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>Historically, the rationale for excluding women from the draft was that they weren't eligible to serve in combat roles, voluntarily or otherwise Historically

• sofixa 2y ago
  > Historically countries didn't let women fight in wars because they didn't want their civilisation to die out. If a country loses a double-digit percent of its men it can still repopulate just as quickly, because one man can make multiple women pregnant, while if it loses its women then it takes significantly longer to repopulate, because one woman can't have multiple babies at the same time so the birthrate will necessarily be reduced. People keep repeating this, but nobody has so far answered my follow-up question: do you have any example where that actually happened? Even in heavily impacted countries (like Serbia in WWI, which lost around 50% of its prewar male population), there were no laws or campaigns to allow harems or one man - multiple women combinations.
  • londons_explore 2y ago
    I suspect that humans will sleep around enough that you don't need specific laws to make it happen...
    • coldtea 2y ago
      Yeah, in fact such laws would make it less tempting (they'd mean those men would have to take financial responsibility and cater to the kids they spread, etc.). Whereas the sheer choice and ability to f... around more is way more tempting and naturally sustainable.
  • max-ibel 2y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8icpnrLqx0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8icpnrLqx0
  • niemandhier 2y ago
    There is research regarding this. At least in Russia it meant: less options for women, a more male centric dating market and more children born out of wedlock. https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/99/2/229/58403/The-Lasting-Effect-of-Sex-Ratio-Imbalance-on?redirectedFrom=fulltext https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/99/2/229/58403/...
    • sofixa 2y ago
      And the research seems to disprove the core premise of the person I responded to ("only men are drafted because women are kept to be bred to repopulate the country, because 1 men can get multiple women pregnant"). From the abstract: > Using unique archival data, the results indicate that male scarcity led to lower rates of marriage and fertility Lower rate of fertility is the important bit.
  • alexey-salmin 2y ago
    Why on earth would you think laws would be necessary? This mechanism is older than laws or human civilization itself.
    • prabhu-yu 2y ago
      Some people want laws for everything.
    • sofixa 2y ago
      Because in practically every country there are laws on marriage, and it's usually (Muslim world being the exception) 1:1 in partners. It adds legal and financial protections for both parts of the couple. Unless there's a law change, how do you see this working? A married man going around spreading seed and women getting pregnant and going at it alone?
      • mkl 2y ago
        Infidelity exists. Serial monogamy exists. No-strings liaisons exist. Polyamory exists. Etc. Single mothers exist even with an equal number of men and women. The exact legal nature of marriage is not going to stop any of these. Enormous numbers of people have lived and reproduced without any legal or financial protections at all, including the majority of your ancestors.
        • sofixa 2y ago
          And the core premise I'm disagreeing is that countries on purpose draft only men, because women are kept to be bred to repopulate the country in case of military disaster. IF that were the case, governments would do something, anything, to encourage such behaviour (one man getting multiple women pregnant) after the war is over. Nobody is able to come up with any examples of anything like that happening, which again leads me to believe that the premise is bullshit and the real reasons why only men are drafted are somewhere between biology and misogyny.
          • sobriquet9 2y ago
  • coldtea 2y ago
    >there were no laws or campaigns to allow harems or one man - multiple women combinations. You don't need laws or campaigns, it happens naturally, due to the increased sexual selection availability. And of course, given that, why would men opt of harems (especially where they aren't even historically relevant to their culture)? They'd just have relationships on the side, jump ship and marry again, etc.
    • sofixa 2y ago
      > You don't need laws or campaigns, it happens naturally, due to the increased sexual selection availability Again, do you have any examples of this actually happening in the real world? It naturally happens that men become more desirable because there's less of them, but is there any actual case where it became widespread for men to get multiple different women pregnant to repopulate the country? Not to mention, even if it did happen (and again, nobody has come up with any examples in the tens of times I've asked this question, and Google hasn't been helpful either), unless there was a concentrated government policy to that effect, you'd be mistaking correlation with causation - less men than women, so men are more desirable and can pull off multiple kids from multiple women doesn't mean that's the reasoning why only men were drafted.
