Women in Stormwind’s Military
From Blizzard Watch’s Queue 9-25-15:
Q4tQ: What is the human (WoW) military’s stance on women in active combat posts? There are female guards and combatants in-game, but they, to me anyway, seem to be in the minority and somewhat of an oddity in high ranks.
I started thinking after just finishing Lord of the Clans, where it is mentioned in passing that women weren’t allowed on the front lines in the First War. Could of course have been ret-conned, but my little head-canon is that they weren’t allowed in the military during the First War, but regulations loosened during the chaos of the Second War. Then, after the plague and the continued hit on Alliance forces during the Third War, outdated regulations were thrown out the window due to a desperate need for hot bodies in combat. Which led to the first female war heroes, who are now getting promoted to high positions in the military after some 10-12 years in the service. And again, I’ve put WAY too much thought into something completely inconsequential.
Let me introduce you to Lady Mara Fordragon. If the Alliance (and Humans in general) ever had a problem with women in the front ranks, she probably helped cure it. Some credit should likely go to Alleria Windrunner as well, as she may have been the first woman most Alliance military of that time period (First/Second War) would have ever seen in battle.
It’s pretty clear that by the end of the Second War, women were starting to enter combat in Humanity’s military organizations. The Silver Hand, for example, definitely had women as Paladins at this time (as we’ll see below). I would argue it’s very likely that you don’t need to wait until the Third War — Jes-Tereth is a Grand Admiral, you don’t get that job easily.
Women are a minority in Stormwind’s military, but they’re far from anomalies, especially in her naval forces. There are two highly ranked Admirals, Jes-Tereth (Grand Admiral of the entire Alliance fleet) and Sky Admiral Catherine Rogers, commander of the Skyfire. Let’s also not forget Brigitte Abbendis, who rose to a high rank as a Paladin of the Silver Hand before the Third War and the rise of the Scarlet Crusade, which she rose to command as High General. As for their armies, Joanna Blueheart is the commander of the Marshtide Watch post in the Swamp of Sorrows.
All this being said, I wouldn’t read too much into a few lines in Lord of the Clans. We don’t even know what on the front lines means in that case. It’s unlikely, as just one example, that Dalaran mages would have been turned away no matter what their gender was.
((Personally, as a woman and former soldier, I don’t think the question is “inconsequential” given how wishy-washy the U.S. military is on the matter, despite women fighting in combat positions since forever in various nations--and not just the ones disguised as men, or a select few rising to the top. There have been women soldiers, snipers, pilots, sailors, guerrillas, and other combatants--many of them silenced or swept under history’s rug.
In many RPGs, the concept of gendered roles is done away with in favor of letting players have a choice--hence dropping the gender barriers for night elves, for instance. While there is still some definite gender role stuff occurring in WoW in general chatter and storylines (remember what Thaddius was made of to be more horrifying), there doesn’t seem to be the horrible misogyny and issues playing out in the fiction of WoW, that occurs in reality. Though that can be used in RP.
So probably somewhere between “Azeroth has better gender politics to begin with” (and mind, ours aren’t always so bad in reality, it cycles depending on time and place) and “After the First War women in the military were even more necessary.” I also agree with Rossi that the women in high positions now have likely been fighting a long time (at least since the First or Second Wars) but women can’t look grizzled/old/ugly and they even smoothed out the “older” faces a bit in the model revamp--I play an older character as well, trust me--and the military isn’t going to turn away skilled mages, or priests--many of which became paladins in the Second War. And lots of women do just like to fight, and are good at it.))
