Download Why There Are So Few Women Warriors

Why There Are So Few Women Warriors
by David Adams
Behavior Science Research
Volume 18, Number 3, 1983, Pages 196-212
SUMMARY
Cross-cultural methodology suggests that women are excluded from warfare not so much
because of sex differences in aggressiveness or strength, but instead because of a contradiction
arising from marital residency systems that arose, in turn, as a function of warfare. Under
conditions of internal warfare war against neighboring communities sharing the same language
many stateless cultures may have adopted patrilocal exogamous marital residency (the bride
comes from a different community and comes to live with the family of the husband). Under
these conditions the wife is faced with contradictory loyalties during warfare, because her
husband may go to war against her brothers and father. It appears that women have been
excluded historically from warfare in order to resolve this contradiction and protect the security
of the warrior husbands. This explanation is supported by other findings that women do fight as
warriors in certain cultures in which warfare or marital residency rules are structured in such a
way that the contradiction does not arise.
1. Introduction
Why don't women take an active part in war? Is it because they lack a "so-called aggressive
instinct" (Lorenz, 1966) present in men and responsible for war? These are important questions
while it is imperative for us to abolish war within our lifetime, some people have argued that war
cannot be abolished because it is caused by "aggressive instincts." In previous work on the brain
mechanisms of aggressive behavior (Adams, 1979), I found no evidence that "aggressive
instincts" could explain warfare. Therefore, I have turned to cross-cultural methodology to
address the question. The results, presented in the following paper, support a completely
different explanation that women do not go to war because there is an historical contradiction
between the institutions of warfare and marriage .
Of course, all complex human behavior is at the same time both biological and cultural, both
individual and social. On the one hand, the present paper emphasizes that historical contradiction
between marriage and warfare is the immediate determining factor in the exclusion of women
from war. On the other hand, there is no reason to deny that biological factors have also played a
role in the historical process, as will be discussed later on.
Cross-cultural anthropological research by previous investigators, especially Carol and Melvin
Ember (1971, 1974) have shown that there is a strong relationship between patterns of marital
residency and patterns of warfare. In particular, it has been shown that there is an association
between patrilocal marital residency (in which the bride goes to live with or near the husband's
family) and the presence of some internal warfare (warfare against neighboring communities that
share the same language), while matrilocal marital residency (in which the husband goes to live
with or near the bride's family) is more likely to be found in cultures with exclusively external
warfare (warfare against more distant communities that do not share the same language).
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In cultures with patrilocal marital residency and internal warfare, there is a potential conflict of
interest for women: war may be waged by their husbands on one side against their brothers and
fathers on the other side. In reading various accounts of warfare in cultures without a state
structure, I have been struck by how often one encounters this problem of split loyalties for
women. For example, among the Mae Enga, a New Guinea people with frequent internal warfare
and a patrilocal system of marital residency, Meggitt (1977 , p. 98) reports:
Mae women are wholly excluded from the meetings in which men decide whether or not to go to
war. ...This restriction prevents women from learning the details of battle plans, and it is meant
to do so. In this way a woman married in from another clan (and almost all are) is not faced with
a difficult conflict or interests, if, as may well be the case, her natal group is the intended target .
Given the frequency of the preceding predicament (in the sample to be described later, it would
be expected to occur in 7 I percent of the 58 cultures with frequent internal warfare), it seemed
that it might be a major contributing factor to the exclusion of women from warfare. Therefore, I
put it to a test by using classical cross-cultural survey techniques.
