Events that allow women portraying soldiers?

[Crispvs]

I can't comment on the situation in Europe or in the US, but here in Britain I don't recall ever having seen an event organiser specifying a policy of woman not protraying soldiers, although I have seen policies stating that women may portray soldiers if they can do so convincingly but that if they wish to speak to members of the public afterwards they must change into appropriate female costume first. Many re-enactment groups have their own policies which echo this view. This is of course easier for periods where the majority of the body is covered and clothing is not closely fitting, and thus it is very common to see women portraying soldiers in English Civil War and American Civil War period groups. Baggy jackets and trousers can hide much.

This is difficult to pull off convincingly for Roman re-enactment though. For a start, as has already been stated, women's legs are simply not the same shape as men's legs and so any woman would need to be able to completely cover her legs. For many women the shape of their rear ends would also be an issue to overcome. Also mail is a problem, as it hugs the figure and thus a woman's body shape is hard to hide. Scale is slightly less of a problem but it is still sufficiently flexible that an obviously female shape would still be hard to hide convincingly. Segmentata is the only armour type which has sufficient rigidity to hide female curves but in the case of a great many women it would have to be very carefully padded out so that it did not hang strangely on the body. Thus if a woman were to portray a Roman infantryman in anything even approaching a convincing way, she would have to be able to wear segmentata and bracchae, as well as learning to move like a man. Although there is now a reasonable body of evidence to support the idea of auxiliaries wearing segmentata, which would allow this combination. I doubt that most women would want the level of hassle this would involve though, particularly if they had to take it all off to change into female costume after each display.
I suspect it is easier for a woman to portray a cavalryman, although many women possess body shapes which would run into trouble with mail or scale as I mentioned above. Also, where a woman's facial features would be hard to disguise in most infantry helmets, as Olga's cavalry portrayal has demonstrated, a masked helmet can hide a strong element of a female identity.

I know you are interested in the events themselves, but I do think it really comes down to the groups that participate in the events and how they approach the issue. Most events are invitation only, meaning only the invited groups can take part and so any non-female policy an organiser might have will largely be seen to by the choice of the groups invited to take part. If the organiser does not wish to have women portraying soldiers, then he is likely only to invite groups who do not allow woman to portray soldiers, meaning that any policy which the organiser might hold will be invisible to most participants. After all, there could be many reasons why one group or another might not have been invited to an event. In our case, often when we are at multi-period events we are the only Roman group present. Why did the organiser choose us? Was it because we are a knowledgeable group and put on a good display? Was it because all of the other groups had bookings for that weekend? Was it because we do not allow Trooper helmets in the group or was it because we do not allow woman to portray soldiers? We rarely learn the answer to this question and to be honest, we would rarely think to ask.

Crispvs