The Israeli army comes to mind...the red army, though not equal representation, included lots of women (because it gets kind of hard to keep the army supplied with young men when 20 million people die)...
Anyway, not all women are slim 105 pound, and not all men are bulky 190 pound, they are just depicted as such in the game environment because fantasy environments are visually....well...kind of sixist....
Granted, but how are the Israeli and Red armies counter-examples to what I said? Not all women are physically incapable of soldiering, but they are as a gender less likely to be suited to it. They are statistically smaller and weaker, and they simply will not be equally represented in any profession which requires physical strength. As I said, pilots might well one day be half female, but infantry never will.
It's like complaining your sword damage isn't affected by the body type slider...
Men may have a competitive advantage in strength due to hormones, but women in less developed countries do loads of physical labor, often while the men sit around playing cards from what I can tell. The reason why men dominate professions like the military is because of politicized gender roles more than due to capacity to do the work. If women were freed by society to do these high-prestige jobs then they would bulk up like female bodybuilders and it wouldn't be a problem. Here is some info on female soldiers in the Middle Ages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Women_in_Medieval_warfare
Did you read the first clause of the first sentence in that article?
Warfare throughout history has mainly been a matter for men, but women have also played a role, often a leading one.
Mainly a matter for men, although there were some standout women. This is how it should have been in Skyrim: some female heroes, but the rank and file soldiery and the more physically-demanding professions (smithing, logging, etc.) should have been all male.
But all the game designers have to do is to say "women in our world are as physically strong as men" and the question is settled ex cathedra. This has been a common feature of role playing games going back to D&D.
And that's an absurdity. If you do so, you're doing so simply to feed people's wish-fulfillment that men and women were physically more alike, which is a very deeply weird desire.
None of what you attributed to biology is actually biological. Those are all cultural.
If you're responding to something I posted, no, all of what I am talking about is biological. Women as a group are smaller and weaker than men as a group. This is not a cultural invention, and even in societies where people have to do large amounts of physical labor, the men are still stronger than the women - and no amount of wishing will make it different. The human norm for division of labor has revolved around the fact that while women can quite often perform physical labor that requires stamina, they leave the labor that requires physical strength to the men. In hunter-gatherer societs, women do the gathering - often physically tiring and demanding of endurance, as well as tedious - while the men might well sit around for a day between hunts, then go and spend three days on a long, arduous hunt requiring them to accept relative deprivation of sleep and shelter, as well as some danger and physical exertion. The men's labor has higher peaks and deeper valleys, so to speak, while the women have a flatter line of exertion. They get fewer days completely off, but in return they have fewer days which are flat-out difficult. All this is due to using wisely the asset of mens' strength.
This can't be substantiated.
Nor can this.
I think any situation where you can point to evidence of this would be in societies with extreme sixism woven into the fabric of their respective cultures, and not in the biology of males/females.
The diferences in the biology of men and women is a fact, and are not restricted to differing genitalia. Men are stronger than women - this is an incontestable fact, and it has real-world consequences.
The OP's logic evinces at best insensitivity to gender issues perhaps due to a poor choice of words and at worse ignorance.
The premise presented is flawed; as several have pointed out, Tamriel is not an anologue for historical Earth or Europe. As far as it being a politically- correct gesture to include gender equality in the game, or the tragedy of this phenomenon invading the world of video games, Skyrim doesn't even register on the list of games where this happens, in my opinion, to the detriment of the games and our experience playing them.
Dragon Age 2 tries so hard to address identity politics that it becomes absurd, and has hamstrung its own lore by having to fit it into an anology of our world. It hurts the game. The whole thing has become a garbled mess. Same case in the Mass effect games, but to a lesser degree.
When it comes to wholesale propaganda, though, Fable 2 takes the taco. The whole game is a really unfortunate collectivist screed.
Skyrim addresses some political and social issues, but in a light- handed way that has an effect more of trying to simulate a society and cultures with actual interactions in a realistic way than covering their butts out of fear of leftist persecution, or trying to indoctrinate gamers.
Tamriel is not Earth, but in addition to at least four races being modeled after specific Earth nationalities, the fact remains that the people on Tamriel are humans and human males are stronger than human females. Having the occasional exceptional female stand out as a warrior adventurer is entirely logical and in fact consistent with Earth history and legend; having armies be completely mixed-gender with equal representation of sixes is simply laughably ridiculous.
Are you sure? In Denmark we have had a number of scandals relating to sixual harrasment of female soldiers by their superiors. Not exactly a good way to attract female volunteers.
Given that Tamriel is a wholly different world, what makes you think that Tamrellian females are significantly weaker than their male counterparts? Most of the races in http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Races and http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Races had the same strength for males and females. In Oblivion Bretons, Khajiits and Redguard males were stronger than their female counterparts. In Morrowind Bretons, Khajiits and Orc males were stronger than their female counterparts. But Imperial and Nords had no strength difference at all.
And this is an absurdity as well. The people are humans, and so it's perfectly logical to use human norms to describe them.
These are US statistics. Just because. - Prior to the 1994 DoD assignment rule, 67 percent of the positions in the Army were open to women
- Today, 70 percent of the positions in the Army are open to women, and women serve in 93 percent of all Army occupations (active duty and the reserve components), as of June 2009.
- Women represent about 13.4 percent of the active Army, 23.7 percent of the Army Reserve and 14.0 percent of the Army National Guard as of fiscal year 2009.
- An increasing proportion of senior-level active duty and DoD positions are being filled by women.
- The percentage of female officers in the active Army in grades O-4 (rank of major) and above increased from 11.5 percent in fiscal year 1995 to 13.3 percent in fiscal year 2009.
- The same is true for enlisted active-duty women in grades E-7 (rank of sergeant first class) through E-9 (rank of first sergeant), who went from 8.3 percent in 1995 to approximately 10.8 percent as of fiscal year 2009.
- In the grades GS-13 through senior executive service, the percentage of female civilian Army employees increased from 18.9 percent in 1995 to 30.9 percent as of fiscal year 2009.
Historically- 1983: Women accounted for 9.8 percent of the total Army.
- 1993: Women accounted for 12.5 percent of the total Army.
- 2009: Women accounted for 15.5 percent of the total Army.
So, we can clearly see that as American society moves away from the stifling traditions of Old World religions and culture and the "values" (limits) they impose on society, that women are increasingly interested in joining armed forces, and participating in the active engagement of violence and violent action.
I would also like to point out that there are LOTS of lady cops around these days. It's all society, telling people what they can and can't do, and those people either believeing it or disproving it.
And yet the physical facts remain: women are not as strong as men, and pretending otherwise is absurd. It is also absurd to pretend this is irrelevant to soldiering or physical professions like smithing and logging and anything else that requires physical strength.
» Thu Jun 07, 2012 6:59 pm 