2. Cross-Cultural Methodology
Rather than drawing up an entirely new sample of cultures, the sample for this study was drawn
from the sum of the samples used by nine previous investigators who have used cross-cultural
techniques to examine the relation of warfare and marriage.1 All of the 204 cultures cited by
those investigators were used providing they met the following criteria: (1) they had to be
included in the Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock, 1967) and coded there for type of marriage and
political complexity (all but 10 societies met this criterion) (2) they had to be stateless cultures,
coded as 0 or 1 on column 33 of Murdock, since it was assumed that state systems might involve
other complicating factors (44 cultures were excluded on these grounds) (3) when more than one
source was available, the data had to be consistent in al1 of them or else the culture was excluded
{the following six were excluded because of such contradictory information: Aymara, Chukchee,
Cuna, Siwans, South Ute, White Knife) and {4) data had to be available on both the frequency
and type of warfare (internal, external), as well as feuding (see below). Warfare was judged to
have a low frequency if war and feuding were coded by previous authors as "rare," "infrequent,"
'never ," or "absent," or if there was no mention of warfare despite considerable evidence about
related aspects of the culture including economic structure or relations with neighboring cultures
and communities. There were 29 societies excluded because of lack of adequate information
about frequency or type of warfare. All told, there were 115 cultures that met all of the criteria
and were included in the sample.
In the previous literature two different definitions have been used for warfare. A broad definition
has been used by the Embers: "fighting that involves two or more territorial units so long as there
is a group of fighters on at least one side. " A narrower definition has been used by Divale, Tefft,
and Otterbein: for Divale and Tefft, warfare is "armed aggression between political communities
or alliances of political communities" for Otterbein, it is 'an armed contest between two
independent poIitical units, by means of organized military force, in the pursuit of a tribal or
national policy." Since the narrower definitions insist upon the political community as the unit of
war, they exclude feuding. In the present study the broader definition, including feuding, will be
used because it would be expected to relate to marriage residency rules in the same way as other
internal warfare. Therefore, in order to adapt the findings of Divale, Tefft, Otterbein and Horton
to the present study, it was necessary to check for feuding in the cultures they listed and to
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reclassify four cultures in which there was frequent feuding and include them among cultures
with internal warfare (Copper Eskimo, Monachi, Maria Gond and Papago).
The determination of whether or not women take part as warriors was made on a subsample. The
subsample consisted of those cultures that: (1) had frequent or occasional warfare, (2) were
surveyed in the Human Relations Area Files, and (3) had sufficient material in the Area Files so
that it could be determined if women fought as warriors. Of the 83 cultures with frequent or
occasional warfare, 71 were found in the Human Relations Area Files and all but four could be
coded for female participation in warfare (the exceptions were the Lesu, Maria Gond, Copper
Eskimo, and Yavapai for which there were insufficient data). All of the material in the Human
Relations Area File was read by the author and searched for descriptions of women taking part in
warfare within the following sections of the files: 628, inter-community relations 669, revolution
70-708, armed forces and 72-729, war (Murdock et al., 1967).
3. Societies with Women Warriors
In nine of the 67 cultures in the subsample it was found that women take part in war, at least
occasionally, as active warriors (Tables 1 and 2). All nine were among the 33 cultures
characterized by exclusive external warfare and/or community endogamy (i.e., marriage partners
come from the same community). In contrast, there was not a single case of a culture in which
women are allowed to fight as warriors among the other 34 cultures characterized by internal
warfare and some community exogamy (i.e., at least some marriage partners come from different
communities). These data, significant at a .01 probability level by Fisher's Exact Test, support
the hypothesis that women are excluded from warfare at least in part because of the problem of
split loyalties derived from the contradiction between marriage and warfare systems.
Women warriors have been described in five of the sampled cultures with exclusive external
warfare. Among the Crow, "there are memories of a woman who went to war. ..indeed one of my
woman informants claimed, to have struck a coup" (Lowie, 1935, p. 215). Among the Navaho "a
woman, if she wished, might join a war party. There were never more than two women in a
party. They fought just as did the men " (Hill, 1936, p. 3). Among the Gros Ventre, "women not
infrequently went with the war parties" (Kroeber, 1908, p. 192). Among the Fox women could
go to war with their husbands and it has been reported that "even some women have become
warrior women" (Michelson, 1937, p. 11). Among the Delaware, although "the women seldom
go into battle, they have however a right to fight, which entitles them to a place in the ranks"
(Kinietz, 1946, p. 132).
