List of women warriors in folklore

For the mythology and culture of female warriors, see Female warrior (disambiguation).

The Swedish heroine Blenda advises the women of Värend to fight off the Danish army in a painting by August Malström (1860).
The female warrior samurai Hangaku Gozen in a woodblock print by Yoshitoshi (c. 1885).
The peasant Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc) led the French army to important victories in the Hundred Years' War. The only direct portrait of Joan of Arc has not survived; this artist's interpretation was painted between AD 1450 and 1500.

This is a list of women who engaged in war, found throughout mythology and folklore, studied in fields such as literature, sociology, psychology, anthropology, film studies, cultural studies, and women's studies. A mythological figure does not always mean a fictional one, but rather, someone of whom stories have been told that have entered the cultural heritage of a people. Some women warriors are documented in the written or scientific record[1][2] and as such form part of history (e.g. the Ancient Briton queen Boudica, who led the Iceni into battle against the Romans). However, to be considered a warrior, the woman in question must have belonged to some sort of military, be it recognized, like an organized army, or unrecognized, like revolutionaries.

  1. ^ Newitz, Annalee (1 January 2021). "What New Science Techniques Tells Us About Ancient Women Warriors – Recent studies show that man was not always the hunter". The New York Times. Retrieved 2 January 2021.
  2. ^ Haas, Randall; et al. (4 November 2020). "Female hunters of the early Americas". Science Advances. 6 (45): eabd0310. Bibcode:2020SciA....6..310H. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abd0310. PMC 7673694. PMID 33148651.