Why Women Fight

Why do women fight in wars? The short answer is simply that women, like men, fight because they must. The longer answer is inevitably more complex. Spanning an arc of over 2000 years, including examples from across the globe, Why Women Fight reveals the major themes that drive women to take up arms, examining them through the lives of individuals on the front lines. Busting the myth that female soldiers are a manifestation of modernity, the book begins in the ninth century BCE with Semiramis, a former milkmaid attributed with expanding the Babylonian empire, and concludes in 2024 with Tatyana, a former shop assistant who went on to command a Ukrainian Battalion of a thousand men. Incorporating extraordinary interviews with Marxist guerillas, resistance fighters, illegal paramilitaries, conscripts and regular volunteers, the book explores some of the myriad reasons that women across the ages have broken one of humanity’s most fundamental taboos, to take up arms and fight for their kin, their ideas, their liberty, their lives…