard.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

I already have, multiple times - though perhaps not to you specifically.

But basically, there are two main reasons why real world logic matters here:
1) 40k writers live in the real world, and will be inspired by what they see in the real world. Therefore, they will often reflect the real world regardless of whether it makes sense in the setting or not.

If scifi writers are writing purely based off the real world, with current world sensibilities, in a setting that's pretty explicitly space fantasy 40,000 years into the future, they're arguably not worth the paper they're writing on. Imagine Star Trek treating Uhura as an anomaly on that show because it was written with the sensibilities of the 70's as the primary focus. Whereas today, most of us wouldn't even bat an eye at a woman or non-white person being an officer.

I am not discussing "sensibilities" here but reality. And reality is that men make better soldiers than women for purely biological reasons. Which then means that if you want to deviate from reality, you need to provide an explanation (at least in sci-fi).

But explanation in 40k is a) lacking and b) would be difficult to provide in the first place considering the state of the setting. Unless you went the route of rewriting the entire background to include pre-40k humanity genetically modifying its entire human population.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

2) Fiction is based on the real world. Therefore, inherent assumption in reading any kind of fiction (fantasy, sci-fi, whatever) is that things are the same as in the real world except where explicitly noted otherwise.

Fiction? Maybe. Science/fantasy fiction? Absolutely not.

The only time where this applies if it's fiction written in contemporary or within specific timeframes (like Stargate). And even then, those fictions are usually written or are going to poke at the backwards mentality of those timeframes.

Science fiction too is largely based on the real world, because it typically a) features actual humans and b) is based on writer's own experiences.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

You don't assume that humans of the Warhammer Fantasy are inherently superhuman just because they live in a fantasy world? Or those of Star Wars or Homeworld, both of which are in literally different galaxies from our own?

Except...they sometimes are? Humans in the Empire, much less the chaos wastes, *can* be superhuman, whether through raw physical prowess or being able to make reality their bitch with their brains. Star Wars, you can actually have random people turn into super human space wizards, or even those that aren't can be 'force sensitive' and end up inherently better than the people around them.

For Homeworld, they could very well be super human but the only thing that would matter in that universe is if they could survive in 2000C environments. Which we have empirical evidence that they cannot.

Notice the "inherently".

Yes, some humans there are superhuman - just as there are some superhumans in the Imperium. But baseline human is still a baseline human. And when they are superhuman, that is always *explicitly* noted.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


As for disparity between individual regiments, that is easy to explain by each world having its own tests - which, considering different fighting styles, only makes sense. Add cultural reasons on top of that, and you have a playground for "anything goes".

It's more likely the Imperium provides the criteria that the planetary government must meet. "You are hereby called upon to provide a regiment of 3,000 men/women, between the ages of X and Y, with no chronic conditions that were result in impaired service within 20 years" etc. etc.

Even if Imperium did provide such details, they probably wouldn't send out exact physical fitness standards or anything like it. They'd just say "best 10%", which brings us back to what I have been saying.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

But law of averages still means that majority of the Imperial Guard overall will be men.

Actually, the law of averages means that roughly half of the Imperial Guard will be men.

OK, I may have used the wrong term... but what I was talking about is basically the distribution curve.

To quote Wikipedia:
"The law of averages is the commonly held belief that a particular outcome or event will, over certain periods of time, occur at a frequency that is similar to its probability."

So what you said would be only true if Warhammer 40k men and women were demonstrably equal in every single characteristic.

But let's take the height... if we assume the US military's WW2 60'' minimum height requirement, and take these graphs:
https://matthewmazur.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/two-curves.png
https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-426a04d914f4c61347f224fa76f9d3c8.webp

You would lose some 5-10 times more women than men, just due to the height requirement.

There's this treehouse with a no girls allowed rule. If we just extrapolate that real life example to all the populations of all the worlds in this fictional space fantasy setting 38k years in the future then it's obvious that there shouldn't be any women in the guard at all.