Women warriors have also been described in four cultures with exclusive local or community
endogamy. Among the Comanche women sometimes would "snipe with bows and arrows from
fringes of the fray" (Wallace and Hoebel, 1952, p. 253). Among the Majuro of the Marshall
Islands, "women take part in war, not only when they have to defend the home ground from the
enemy, but also in attacks, and although in the minority, they form part of the squadron.
..(throwing) stones with their bare hands" (Erdland, 1914, p. 93). Among the Maori, women
occasionally took part in the fighting and also accompanied raiding parties (Best, 1924, p. 231).
Finally, among the Orokaiva "the women were always ready to urge on the fighting men and
even to mingle in the fray as W.E. Armit found. ..when they finally were beaten off that two of
the women lay dead with spears in their hands" (Williams, 1930, p. 164).
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4. The Exclusion of Women from War
In the various cultures in which women are excluded from participation in active fighting, the
male monopoly on warfare generally extends far beyond the battle field. Women are generally
excluded from all meetings and councils and discussions of warfare and they are usually
forbidden to make, own or use the weapons of warfare such as spears or bows-and-arrows.
Furthermore, in most cases they are also forbidden to use such weapons in hunting or fishing as
well. In one culture the middle fingers on the right hand which would be necessary in order
to pull a bow string are systematically cut off in young girls (Heider, 1970, p. 238). In this
way the question of split loyalty may be avoided. Since women know nothing of war, there is no
question about which side they might take. The question of split loyalties during warfare is not
an abstract issue, but a practical matter of security for the warriors and the entire community. In
most warfare, the most critical and deadly phase consists of surprise raids, often carried out
before daybreak under the conditions of absolute secrecy. If even one woman were to know and
betray the plans, making possible an ambush, the result would most likely be disastrous.
Even in those cultures in which there is no question of split loyalties, the proportion of women
warriors is very small, much less than might be expected by chance. How can this be explained?
To attempt an answer, we must go beyond a simple analysis of the contradiction between
marriage and warfare and develop a general picture of the prehistory of war based upon a further
analysis of its relationships with marriage systems.
5. Type of Warfare Determines Marital Residency
The causal relationship between marriage and warfare appear, to be a two way relationship not
only may the type of marital residency help determine whether or not there are women warriors,
but also the type of warfare may help to determine the type of marital residency. This may be
seen from an examination of the full sample of cultures shown in Table 1. Cultures with internal
warfare have, in most cases patrilocal marital residency and exogamy. Cultures with exclusively
external warfare have, in most cases, matrilocal marital residency and, in most cases, there is no
restriction that marriage must be exogamous. Finally, cultures with low frequencies of warfare
tend to have no strict rules at all with regard to marriage, for example, they require neither
patrilocality nor matrilocality and neither exogamy nor endogamy. These differences are
significant by Chi Square tests, in which the cultures with internal war or exclusive external war,
respectively, are compared to cultures with low rates of war, which suggests that the presence
and type of warfare is a causal factor. Whereas 44 of 58 cultures with internal war are patrilocal,
there is no such tendency in cultures with low rates of war (15 of 32) Chi Square = 6.4,
probability less than .01 (Table 3). Whereas 14 of 25 cultures with exclusively external war are
matrilocal, only 5 of 32 cultures with low frequency of war are matrilocal Chi Square = 8.7,
probability less than .01 (Table 4). Finally, exogamy is associated with patrilocality. Of 67
patrilocal cultures, 30 are exogamous whereas in the appropriate control group of 24 bilocal and
neolocal cultures, only two are exogamous, Chi square = 8.8, probability less than .01 (Table 5).
From the preceding data it would appear that internal warfare tends to cause patrilocal marital
residency, external warfare tends to cause matrilocal marital residency, and lack of warfare tends
to be associated with lack of strict residency rules. As mentioned earlier, the first two causal
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relationships have been suggested in previous literature (Ember and Ember, 1971). The relation
of lack of warfare to lack of marital residency rules is a new suggestion.
The existence and type of warfare, in turn, may be causally linked to population density and size.
