How many female soldiers saw combat in WW2? | AskHistorians Archive Observer

I'll answer for the Red Army, as out of all WWII-era militaries, it's perhaps best known for its employment of women soldiers. Most of the fame has gone to snipers such as Lyudmila Pavlichenko or to specialized all-female units like the 588th Night Bomber Regiment (aka the Night Witches), but there were (depending on which source you believe) at least 800,000 women serving in some capacity, and possibly up to 2 million. Breaking them down into combatants and non-combatants is tricky- for example, while most female medical personnel were stationed behind the lines, there were thousands of female combat medics who would treat and evacuate wounded soldiers under fire. In at least some cases, they were trained and equipped in the same manner as the rest of the soldiers in their unit, and would engage the enemy when not providing medical treatment. One woman, Valeriia Osipovna Gnarovskaia, was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union when she threw herself under a German tank and set off a satchel of grenades in order to prevent it from reaching a medical post. There are numerous other examples of women in support roles - communications, anti-aircraft artillery, engineers - who became front-line combatants out of necessity, often serving with distinction. However, while anecdotes about these occurrences are readily available, hard statistics are not.

In terms of actual combat infantry, it seems there were a few specialized training schools set up for female infantry and machine gunners, graduating at least 20,000 soldiers. (This number does not include female snipers, who seem to have numbered at least a couple thousand.) Some of the units formed in this way were apparently earmarked for rear-echelon duties by officers doubtful of their ability to perform, despite protests from the soldiers themselves, so not all of these women would have seen combat. However, there were also thousands of women who joined up through other means, and served in the infantry, mortars, artillery, armor, and other branches. Again, hard statistics are hard to come by.

Soviet partisans had a much higher percentage of women serving- perhaps 25% of partisans were women, with around 10% of combatant roles being filled by them. Whether you regard partisans as 'soldiers' is perhaps a matter of semantics, or of which you focus on- partisan groups ran the gamut from disciplined, hierarchical organizations that had frequent communication with the regular Red Army, all the way to what were essentially gangs of bandits. In any case, most of them were combating the Germans in some organized capacity, and I think that qualifies them as soldiers.

Anyways, to actually answer your question, I think you could safely say that less than 1% of Red Army soldiers in explicit front-line combatant roles were women. Including all women who engaged in combat at any time, you might hit 1%. Among Soviet partisans, it would have been 9-10%. I would expect the numbers would be significantly lower for any other army involved in the war, but that's not an informed opinion, it's just based on my lack of anecdotal knowledge of significant numbers of women serving in combatant roles outside the Soviet armed forces.

Edit: Another way to estimate is that out of 11,000 Heroes of the Soviet Union, a medal awarded for valor in combat, around 100 were women. It's possible that women were less likely to be awarded medals due to official chauvinism; however, it's equally possible that women were more valorous on average than men, given that they had to fight hard to even be allowed to serve in combat. Regardless, this does seem to support the <1% theory.