Jokes aside, I disagree with your assumption that science fiction settings are mostly just 1:1 real life copies. That view really limits the possibilities of any fiction and makes you fill in unknown/unexplored topics with boring real life stuff, instead of with stuff that makes sense in-(fictional-)universe.

They are based on our reality och real life and then expanded from there. It is possible to change anything and everything in a science fiction or fantasy novel from there but it all has the same base and unless something is told to be different it is assumed to be either like in our world or like a trope/stereotype of the setting.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

There's also the fact that on Necromunda, arguably one of the most dangerous and deadly hives in the Imperium, women are not only not considered inferior, there's a very successful House located there that's primarily made up of women.

4) That is politicking, not fighting...

I'm sorry - did you just claim that House Escher don't fight?

Please go see a proctologist at your earliest convenience, so they can pull your head out of your ass.

Politics with Guns is call fighting

Heck the first new generation of Necromunda boxed set has Escher squaring off against Goliaths in battle

Klickor wrote:
They are based on our reality och real life and then expanded from there. It is possible to change anything and everything in a science fiction or fantasy novel from there but it all has the same base and unless something is told to be different it is assumed to be either like in our world or like a trope/stereotype of the setting.

Well that is indeed the assumption I disagree with, thanks for restating it. It's the "it is assumed" part that I disagree with. That's not the default position (if there even is such a thing), that's a choice you're making.

Assuming everything not explicitly declared as different is the same as our current snapshot of a society is such a strange take (see also my previous comments). It's a space fantasy setting set 38.000 years in the future. The stone age ended only ~10k years ago.

There is of course an assumption that some, probably most, things have progressed in various ways in the future from how they are today. But still in ways that have their root in our current day. Especially things that we today know are rooted in things that had to do with survival and making earlier and simpler societies work. Like gender roles. Part of it is biology but a lot of it is from culture and much of the reasons the culture were like that is gone but it still lingers on in our culture. If we jump forward in time we can assume all those old cultural traces are gone when it comes to gender roles in the future. Biology will probably still play a part and new cultural influences may affect them. But we can't assume what these new cultural influences are without the authors telling us and if they don't we can only assume there aren't any that affects the story. There probably still are but what they are and what effect they have we can only speculate about and they can be favorable or weird to us in any which way without we knowing.

Just because someone has a personal view of how they want the future to be we can't just assume it is like that in a story if it is not told by the author even if it is in the future unless it has a logical basis from our real world that indicates it would progress in that direction.

40k is also a bit different from the likes of Star Trek. Both are in the future but while Star Trek is rather filled with hope and shows progress the Imperium in the 40k universe is the opposite. Lots of things are backwards and even though it looks to care less about sex and gender than our world, probably due to having much larger problems to care about, it isn't necessarily true for everything. Would it really be surprising if in certain parts the Imperium is really sexist and enforces strict gender/sex roles without any good reasoning behind it? Perhaps in some aspects it is really favorable to men and in others to women even if on the whole it is fairly neutral and there is no sex that comes out on the top. We don't know all about life in the Imperium since most stories focus on the war aspect so I think it is a bit naive by some people to assume it is better and more equal in all ways, rather than just some, than our modern western world.

A story set in the future that don't pull a lot of the worldbuilding from how we see our current world would probably be very hard for us to read and understand. I don't know any stories that don't. There might be some out there that have gone out of their way to try to leave it behind but even if they tried, have they really succeeded with it?

@Klickor: Multiple people have given lengthy explanations for why the culture of the 41st millennium wouldn't be the same as the modern day. Asserting that it would be without addressing the points already made is just talking in circles.

People have also already pointed out that, based on the representation we see in the novels, guardswomen are a common thing. So even the "we have to assume it's the same as our world unless explicitly stated otherwise" argument doesn't really hold up unless you're waiting for a character to drop an exact %.

Respectfully, every point in your last post has been addressed repeatedly elsewhere in this thread.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
@Klickor: Multiple people have given lengthy explanations for why the culture of the 41st millennium wouldn't be the same as the modern day. Asserting that it would be without addressing the points already made is just talking in circles.