Low density is associated with low frequency of warfare, while greater density is associated with
higher frequencies of warfare. Small populations are associated with external warfare and large
populations with internal warfare.
With low population density, there is a smaller probability of contact between communities,
from which one would expect a lower frequency of warfare. In fact, within the present sample of
cultures, 27 of the 32 cultures with low frequencies of warfare had populations under 21,000.
This can help explain why it has been found that lack of strict marital residency rules is a
consequence of depopulation (Ember , 1975 Ember and Ember, 1972). Depopulation would be
expected to decrease inter-community contact which would decrease the likelihood of warfare
which would, in turn, be reflected in a relaxation of marital residency rules. Lowered rates of
warfare under conditions of depopulation may explain the well-publicized lack of war among
contemporary Kung bushmen who have lost the free-ranging life style of a century ago when
warfare apparently existed (Lee, 1979, p. 382), among Mbuti pygmies whose groups seldom see
each other in recent time., and "so long as we not meet there is no fighting" (Turnbull, 196] , p.
275), and among Eskimo or Lapp communities that are often located at remote distances from
each other .
The type of warfare may be related to population size. As pointed out by Carol Ember (1974)
larger populations usually provide the setting for internal warfare. The relationship holds true in
the present sample as shown in Table 6: of 29 cultures with populations over 21,000, 22 had
internal war, while of 86 cultures with smaller populations only 36 had internal warfare. This is
significant by Chi square = 8.7, probability less than .01. Ember explained this relation by
pointing out that cultures with large populations have more geographical spread and therefore
they may find it more difficult to maintain cohesion and avoid internal war. This might be
expected especially in stateless cultures such as those under investigation in the present study. As
for external warfare, it usually occurs in cultures with small populations, according to Ember, a
relationship that also holds true in the present sample: of the 25 cultures with exclusive external
war, 23 had populations under 21,000.
6. The Prehistory of Warfare
Considering all of the foregoing data, it is possible to construct the following hypothesis about
the prehistory of warfare. In the beginning, one may suppose, the invention of weapons not only
transformed hunting into an especially effective means for getting high-protein food, but it also
transformed the noisy, but seldom lethal, territorial displays and attacks against strangers that
characterized non-human apes into deadly encounters that could be called true warfare. The
distance traveled by hunting and war parties would have precluded the participation of pregnant
women or women carrying suckling infants and led to a tendency (not a monopoly) of hunting
and warfare by men. The tendency toward a sex role differentiation between male hunting and
warfare and female nurturing and gathering of food near a home base may well have provided
the material basis for the family unit and the beginnings of marriage. So long as warfare was
infrequent, one would have expected such primitive marriage to be agamous and bilocal (i.e.
without exclusive exogamy or endogamy and without exclusive patrilocality or matrilocality),
like many of today's cultures that have low frequencies of warfare. At this early stage, it should
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be emphasized, there is no reason to suppose that either hunting or warfare was monopolized by
men.
As population density increased and cultures became larger in size, we may suppose that the
frequency of warfare increased and that internal warfare came to predominate. This would have
been associated with restrictions on marital residency so that it was patrilocal and, in many cases,
exogamous. Patrilocality may have been necessitated in order to keep young warriors with their
fathers and brothers so they could help with the prosecution of the warfare, a proposal made by
Ember and Ember (1971). The causal relationship may have been bidirectional since patrilocality
is associated with fraternal interest groups which may, themselves, tend to promote internal
warfare (Otterbein, 1968). Exogamy may have been instituted in many cases to restrict the
ambiguity concerning sexual partnerships. Assuming, as does Divale (1974) that most primitive
feuds stem from fights over women, and keeping in mind that under conditions of internal war,
men are armed and trained to kill, such ambiguity rises to the level of contradiction. By
rigorously instituting marriage and restricting it to exogamy, taking all wives from other
communities, the contradiction might be reduced. The relationship of men and women could be
clearly specified from the very first time that a woman entered the community through the
institution of marriage, each woman "belonged" only to her husband without any prior history or
ambiguity to be reckoned with.
