War and Gender

Introduction

The gendered character of warfare is extraordinarily consistent across human cultures. I define war broadly as lethal intergroup violence, and define the war system as the interrelated ways that societies organize themselves to participate in potential and actual wars. This war system is among the most consistently gendered of human activities. Every known society assigns war roles differentially by gender, with men as the primary fighters (and usually the only ones). Since nearly every society has war in its social repertoire, gendered war roles have broad social ramifications.