People have also already pointed out that, based on the representation we see in the novels, guardswomen are a common thing. So even the "we have to assume it's the same as our world unless explicitly stated otherwise" argument doesn't really hold up unless you're waiting for a character to drop an exact %.

Respectfully, every point in your last post has been addressed repeatedly elsewhere in this thread.

My last response wasn't about the amount of women in the guard at all. That has already been discussed to death I think.

It was about how in general science fiction do start with where we are today and that at most we can extrapolate it a bit without the author directly telling us what has changed. But we can't assume much more than that without direction.

I only brought up gender roles and sex as a general statement since it is a good example of this due to how I think we can all assume that in the far future it will have progressed beyond where we currently are and that the cultural "baggage" that has been linked more to social necessities in the past rather than be directly related to biology is most likely completely gone. Same with that the view on discrimination based on sex might still exist but probably not in the ways like we do it now cause the "reasons" behind it today won't exist. We just don't know and shouldn't assume it is 100% gone in a society like the Imperium which has plenty of backwards parts to it while it is more likely it is completely gone in Star Trek.

I don't mean in the way that they see women only fit to breed and men fit to die but more absurd like if for some reason 10k years ago the Emperor said something about a woman who spilled his morning coffee pot and now women in the Imperium are not allowed to serve coffee. But the Emperor didn't stop there because the male chef burned his pancakes so now only women can cook pancakes. All from twisted and absurd interpretation of a "holy" text found in the custodes trash heap. I expect there to be some weird rules like that.

As I've noted even the concept of "where we are today" is flawed because we are not a single society today. We have over 100 countries and each one has its own structure of social elements. Layer on top of that political and religious groupings that can extend cross country and also wriggle their way through countries and you've got a LOT of different social structures on show even just in this one moment in time on Earth.


So even if we use today on the real world as a foundation then you've got to define which country and social/political/religious group you're talking about.


Plus as noted we've seen women in the Guard and in high positions of power and influence throughout the Imperium and no one bats an eyelid at it. Men and Women of the 41st millennium appear to share entirely equal social status "at large" throughout the Imperium. Yes you will find worlds where it skews one way or the other and there are some certain trends here and there with certain sectors clearly showing a bias toward one gender over the other.

However the Imperium is essentially uncaring about your gender. It just doesn't seem to factor into choices being made.
It's like eye colour - most cultures and people today when reviewing you for a job or position care not one bit about what colour your eyes are. It doesn't matter if you're blue, brown, grey, green or whatever. It's just not entering into the thought process - its not a tick box on the application form; part of the application process nor even anything beyond a casual observation on the medical record.

shortymcnostrill wrote:
There's this treehouse with a no girls allowed rule. If we just extrapolate that real life example to all the populations of all the worlds in this fictional space fantasy setting 38k years in the future then it's obvious that there shouldn't be any women in the guard at all.

Jokes aside, I disagree with your assumption that science fiction settings are mostly just 1:1 real life copies. That view really limits the possibilities of any fiction and makes you fill in unknown/unexplored topics with boring real life stuff, instead of with stuff that makes sense in-(fictional-)universe.

It is not my assumption that "science fiction settings are mostly just 1:1 real life copies". Rather, it is standard assumption that "fictional settings are identical to real life unless explicitly noted otherwise".

Rohirrim are not different from real-world humans simply because they live in Middle Earth. Numenoreans are different - because said difference had been explicitly described by Tolkien. Likewise, we don't assume that all Middle Earth rabbits are cousins of Monty Python's Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog simply because it is a fictional setting.

And using "stuff that makes sense in-universe" is still based on the above assumption. If setting *requires* something to be different from real world, then assumption will be that it is different. If however it potentially-could-be-different-but-is-not-necessarily-different, then it makes no sense to assume that it is different from real world until we are given explicit reason to believe otherwise.

If you just ignore reality, then you end up with a bunch of headcanons and then everybody is talking about his own universe rather than author's creation.

If however it potentially-could-be-different-but-is-not-necessarily-different, then it makes no sense to assume that it is different from real world until we are given explicit reason to believe otherwise.