With the advent of internal war, patrilocality, and exogamy, there came a profound shift in malefemale relations. The male monopolization of warfare was instituted and extended to hunting (in
order to preclude the use of weapons by women) and to the initiation rites of the young (male)
warriors. The inequality of power between men and women was institutionalized in a way from
which we have never recovered. This situation characterizes 35 of the cultures in the present
sample, including over half those with large populations.
There is another way to resolve the contradiction between warfare and marriage under conditions
of internal war, which appears to have been used in some cultures. Rather than pushing the
marriage system toward exogamy, a society may push it toward endogamy instead. This does not
resolve potential disputes over sexual liaisons within the culture prior to marriage, but it does
resolve the question of split loyalties for the women during war, since their husbands, fathers,
and brothers all fight on the same side. This solution appears to have been taken by the 17
cultures in the sample with internal war and endogamy.
Cultures with smaller populations may have maintained low frequencies of warfare or found
themselves at war with an external enemy. In the former case, they may have maintained loose
rules for marital residency as we find in 12 cultures of the present sample. In the latter case,
faced with the need to maintain unity against an external enemy, it would have been
advantageous to break up the fraternal interest groups that might otherwise promote internal
warfare and disunity. This could explain the adoption of matrilocal residency rules under such
conditions (Divale, 1974) as we find in 14 cultures of the present sample.
To complete the picture, we may consider those contemporary stateless cultures that have
patrilocal marital residency despite low frequency of warfare (15 in the present sample). It may
be supposed that many of them had prior histories of internal warfare and that their recorded
traditions and institutional structures reflect those earlier periods by a process of cultural lag.
The question of warfare and social structure in cultures with state structures is beyond the scope
of the present analysis.
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7. Interaction of Biology and Culture
There is an interaction of biological and cultural factors determining the tendency for men to
specialize as hunters and warriors. It is suggested that the biological demands upon the human
mother during pregnancy and nurturance of the young preclude her active role in hunting and
war. At this level, there is no reason to question the importance of biological factors. Notice that
there is no reason to suggest that it is the superior strength or speed of men that is critical in their
predominance as hunters and warriors, unlike the suggestion of some cultural anthropologists
(Divale and Harris, 1976 Harris, 1977). If anything, the differences in strength and speed
between human males and females is less than in other great apes such as the chimpanzee,
gorilla, and orangutan, and even such differences as do exist are made less important by the
invention and use of weapons which extend a man's (and woman's!) speed and strength. As for
the existence of a special instinct for war in humans, the present analysis only claims that there is
no reason to postulate a male-female difference in such an instinct to account for sex role
differences in warfare. To show that there is no such instinct for war in humans, it is necessary to
show (Adams, n.d.) that the various motivational systems of social behavior that are activated
during the various stages in the social act of war are neither peculiar to, nor necessary for the
carrying out of war .
8. Conclusion
From the available evidence there is no reason to suggest that the absence of women from active
warfare reflects sex differences in a "so-called aggressive instinct" that is critical for warfare.
Instead, cross-cultural data support a different hypothesis. Under conditions of warfare against
neighboring communities, many cultures have adopted a marital residency system in which the
bride comes from a different community and lives with the family of the husband. This produces
a situation in which the wife is faced with the contradiction that her husband may go forth to
make war against her brothers and father. Historically, the contradiction has been resolved most
often by totally excluding women from any participation in warfare. Although this probably
occurred early in human prehistory, and is documented only for stateless cultures in the present
analysis, it would seem likely that it has had profound consequences for sex roles in subsequent
history, including all recent civilizations.
Footnote and References
FOOTNOTE
1. a. Divale (1974) b, Ember and Ember (1975) c. Ember. Ember and Pasternak ( 1974) d.
Melvin Ember (1974) e. Ember (1971) f. Horton (1943) g. Otterbein and Otterbein (1965) h.
Otterbein (1970) and i. Tefft and Reinhardt (1974).
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