Women Warriors: How Females Have Fought in Combat Since History's Beginning

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2019

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

From Vikings and African queens to cross-dressing military doctors and WWII Russian fighter pilots, battle was not a metaphor for women across history.

But for the most part, women warriors have been pushed into the historical shadows, hidden in the footnotes, or half-erased. Yet women have always gone to war—or fought back when war came to them. They fought to avenge their families, defend their homes (or cities or nations), win independence from a foreign power, expand their kingdom's boundaries, or satisfy their ambition. They battled disguised as men. They fought, undisguised, on the ramparts of besieged cities. Some were skilled swordsmen or trained snipers, others fought with improvised weapons. They were hailed as heroines and cursed as witches, sluts, or harridans.

In todays episode I'm speaking with Pamela Toler, author of the book Women Warriors. She uses both well known and obscure examples, drawn from the ancient world through the twentieth century and from Asia and Africa as well as from the West. Looking at specific examples of historical women warriors, she considers why they went to war, how those reasons related to their roles as mothers, daughters, wives, or widows, peacemakers, poets or queens—and what happened when women stepped outside their accepted roles to take on other identities.

Transcript

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0:00.0	War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding right down to the present.
0:06.2	Wars made the United States independent, kept it together, increased its size, and established it as a global superpower.
0:13.2	Hi, I'm James Early, host of the Key Battles of American History podcast.
0:17.6	In each episode, I discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's Wars.
0:23.2	To start listening now, go to pathanonpodcast.com or search Key Battles of American History on your favorite podcast and platform.
0:36.1	The history of North America podcast is a sweeping historical saga of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, from their deep origins to our present epoch.
0:46.0	Join me, Mark Vinet, on this exciting, fascinating epic journey through time, focusing on the compelling, wonderful, and tragic stories of North America's inhabitants, heroes, villains, leaders, environment, and geography.
1:01.4	I invite you to come along for the ride.
1:06.4	Welcome to the History Unplugged Podcast, the unscripted show that celebrates unsung heroes,
1:13.0	Mythbust's historical lies, and rediscoveres the forgotten stories that changed our world.
1:19.6	I'm your host, Scott Rank.
1:24.8	Pamela, welcome to the show.
1:26.4	Good to be here.
1:27.8	Well, I'm really interested in diving into this topic because you have a lot of things that I like of biographical stories,
1:35.2	but then also understanding how history is constructed and how we can sometimes look and see how it's crafted in a way that tries to lead us away from what really happened.
1:46.4	So we'll get into all that, but I want to start off by asking what initially got you into this project and inspired you to do this book.
1:54.4	You know, I've been interested in the topic forever at some level, but I really didn't get a feel for just how many women warriors there were until I read Antony of Frazers warrior queens,
2:10.8	which came out in 88, 89, I believe.
2:14.8	And in that, she's introduced me to women I'd never heard of before.
2:19.2	That ended up being kind of a kick in the head for me.
2:21.3	And once I had that idea, I really started seeing examples a lot.
2:28.7	So I started just collecting the stories.
	...

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