I disagree with this slightly. Or rather, I feel like the word "potentially" doesn't apply as well here as the word "probably." In the 41st millennium, modern day real world gender norms *probably* aren't a major factor because the setting has shown us a great many reasons that they shouldn't be, because the abundant examples of guardswomen suggest that they aren't, and because the pretty rapid rate at which gender norms are changing in the real world suggests that they aren't the sort of thing that's especially likely to survive another 38k of cultural drift.

Potentially the Rohirim drink coffee every morning using a thus-unmentioned electrical grid and coffee pot, but probably they do not. Given that Middle Earth is very old-timey and doesn't seem to have things like coffee pots, and it would be sort of weird for something major like an electrical grid to exist but go unmentioned. The rest of the setting suggests they probably don't have electrical coffee pots on Middle Earth despite such things being the norm in our world and despite the books never going out of their way to explicitly mention that coffee pots don't exist.

Which is to ignore my earlier point that given genhancement and deliberate alterations to better suit a new world’s environment, we can’t say the humans of The Imperium are Simply Future Us.

And again, we see any presentation of real world gubbins done so entirely without the impact of cultural context and pressures which are largely artificial, but serve to ensure girls don’t engage in rough and tumble the way boys are at a young age.

Those things whilst created by society (hence they’re artificial) are real, and do have a direct impact.

The Imperium has, at no point, shown to particularly care about what is or isn’t in your pants. The two exceptions being Astartes and Sororitas, who have specific recruitment restrictions.

We see men and women represented at all levels of Imperial Society. And at no point is a given person’s position considered especially noteworthy based on their gender. From a drudge of House Orlock to a Lady Inquisitor, or even High Lord of Terra? Gender just doesn’t seem to be a factor at all.

The false assumption that your own experience is the default and natural way is also something that science fiction regularly examines and deconstructs. This applies to both personal and also societal views and structures.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin is a great example which follows a man on a diplomatic mission to a planet inhabited by gender fluid humans, and how his prejudice based on his personal lens of gender makes him misinterpret and misunderstand the society he is meant to be learning about. Intentionally going into any science fiction world under the assumption that your normal is the normal of the world you are interacting with unless explicitly said otherwise in the work is, to me, an incredibly incurious approach to media.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:
OK, sorry for the late reply, but was busy IRL...


Sure. But you cannot just say "it should be so". You should also explain WHY.

"Inequality" didn't spring from nowhere. So if you want to remove it, you need to adress the root causes.

I'd argue your own logic back at you, since it's been repeatedly shown that within the context of the Imperium in 40k, the gender norms you reference simply don't exist. Women are found in all areas of the Imperium, including in front line combat positions. They're so ubiquitous in the guard that the only lip service that's paid to gender is simply that mixed gender regiments are not that typical, though do exist enough to not be a freak occurrence.

It's even noted in the Gaunt novels that the (all female) Sororitas initiates tended to be the physically dominating jock types and would routinely pound the other recruits into the ground during training and sports.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


Most of science fiction is basically a portion of reality blown up to massive proportions and with better tech. That's it.

And could you accept that somewhere in 30,000+ years of advancement, some of that technology could render the physical differences between men and women pointless in an essentially endless galactic armed conflict?

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


No, but so long as baseline humans in Imperium are assumed to not be mutants compared to modern-day humans, majority of IG will be men.

Except as stated before, women are in the Guard in such a degree that it's not even remarked upon. It's only some people seeing the stated fact that female only regiments exist, men only regiments exist, mixed regiments are atypical but not unheard of come in with out-of-game reasoning why the female regiments must of course be in the vast minority that supports your stance.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


Now this actually is a good argument. IIRC, Starship Troopers has women serve as starship crews.

But complete equality can only exist in a society of genderless clones.

The Imperium does not have equality nor does it have equity, but has been shown again and again, gender is not the typical gatekeeping, unless it's Astartes (which has its own in and out universe ...discussions) or Sororitas. Or I guess Sisters of Silence.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


1) True. But as I have pointed out, Imperial Guard takes IIRC top 10% or so of recruits from any given world. This means that standards of IG recruitment from said world will be based on said world's standards, thus making any differences between the worlds irrelevant for the purposes of recruitment.