      • coldtea 2y ago
        >Again, do you have any examples of this actually happening in the real world? You were given examples already: "Using unique archival data, the results indicate that male scarcity led to lower rates of marriage and fertility, higher nonmarital births, and reduced bargaining power within marriage for women most affected by war deaths" You can read about similar post-war periods with similar problems and outcomes in history books too. >unless there was a concentrated government policy to that effect you'd be mistaking correlation with causation - less men than women, so men are more desirable and can pull off multiple kids from multiple women doesn't mean that's the reasoning why only men were drafted. Women were needed to raise the present kids, and to be able to raise future kids. People didn't need to have this spelt out in law, or to have subsidies for sex with more different partners post war. Even so, the very link you continue to ignore mentions such legal changes too in the case of post-WWII USSR: "The impact of sex ratio imbalance on marriage and family persisted for years after the war's end and was likely magnified by (...wait for it...) policies that promoted nonmarital births"
  • gampleman 2y ago
    Why do you think the sexual revolution happened right on the heels of WW2?
    • quesera 2y ago
      WWII ended in 1945. The sexual revolution was a full generation later.
  • Maken 2y ago
    You probably should look at single mothers' statistics. Edit: To provide more context: It was not exactly "official policy", but single mothers became much more common in Britain after WWI due to the fathers either dying in the war or, well, being already in another marriage. To the point the women started organizing and campaigning for their rights https://www.gingerbread.org.uk/about-us/gingerbread-history/ https://www.gingerbread.org.uk/about-us/gingerbread-history/
    • fwip 2y ago
      Naively, it seems like there'd be a lot more of the "dead fathers" case than the "out of wedlock because women want to have kids but there aren't enough husbands to go around" case.
      • Maken 2y ago
        Given one of their first goals was to end the discrimination against bastards (children with unknown father), I would say not.
  • red-iron-pine 2y ago
    Post-WW2 Soviet Union, or maybe Paraguay post-War of Triple Alliance In no cases were there laws, government doesn't need to pass laws to make it happen, just just because there weren't laws doesn't mean it didn't happen a lot
    • sofixa 2y ago
      Post-WW2 Soviet Union had a drop in fertility rates, so no: https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/99/2/229/58403/The-Lasting-Effect-of-Sex-Ratio-Imbalance-on?redirectedFrom=fulltext https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/99/2/229/58403/... Any data on Paraguay?
• benterix 2y ago
  Well, supposing this is true, the situation has changed dramatically - women just don't want to have babies in general, globally. And I doubt a war or some patriotic duty would change their minds.
  • immibis 2y ago
    They still want to have sex with sexy people, and many people, when they're in the mood to have sex with sexy people, don't want to use protection. And some of those people who were not in the mood for protection also don't have access to abortions, and some others actually want to raise children by themselves for some reason. This is the actual process of human natural selection, and it's not much influenced by laws and things like that, no matter how hard the law tries.
    • benterix 2y ago
      > and many people, when they're in the mood to have sex with sexy people, don't want to use protection. I don't believe not using a condom with a Tinder date is an option, at least in the West. No matter how attractive and insisting the male is, a woman knows she is the one to bear the consequences. Even if they're on a pill, STDs are still a thing, so why take the risk.
      • Jensson 2y ago
        > a woman knows she is the one to bear the consequences The man has to also bear the consequences in most nations, since he has to pay a lot of money. They like sex, but not at that price.
        • immibis 2y ago
          The problem is that a person's "lizard brain" is set to override rational thoughts. Although this effect can be decreased with training (something we do to all humans as they grow up) it's hardly an effective thing to rely on them following. Try telling a hungry person they can't eat without a napkin tucked under their collar (the nearest napkin store is 10 minutes away) or telling a person with a very full bladder they can't cut the queue for the toilet. It just isn't reliably going to work. They're probably going to ignore you. (Although having sex isn't something that you need to survive (like eating), or something that will happen embarrassingly for physics reasons if you don't choose a voluntary place to do it (like peeing), it is controlled by similar mechanisms thanks to evolution being evolution.)
• Aeolun 2y ago
  I think this has historically been pretty limited in Europe because it’s seen as culturally inappropriate.
