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What percent of Ukrainian front line troops are women?
Good luck finding a real answer to that question. BBC claims 5,000 but that's almost certainly an egregious lie. My guess is that the real answer rounds to zero.
I'm willing to change my estimate if you can find a single story of a woman killed while storming enemy lines.
The UKR army is like 800k strong which translates to roughly 225k troops on the front.
Given ukraines manpower problems having 2% of your frontliners be women might be reasonable. After all while a 23 year old man is probably better than almost any 23 year old women a 23 year old women might outperform a 45 year old man.
2% is fairly low. Frontline troops can mean Artillery gunners, FPV drone user ect, there are so many different combat roles in the military that they can find the least bad role for women to save more men for the infantrymen.
I take it you don't play co-ed sports. It might be worth an effort post, but there are lots of reasons why men are better than woman at combat that even this age gap wouldn't come close to erasing.
I suspect that this is where the 5,000 number comes from. But if women are being used on the "frontline" to save men for the actual frontline then "frontline" is a pretty meaningless term.
I play co-ed hobbyist sports but nothing professional. A women who lifts takes creatine and can do Frontflips can be more athletic than 20% of men aged >40. Obviously this doesn't describe many women but this maybe describes the top 1% of women which corrisponds to roughly 100% of women on the real front lines.
There's a big issue that's hard to mention which is that "frontline" can mean "any combat role where getting shot at is a real concern" (which is why I suspect it's 2% of the UKR army) and "guy in the trenches". What of these roles that I could find on /r/combatfootage would you describe as "the front lines"
I suspect the 5k would call all 5 "front line". I would probably exclude 4.
I would define frontline in a similar way to you. Frontline = high risk of death + proximity to enemy forces. Whether a particular role is front line would depend on how many people died doing it, but many of those roles could definitely be considered front line.
In all the footage there is probably only one single clip of a Ukrainian woman storming a trench, three if you count the gender ambiguous blobs being shot at in Azovstal. Fair few of women in CASEVAC doing in-vehicle stabilization, and a few women working counterbattery were killed. These roles are still valued, but they aren't sitting in trenches waiting for the assault.
Doesn't change the fact that others raised, which is female soldiers are better used outside of directly employing violence of action. Keep men killing, thats what they do best. Women can get the teamkill assist.
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