This sounds suspiciously made up. Why would the Imperial Guard recruitment standards vary from world to world? Are low grav worlders never going to be deployed to earth standard or higher G? Are corrupt officials never going to take the opportunity to curry or call in favors or rid themselves of undesirables?

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

2) I was talking about Imperial Guard recruitment, which is also the topic of the thread.

Whether world is in the state of the total war or not doesn't matter for the IG. Of course, if the world is in the state of total war for survival, then they will recruit everybody they can get hands on, every warm body, men, women, even cripples... into the PDF.

Not the Guard.

You misunderstand. It's the Imperium itself that is in a state of near Total War. Most of its industrial output is dedicated to the war effort, and the only thing preventing it from throwing more bodies at the problem is that the Imperium can't physically move enough troops at a time. The Imperium can't even stop to reorganize itself which would improve the efficiency of the Guard alone by at least 50% because it is at constant war all over.

And then when an actual world comes under serious threat, then yes, every civilian that can be found and armed will be conscripted into the PDF or militia or what-have-you.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

3) I do not recall such enhancements being implied to being used en masse.

Which is not to say that they couldn't. I recall in older fluff, Inquisitorial Stormtroopers and Kasrkins had some genemodding going on. And then there's the Black Lucifers.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

4) That is politicking, not fighting...

No, House Escher fu...ights.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


Yes, I do believe no one ever bothered outside the Space Marines. As I said, I do not recall any evidence of large scale usage of genetic enhancement in the Imperium. And enhancement they do use in Space Marines apparently depends on candidate's biological and hormonal makeup, making it unviable for women.

You're factually incorrect on that one. The Custodes for one. Lucifer Blacks for another. Hell, in the second Horus Heresy novel, there was a noble house's retainer that got in good with Horus, and he was given genetreatment. While he was too old to be converted to an Astartes, but he was definitely no longer purely human.

And it's likely that large scale gene-modding of a population wouldn't be happening under the Imperium for three good reasons: the Imperium has a thing against mutants, it would require heavy resource investment, and all the modifications would normally be done before you plop people onto a planet so the biggest offenders would've been done during humanity's height at the dark age of technology.

And it should be noted that for Astartes, real life biologists have commented on GW's reasoning being total bunk, but we as the players have to accept it because that's what GW says (until they inevitably change or expand the fluff), much like they've said that women in the guard and the rest of the Imperium's military are pretty typical, no matter what modern day hang-ups players may have.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

And no, I have not "ignored the influence of gravity, of growing up in different environments, and the effect of the Imperium's effectively on-going total war stance, and the fact that they've just too big and bureaucratic to make any efficiency changes.".

Let me explain... again:
1) Influence of gravity does not matter, because recruiting standards will vary from world to world. In other words, you won't have an Ogryn or a Catachan being compared to a Tanith. Rather, any comparison and differentiation will be done on the world itself. Guard merely takes the best 10% from the world, but what exactly constitutes the "best 10%" depends on the world itself.

Why wouldn't they be compared? Any guard regiment from any world could be deployed to any other world. It would make sense to have at least a standard base, even if the Imperium weren't a bureaucratic hellhole. Hell, your own examples undermine your stance--Ogryns aren't raised as regiments, they're used as very specific auxiliaries because they can't function as regular guardsmen.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

3) Total war stance doesn't matter, because Imperium is by its very nature incapable of being in a "total war stance" by World War 2 standards. Imperial Guard recruits through tithe, which if we take a traditional definition means that they take the best 10% of recruits from a world. Again, this argument would make sense if we were discussing a Planetary Defense Force... for PDF it may make sense to have a 50-50 split. Not so much for the Guard.