• mike_hearn 2y ago
  > Historically countries didn't let women fight in wars because they didn't want their civilisation to die out. No, women have been excluded from front-line combat because they are physically weaker than men and would be killed quickly without accomplishing much. Men are just much more aggressive, have higher stamina etc. It's never been about repopulation. Nothing biologically stops a woman having 10 children with a single man, it's just rare.
  • jajko 2y ago
    Israel tried it some time ago. I don't agree women are weak per se, yes their peak in strength and stamina are lower as proven by literally any professional athletic sport, but this doesn't matter that much as before in current combat. What went wrong - in fubar situations, men instinctively lunged for protecting women, instead of rationally estimating situation and acting accordingly. We men are simply still too much gentlemen to have women around when bullets are flying, despite feminists trying hard erasing this. Give it 2 more generations and western society will be there. FYI eastern Europe countries like Ukraine have women in the military, including combat positions. Not surprisingly they keep getting injured and dying just like rest of them.
    • mike_hearn 2y ago
      Lots of militaries have looked at this. There is enormous ideological pressure on militaries to treat women the same as men, but unbiased studies always conclude that it would be a bad idea to do so. And no it's not the fault of the men's gallantry. Women are just physically weaker in ways that matter a lot for fighting. The idea strength in soldiers doesn't matter isn't believed by the military itself and the strange justifications in this thread don't have much basis in actual military doctrine (militaries aren't generally concerned with family planning...) This report might be useful. It summarizes a large scale study done in 2002 by the British army. The tests were heavily rigged in favour of the women but even so the conclusion was to keep them out of combat roles. Note the part where they say that fewer than 2% of women were as fit as the average male soldier: https://www.cna.org/reports/2012/Practices-of-Foreign%20Militaries-Assessing-the-Implications-of-Possible-Changes-to-Women-in-Service-Restrictions.pdf https://www.cna.org/reports/2012/Practices-of-Foreign%20Mili... A panel of subject matter experts conducted the study. They issued a report, A Study of Combat Effectiveness and Gender, to British ministers in 2001.[24] The study's tests were designed to examine the feasibility of mixed-gender tank crews, all-women crews, mixed infantry units, and all-women infantry units. They also were designed to examine how men would react to the presence of women on the battlefield and how each gender coped with the physical demands of combat. According to news articles, some reports maintain that the exercises found that women were as capable as men for service in combat units, but the results were mired in controversy [56]. Senior military officers, including Brig Seymour Monro (the Army's director of the infantry), stated that the Army field tests were so diluted that they “amounted to little more than aggressive camping.” Brig Monro also said that tasks that women were not physically capable of doing were simply dropped from the trials [56]. According to the final Ministry of Defence report, the study showed that fewer than 2 percent of female soldiers were as fit as the average male soldier [57]. Specifically, news reports stated that the trials stalled early on when women were not able to complete a number of tasks under battlefield conditions: • When asked to carry 90 pounds of artillery shells over measured distances, women failed 70 percent of the time (compared with a male failure rate of 20 percent). • When asked to march 12.5 miles carrying 60 pounds of equipment followed by target practice in simulated wartime conditions, women failed 48 percent of the time (compared with a male failure rate of 17 percent). • Women were generally incapable of digging themselves into hard ground under fire. • Women were generally slower in simulated combat exercises involving "fire and move" drills. • Women suffered much higher injury rates in close-quarter battle tests, such as hand-to-hand combat.
• stormfather 2y ago
  You're right but this isn't a conscious calculation - its deeply rooted, evolved behavior. It evolved because of the dynamic you described. Its the same reason women left the Titanic first, men are more likely to task risks, the Y chromosome has a higher mutation load and a million other things.
• psychlops 2y ago
  > Historically countries didn't let women fight in wars because they didn't want their civilisation to die out. Really? Might is also have something to do with women having trouble moving 80-100 lbs of gear like in WW2? It was 50 lbs in the Civil War. Do you think the leaders at the time had the foresight to keep women out of the war for future breeding purposes? That's thinking 15-20 years into the future while they are fighting wars now.