NationStates

Women are not and have never been permitted to serve in the armed forces of the Senate and Freeborn Landholders of Ephyra. This law was affirmed as part of the therissa Gorgosī, a series of laws and other reforms during the Great War against Russia (waged between 1940 and 1946), as well as other reforms made during the tenure of Anomedes Gorgosios Lenaleos Asalinos, Archon for that decade.

Military service is firmly established as a male duty only, and it is the official position of the Ephyral government that any state that permits female participation in the military is demographically suicidal, as women are necessary for the continuation of the people and the state through childbirth, and every woman lost in combat is dozens and dozens of future descendants wiped from existence.

There is a history of women fighting however and contributing to war efforts, particularly before the modern age and during sieges, where the women of a threatened city might dig defensive trenches or raise barricades to save the men's energy for battle, or where they take up what weapons they can and ambush enemy forces in the streets. These latter cases are rare and desperate examples, and whilst the commitment of these women to the immediate preservation of their country has never gone unnoticed, it has never been policy for women to be trained in combat.

The argument of tradition is easily supported by an argument of biology, that in upper and lower body strength capacity women are simply weaker than men, and as the military budget cannot simply be increased to accommodate a double-size force with women, it must necessarily come to pass that women replace men leaving the service. This will inevitably cause a weakness in the fighting strength of the military. Slower female reaction times to visual and audio stimuli also present issues, as well as problems of a sexual nature between soldiers.

Whilst women play no active role therefore in the armed services directly, women do have interaction with the military. Medical personnel assigned to the military are not considered enlisted, and can be comprised of female nurses and doctors typically of Lykosian (partial citizen) or metic (non-citizen) background. Prostitution taking place around military camps by women is also a tolerated practice so long as it is confined to brothels, which have been funded and run by the state for reasons of high interest. Such women are considered related to the military if not part of it, and are known as 'barrack whores'.

Outside of these services; medical and sexual, women have no place within the military and are denied entry to any military installation save for authorisation by relevant officials.