Exploring the enduring taboo around allowing women to fight in wars, and what causes us to break it. Why do women fight in wars? The short answer is simply that women, like men, fight because they must. The longer answer is inevitably more complex. Spanning an arc of over 2000 years, including examples from across the globe, Why Women Fight reveals the major themes that drive women to take up arms, examining them through the lives of individuals on the front lines. Busting the myth that female soldiers are a manifestation of modernity, the book begins in the ninth century BCE with Semiramis, a former milkmaid attributed with expanding the Babylonian empire, and concludes in 2024 with Tatyana, a former shop assistant who went on to command a Ukrainian Battalion of a thousand men. Incorporating extraordinary interviews with Marxist guerillas, resistance fighters, illegal paramilitaries, conscripts and regular volunteers, the book explores some of the myriad reasons that women across the ages have broken one of humanity's most fundamental taboos, to take up arms and fight for their kin, their ideas, their liberty, their lives AUTHOR: Victoria Preston has a background in communications , and over the course of four decades she has advised international corporations and governments, including the British military, and worked with clients all over the world. At the age of 59 she was tapped up to join the British Army as a Specialist Reservist Officer and over the course of nine years rose to the rank of Colonel, the highest achievable in this role. Serving under the Royal Engineers cap badge, she has contributed to a variety of assignments, including sitting on a number of military advisory boards. While she stepped down earlier this year, she remains engaged in certain military projects in a civilian capacity. She is an Associate Fellow at King's Centre for Strategic Communications (KCSC) which she was invited to help create in 2016.