The Imperium is as close to being in a total war stance as they possibly could be. The only reasons they aren't closer to your WW2 standards is that they don't have enough industrial lift to throw more bodies at the existing conflicts and they can't physically get at most of their enemies--Chaos hides, usually in the warp where the Imperium is not just going to stroll into; Eldar are on their craftworlds or in the webways; tyranids float from system to system; Necrons are asleep, all over, and have the technology to hide.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


I am not discussing "sensibilities" here but reality. And reality is that men make better soldiers than women for purely biological reasons. Which then means that if you want to deviate from reality, you need to provide an explanation (at least in sci-fi).

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume when you say 'better soldiers', you mean 'better frontline infantry combatants.' Because many women have distinguished themselves with their service. The US has senator that was in the armed services, and some extra bits between her thighs would not have prevented her from losing both legs after her Black Hawk was shot down by enemy fire in Iraq.

And the explanations have already been given. And, frankly, GW says so, so you don't really have a leg to stand on.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

But explanation in 40k is a) lacking and b) would be difficult to provide in the first place considering the state of the setting. Unless you went the route of rewriting the entire background to include pre-40k humanity genetically modifying its entire human population.

You're literally ignoring fluff and reasoning to impose your own view on a part of the setting GW has already put to rest, just so you can say that women don't make up a significant portion of combat units in the Astra Militarum.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

Science fiction too is largely based on the real world, because it typically a) features actual humans and b) is based on writer's own experiences.

I can't wait to read the part in Abnett's biography when he goes to another planet to shoot lasers at magical space demons.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


Notice the "inherently".

Yes, some humans there are superhuman - just as there are some superhumans in the Imperium. But baseline human is still a baseline human. And when they are superhuman, that is always *explicitly* noted.

Gaunt fought at actual superhuman with hundreds or thousands of years of experience and was specifically noted to be more or less your average human. Perhaps a somewhat gifted duelist, but if you ask Ciaphas Cain what a gifted duelist can do against an average Astartes and the answer is "you can scratch their armor--once--if they're bored and underestimate you."

So even baseline humans may not be as baseline as you'd think.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:

Even if Imperium did provide such details, they probably wouldn't send out exact physical fitness standards or anything like it. They'd just say "best 10%", which brings us back to what I have been saying.

They can say send me your best, but unless the world prides itself on the regiments it sends--like the Cadians, Kriegsmen, etc.--who's going to know if they send their best 10% or not? Even Tanis, when it was mustering its three regiments as a point of pride, took the opportunity to get rid of some less than desirable members of the population.

 AldarionTelcontar wrote:


OK, I may have used the wrong term... but what I was talking about is basically the distribution curve.

To quote Wikipedia:
"The law of averages is the commonly held belief that a particular outcome or event will, over certain periods of time, occur at a frequency that is similar to its probability."

So what you said would be only true if Warhammer 40k men and women were demonstrably equal in every single characteristic.

But let's take the height... if we assume the US military's WW2 60'' minimum height requirement, and take these graphs:
https://matthewmazur.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/two-curves.png
https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-426a04d914f4c61347f224fa76f9d3c8.webp

You would lose some 5-10 times more women than men, just due to the height requirement.

It depends on the characteristics being measured, which is why it's likely that the Imperium has a generic standard for what's considered an acceptable guardsmen.

Which from what we've seen in the books that do feature female guardsmen fighting alongside male guardsman, doesn't seem to be particularly stringent. There's no mention of the female guardsmen of the Tanith struggling with the equipment once they become a mixed regiment--the only mention is that there's a low burn resentment that the newcomers don't have the Tanith made equipment that the original troops do. There's also no mention of any likewise issues with the regiment Cain usually serves with.

So there's evidence right there that there's not anything your typical woman in the guard can't handle that their male counterparts can't. And those two regiments are fighting regiments too, so you can't just say that they were garrison regiments with more lax recruitment standards. Hell, the only reason the regiment Cain typically serves with even is integrated in the first place is that an all-male and all-female regiment were both mangled to half strength and combined by the Munitorum.

