Most of the women we know about in the 16th and 17th centuries are elite women. Some 90% of women couldn't read or write, which means they didn't leave any letters of diaries. They weren't considered to be legally capable once they got married, so they didn't appear before criminal courts. The sources we do have might tell us about the structures of women's lives, but they don't tell us about their behaviour or mentalities. That means most women who have ever lived have been lost to posterity. When we come across a set of sources, they are so valuable because they give us an insight into the lives o people who would otherwise be lost to history. (Susanna Lipscomb - author of the The Voice of Nîmes, on why the primary sources from women are important)
The whole notion of "women weren't on battlefield" are wrong. There were more prostitutes and merchant women than there were soldiers on almost every encampment. They followed the armies, marching alongside them and notably running the camps. Many more women dressed as men to fight.
Long before female nurses were considered to be part of the military, they were already on the battlefield. They merely didn't;t get written into official reports because they were" invisible women," "not supposed to be there." Usually they would be local women running a makeshift care centre out of their own homes.
Movies unveiling ancient societies? Guess how many had female fighters? Spies? Mostly female, only men were caught because nobody suspected the servant woman, but historians believe most cases had more women spies than men. Most cases meaning across time and continents.
Give me a movie on Samurai? Women were trained as well to avoid being captured and raped, and often fought just as hard as men. One woman notably survived multiple battles, and acme a hero alongside her sisters after taking out 7 men before dying in her last fight (usually in sword fight, you'd be lucky to take out 2 enemy soldiers, 7 is insane, but because she was a woman is was shoved out of the records.)
Women have always been on battlefields. Women have an intense history in driving victories and losses alike. They were simply runners, fighters, spies, assassins, underground activists and prostitutes. Look up how many prostitutes essentially ran the western world, or even the social status of harem members.
The only time there weren't many women were with cowboys. Actual western cowboys tended to be both POC - mostly Mexican or Black, and gay. In fact, any time women didn't;t have a near equal or greater presence, there was a lot of gay men.
History: either 80% female or 100% gay. And it's 95% POC.
Note: in most films, T.V productions, even commercials, women only comprise of 17% in a crowd scene. Any more, and viewers will think there are too many women to be realistic - even when in real life women are more than half the population.
PUT LOTS OF WOMEN IN YOUR STORY.
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