Modernizing the Wheel of Time

[Psyren]

That too yes, but no women anywhere? Not even in administration type jobs? The whitecloaks werent just some mercenary band after all, they were a full on organization. I actually agree with the idea that there was likely a subtle "Aes Sedai cant infiltrate if its men only" vibe to them. It seems to be the sort of thing that they would have thought of as only darkfriends outranked aes sedai on their "DO NOT LIKE" list. And the idea of infiltration would have been an obvious one for the white tower to take advantage of if women could join in any capacity.

Not to mention, men who can channel are something they'd presumably need to worry about too. Certainly rarer, but a possibility over centuries.

Not really. Remember, the Trollocs aren't a one-time event where they need every man/woman/child. The Trollocs have been coming down out of The Blight for the last two thousand years since The Trolloc Wars.

From the perspective of keeping your populace going, it's not smart to have women be primary combatants. I actually did get the impression that the women from The Borderlands did generally get some combat training so that they could fight in a pinch, but not as front-line soldiers.

And frankly, as much as this isn't PC to say, when you're talking about muscle-based combat, VERY FEW women are going to be able to keep up with the average man in melee combat, or even with a longbow, since they just don't have the same draw-strength.

Yikes. From the implied brood-mare role to the myopic view of combat styles (even if we somehow believed women were somehow incapable of strength-based combat, Randland has many many more styles besides that - from dex-based swordplay to the knives Faile learned in Saldaea to archery etc)... Yeah, thank you for providing the perfect reason for them to make changes, right here.

Edit: If you're a human fighting Trollocs, you're always outmuscled anyway, unless you're on a horse.

Exactly - nowhere is "stick them with the pointy end" (I know, other series) more apropos.