have a higher tolerance for pain than women

Do you have some kind of scientific evidence for this?

The obvious answer for why men typically did the fighting is because childbearing was too valuable an ability in societies with low life expectancies to throw away in combat. Losing lots of your women will have serious consequences on your overall birthrate. Losing lots of your men can be worked around, since one man can impregnate multiple females.

I have actually been considering this issue as of late with one of my magical societies. They have a rather small population, and so the women are furiously trying to get more and more babies out, but on the other hand, they are fighting a war, in which having a larger force would be helpful. Do the women fight? At this point, it wouldn’t make sense, at least, not for those of childbearing age. Maybe the infertile or those who can no longer have children? In terms of magic, there is really no better or worse between the sexes, so in that sense, women are just as useful as men on the battlefield.

Fair enough. In my experience, though, pain tolerance is primarily psychological(pain tolerance and amount of pain felt being distinct traits), and therefore, at least somewhat a function of culture. Basically what I’m saying is that if a woman is raised to be a badass, she’ll be a badass.

She’ll always be an inferior sprinter to a man of the same relative physical condition, though, thanks to hip angle.

There’s also the general theory that men evolved to be hunters (and therefore more bloodthirsty/stronger/faster/better at hunting) while women evolved for childbearing, social-norms-upholding and foraging for fruits and nuts and such.

There’s definitely sociocultural and psychological factors in the equation, but purely on a biological basis men are generally better-developed to be warriors and soldiers (and hunters) while women are better as, say, teachers, priests, potters, weavers, artists/storytellers and the like (like foraging for hours to find edible roots or grubs). Things that require concentration on small details for an extended time.

Also regarding the pain thing, I thought it was that women have a higher tolerance for pain than men, but men are able to shrug it off or ignore the pain for longer (and starting with smaller amounts of pain). Like how a guy can cut himself somewhere and not notice, but a woman can stumb a toe and be in tears; BUT a woman can give birth to an 8 or 9 pound baby while a guy screams because of a syringe to the spine. Basically, men can shrug off the small day-to-day injuries, but women can tolerate more extreme levels of pain.

Does that make sense?

Yes. Yes it is.

It depends a lot on the way the societies go about combat. In general, women make poor brawlers, but if magic is involved in fighting the military probably wouldn’t care about upper body strength so much. Just make sure that women have roles in combat that make sense.

That said, anything is possible. I think it’s most important to understand that being an effective fighter requires physically. If you’re built like an ox, it doesn’t particularly matter whether you’re a guy or a girl, but if your character is coming out of grand melees alive there must be a good explanation, especially if she has the “slender plus boobs” build that’s only practical in the male imagination.

That’s why I’m telling y’all, unless your brain actually shuts down from pain overload, pain tolerance is a function of the mind, and the mind belongs to the individual.

IIRC, in Japan, women used to be preferred over men for cavalry roles since generally women were lighter, which meant that they could carry more equipment without exhausting the horse and were more mobile archers.

As far as pain tolerance goes, as Sansa pointed out, it’s more psychological than physical. While women may have more nerve endings, more nerve endings does not equate to more pain. It just means a greater awareness of the pain in that region. For example, think of it like cameras. You could have one camera or ten of the same type, but regardless of how many you have, they will see the same car pass by. It’s just that with ten cameras, there’s a wider field of view (or awareness) that the car can be seen in. None of the cameras are “seeing” the car more acutely than the others, and the combined camera feeds do not make the car any more car-like.

Now, if there were different kinds of pain receptors, and women were stuck with the ones that processed pain more severely, then there’d be a case for women feeling more pain than men. But, as far as I know, there is only one type of pain receptor.

Personally, I can’t count the times that I’ve cut or otherwise injured myself and not noticed until I saw it or someone pointed it out. And, of course, that’s when it starts hurting. I actually once sliced a good chunk of my shoulder with a fishhook, and it wasn’t until someone started going “OMG! You’re BLEEDING!!!” that it registered. >.>

It’s not the pain from a bullet wound that does you.

I’ve heard lots of arguments against women in combat over the years, but the most interesting was the assertion that, all modern concepts of family aside, if women went to war alongside men, they would be leaving behind a completely broken-down family structure. Therefore, their children would not be guaranteed even one living parent, and it would wreak havoc on society as we know it.

Another theory I’ve heard is that women in combat is a terrible idea because men apparently feel more protective towards women than towards their fellow men, which could be the difference between winning a battle or losing it or something disastrous like that.

Can’t say i completely agree with either point, but they’re both interesting to consider.

And I really doubt that pain thresholds have anything to do with the argument against women warriors. Men and women alike are capable of enduring massive amounts of pain with the right mindset. I don’t think there’s any way to compare them.

And actually, men are better at nearly everything.

Troller or not a troller? I don’t want to assume and then look like an idiot, because everyone knows what happens when you assume…

I’d say a troll, and a dumb one to boot.

Get back to gardenshed, troll. And make me a spice rack.

Paolini’s critics agree, not feeling pain wold be extremely detrimental to battle (you wouldn’t even notice as you bled to death). People who are born with that condition often don’t survive to adulthood, because they simply don’t ntice things like scrapes and cuts, which can become infected without their knowledge. Pain is, above all, a protective reaction. This thing is causing damage, get it away from me! This fire is hot enough to cause permanent scarring, get away from it! This mosquito-bite is larger and more annoying than the average… I’d better see someone about it!

^ Newborns? :P I thought that was leprosy- not registering pain. Or maybe just a sympton of leprosy.

I do think women would be on the losing end of an honest, my strength vs. your strength fight. That’s pretty obvious? But there’s obviously been some awesome women warriors. Boudicca, Fa Mulan, (is she real life? I don’t remember.) Anne Bonny, Deborah, etc.

But there’s obviously been some awesome women warriors. Boudicca,

Boudicca’s my woman. You know history is awesome when your homeplace has its own legends that Boudicca is buried a couple of miles away.

...I wish I had a time machine. :/