And using data from WW2 might not be as effective as you think since, at least in the US, they were able to be picky enough at the beginning to relegate (male) African Americans to support roles--which would be where most females in the military would traditionally be assigned in the modern US armed forces--because of entirely constructed social reasons, which didn't stop the people at the time attributing it to such ridiculousness as black people not having good enough night vision.

Just to adress the gene-modding point specifically (...again), I am pretty confident it is canon that so much gene-modding occurred during the Dark Age of Technology that the Emperor was worried that baseline humanity no longer exists by the start of the Unification Wars (and didn't exist on Terra- all the Techno-barbarian sects were gene-modded from "natural" humanity). It is certainly canon that genetic engineering was widespread and commonplace during the DAoT, although I think only the Horus Heresy series suggests this was basically universal to some extent. This is also a hypothesis for why Imperial humanity is so prone to mutation- their genomes have been tinkered with to the point they are unstable.

Given how widespread low-level gene-modding is in the 41st millennium despite the Imperium's backwards approach to technology and obsession with purity, and given how hostile many human-inhabited worlds are to human life, I think it is highly likely that the hugely-advanced DAoT humans were widely gene-modded to suit specific tasks and survive specific environments. So I think the available evidence does not support that Imperial humans are genetically the same, on the whole, as modern humans. They probably exhibit much greater genetic variability too. The impact this could have on sexual dimorphism is entirely unquantifiable, and likely varies from population to population. My point is merely that assuming sexual dimorphism remains the same based on genetics remaining the same is not a strong argument when human genetics appear to have been altered en masse.

 Haighus wrote:
My point is merely that assuming sexual dimorphism remains the same based on genetics remaining the same is not a strong argument when human genetics appear to have been altered en masse.

This would only be the case if official artwork didn't exist. Official artwork shows that sexual dimorphism definitely still exists.

Furthermore, the specific mentioning of cultures within the Imperium where women warriors are primarily focused on, such as Clan Escher, implies that such things are not the norm. Not unusual to be sure, but not the norm.

Also, the Emperor made great pains to undo the contamination of mankinds genes. He purged great numbers of people for being mutants in an attempt to get back to mankinds base genetic purity. This would suggest that mankind has returned closer to what we are today than they may have gotten during the DAoT. Not all the way of course, but at least a portion.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
My point is merely that assuming sexual dimorphism remains the same based on genetics remaining the same is not a strong argument when human genetics appear to have been altered en masse.

This would only be the case if official artwork didn't exist. Official artwork shows that sexual dimorphism definitely still exists.

Furthermore, the specific mentioning of cultures within the Imperium where women warriors are primarily focused on, such as Clan Escher, implies that such things are not the norm. Not unusual to be sure, but not the norm.

Also, the Emperor made great pains to undo the contamination of mankinds genes. He purged great numbers of people for being mutants in an attempt to get back to mankinds base genetic purity. This would suggest that mankind has returned closer to what we are today than they may have gotten during the DAoT. Not all the way of course, but at least a portion.

Ah yes. The well-known scientific principle of "It looks like this, so it's DEFINITELY THIS."
Yup, no way that genetic modifications from a civilization tens of thousands of years in the future can be invisible to the naked eye. That'd be ridiculous!

 Grey Templar wrote:


This would only be the case if official artwork didn't exist. Official artwork shows that sexual dimorphism definitely still exists.

Ehhhhhh. An argument could be made either way based off the artwork. Artists train themselves very hard to be able to draw realistic human bodies. Asking them to create an uncanny valley equivalent or just something outside the norms may be more than they can do (or GW is willing to pay for talent-wise) when it doesn't really add much.

For example, if you were to take comic books artwork a few years back, you would think that women in the marvel universe do not have spines and Captain America has a six foot wide chest.

But for the sake of argument, if sexual dimorphism still exists in 40k--which seems a safe bet, though it should be mentioned that sexual dimorphism in humans is not particularly extreme with the differences in body mass being about 15% with some of our closer genetic relatives being greater than 50%--it's at a rate that essentially doesn't matter for the purposes of Astra Militarum recruitment.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Furthermore, the specific mentioning of cultures within the Imperium where women warriors are primarily focused on, such as Clan Escher, implies that such things are not the norm. Not unusual to be sure, but not the norm.

