timeline of women's participation in warfare

Women have participated in warfare in a variety of ways in different times and places. This is a list of some notable events related to this.

Ancient Greece

The Amazons, a legendary tribe of warrior women.
Amastris, wife of Dionysius of Heracluria established her own city state by conquering and uniting 4 settlements.
5th century BC - Telessilla ( a warrior poet) defended the city of Argos by rallying women with war songs.
480 BC Artemisia, Queen of Halicarnassus, participates in the Battle of Salamis

Boudicca, a Celtic chieftain in Britain, leads an uprising against the occupying Roman forces.
Fulvia, wife of Mark Antony, organizes an uprising against Octavian

1081 Sikelgaita fights in the Battle of Dyrrhachium; Anna Comnena calls her "a second Athena"
1140s Eleanor of Aquitaine participates in the Second Crusade
1346 Joanna of Flanders defends the rights of her son John V, Duke of Brittany in the Breton War of Succession
1428 Joan of Arc (Jehanne la Pucelle) led the French Army to victory against the English, recapturing Orleans. In May 1431 she was burned at the stake in Rouen.
1541 Ins Surez, come to America to search her husband, fights with Pedro de Valdivia in Chile.
1572 In defence of the city during a siege of Haarlem by Spanish troops, which lasted from december 1572 to 1573, Kenau Simonsdochter Hasselaer (1526-1588) led a force of 300 women.

From the 17th century up to 1894 the Dahomey Amazons were an all female regiment (under female command) of the west African Kingdom of Dahomey.

1854 - Florence Nightingale (a British nurse) revolutionises both the care of sick soldiers in the Crimean War, but also expectations of the role of women of her status.

1937 - During the Dersim uprising, Sabiha Gken, the first female aviator in Turkey and the first female combat pilot in the world carried out sorties in operations against the guerillas.

The Soviet forces had a significant number of women serving, including an entire air force regiment of female fighter pilots, the 586th fighter regiment. There are also accounts of very successful female snipers.

May 14, 1948 - The Israeli Defense Force is founded, at this point it has one female combat pilot, and a draft of both men and women. Most women serve in non-combat positions, and serve only 2 years (instead of three for men). Israel remains the only country to conscript women.

American women perform many varieties of non-combat military service in special units such as the WAVES, Women's Army Corps and Women's Auxiliary Air Force.

2003 - Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski is in charge of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where prisoners were abused.
2003 - Jessica Lynch, a U.S. soldier, is embroiled in a controversy over differing accounts of her capture and rescue in Iraq.

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