LionsDen;90850 said:
Even in today's army it is more of societal/cultural issue that keeps women from the front lines and direct combat units. Yes, I will agree that there is a real difference in muscle development and muscle strength in men and women. It's a fact you can't deny. But to say that women would not be able to be effective warriors is also definitely false.
My understanding is that the lack of muscle mass hurts most when hauling gear and marching, more than in actual combat. You could hypothesize that Malazan logistics are good enough, and their gear is light enough, for this to not be a serious limiting factor for their women.
Honestly, though, from the descriptions of women in the text, I've got to go with the hypothesis that women on Wu are bigger than women on Earth. There's no other way you'd get such a high proportion of the heavy infantry to be female (not to mention Detoran).
-Max
Dark Mac;90869 said:
And when I was talking about upper tier female warriors, I was including ascendants and focusing on non-magical fighting. The ones Pippin mentioned might be good ones, but we haven't seen any of them in action. It's a definite disappointment that we haven't seen any female Imass warriors/Seguleh/Avowed either. Calm is definitely the most impressive one so far though, and I hope we see much more of her in the future.
The Seguleh have some cultural issues with women (won't fight them unless attacked), so perhaps Seguleh women specialize in something other than melee. Magic, maybe, or logistics. (Kidding.) The Imass that Lady Envy met on the Meckros city was female.
-Max
Abyss;176953 said:
Curiously, Lorn, Tavore, Tamber and Laseen have been absent in the above discussion.
Lorn probably doesn't stick in the brain as a top-tier swordsman because she got so thoroughly wasted by Corporal Blues. Nobody remembers the loser...
-Max