I know another situation a lot better. A good number of the partisans in my area who harried the German forces in order to provide support for the allies were women. The partisans as a whole were not a huge percentage of the population. How many people of either sex have that kind of courage? The women partisans made a big difference. Some of them did actual fighting, where others gathered intelligence, carried messages, transported weapons, actions for which they were often better suited than the men particularly because they weren't suspected as much. We have video archives where these women recount how, as young girls, most of them, they hid guns in the bike baskets under laundry, or went into the mountains to bring intelligence and food. Some died, yes, after rape and torture. Of those who survived, some became politicians, important in the post war reconstruction of Italian society. I'm not a Communist, but I have tremendous respect for a woman like Nilde Lotti:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nilde_Iotti
As for the various Kurdish political groups, I am not qualified to comment on what is accepted in their society, or how much of this is for propaganda purposes. I will tell you, however, that if I were a woman in the Middle East, knowing what these ISIS monsters do to people, including women and children, I would beg, borrow or steal to get my hands on the most deadly weapons available, and I'd learn how to use them. If nothing else, as a mother, I would owe it to my children.