Or it could be mentioned because women make up the primary combat forces, like Clan Escher who does have male fighters but appears to be mostly female gangers, instead of it being the more even distribution one would find anywhere else. The other gangs seem to have a fairly even distribution even the roided up Goliaths.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Also, the Emperor made great pains to undo the contamination of mankinds genes. He purged great numbers of people for being mutants in an attempt to get back to mankinds base genetic purity. This would suggest that mankind has returned closer to what we are today than they may have gotten during the DAoT. Not all the way of course, but at least a portion.

Not necessarily. There's a difference between modding humans enough to have, say, nightvision or gills, and modding humans by adding additional muscle mass and strengthened bones at the cost of greater caloric intake to better survive a high grav world. It's entirely possible that humanity among the stars, given the DAoT's greater terraforming technology and efforts, were on the whole closer to baseline humans of today than whatever survived on Terra, Luna, Mars, and Titan by the the time the Emp's solidified his power.

Plus the Emperor didn't try to exterminate the people on Mars even though their physical differences and culture were and remain wildly different from baseline humans. Sure, it's mutation and not cyborgification, but it's somewhat similar as far as this discussion goes.

Although a planet where the population was heavily mutated enough to be worthy of extermination would likely have a culture that was incompatible with the Emp's vision for his Imperium, so it's likely a moot point.

House Escher is indeed an outlier, but not in the way GreyTemplar thinks.

They’re all female thanks to some manky genetic disease which, and I mostly quote with some paraphrasing, renders their males weak and imbecilic.

The other Houses still field female Gangers. Even House Goliath, though there they’re comparatively rare due to them being able to reproduce sexually is relatively new, having originally been an engineered, all-male slave species. But life uhhh..finds a way.

Altima wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

Furthermore, the specific mentioning of cultures within the Imperium where women warriors are primarily focused on, such as Clan Escher, implies that such things are not the norm. Not unusual to be sure, but not the norm.

Or it could be mentioned because women make up the primary combat forces, like Clan Escher who does have male fighters but appears to be mostly female gangers, instead of it being the more even distribution one would find anywhere else. The other gangs seem to have a fairly even distribution even the roided up Goliaths.

This. Escher isn't noteworthy because they include warrior women. They're noteworthy because they use mostly women. Because, y'know, most fighting forces in the imperium don't seem to care about your sex. Seems like when there's a gender gap in one of the setting's factions it tends to get brought up as unusual. Almost like the default is a roughly even split.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Also, the Emperor made great pains to undo the contamination of mankinds genes. He purged great numbers of people for being mutants in an attempt to get back to mankinds base genetic purity. This would suggest that mankind has returned closer to what we are today than they may have gotten during the DAoT. Not all the way of course, but at least a portion.

I don't think a genetic purge on Terra that occurred after the DAoT is likely to have had a significant impact on the gene pool of the rest of the galaxy. Whereas the implication of gene-modding being prevalent during the DAoT is that humanity would have brought modified genetics with them when the species spread throughout the galaxy.

Also, the purges of the Imperium were either not very thorough or did a really poor job seeing as Ogryns, Squats, Ratlings, and many types of Beastmen.
So y'know, if that level of mutation and genetic tinkering was ok, kind of puts a whole stopper on the "the Imperium only likes perfect humans" bit.

Ehh. Human enough to be able to comprehend and follow orders, and have a sense of loyalty.

Even the Solar Auxilia made good use of Ogryns.

Indeed, delving into the old Lore, the problem with Ogryn and Beastmen is they’re super easily convinced about stuff. And once they’ve been indoctrinated? That’s it. They’re completely loyal.

As for the genetic tinkering? I think we can also consider the Kroot. Or rather the Krootox and Kroothound, which became evolutionary dead ends, because the Shaping was taken too far. I see the same in Ogryns, Ratlings and Beastmen. I don’t think any were exactly the intended result. Just that when you muck with genetics, genetics mucks right back.