The image of an armed woman is one rife with tension - it challenges our deep-rooted beliefs regarding the proper role of women in society. The connection between military service and citizenship is explicit to varying degrees in most societies - and therefore the right of women to bear arms is an issue that strikes at the heart of a society's valuation of women. 'A Soldier and a Woman' explores this controversial subject in nineteen essays spanning three centuries and four continents from the late medieval period to the present day. This collection of essays builds a picture of the practical and ideological issues surrounding women soldiers, and the ambiguous place they inhabit; in the process uncovering a remarkable continuity across cultures and periods. The female soldier raises questions of military readiness, gender identity, perceptions of the body, power structures and hierarchy, gendered symbolism and language, personal and collective identities, the power of myths, and the disjunction between equality and conformity.A wide range of countries is surveyed including Algeria, Britain, China, France, Israel, the United States, the Soviet Union and Vietnam. As well as conventional armed conflict - such as the Thirty Years War, the Anglo-Boer War, the First and Second World Wars, and the Vietnam War - the role of women in guerilla warfare, resistance and terrorism is also examined.Gerard J. DeGroot is Senior Lecturer and Chair in the Department of Modern History at the University of St Andrews. His many publications include Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War (Longman, 1996), Student Protest: The Sixties and After (Longman, 1998) and A Noble Cause? America and the Vietnam War (Longman, 1999).Corinna Peniston-Bird is Research Fellow in the Department of History, University of Lancaster. She is also co-authoring (with Gerard J. DeGroot) Women in the Line of Fire: the Female Soldier in the Modern Military (Routledge, forthcoming). She has also published Vienna in the World Bibliographical Series (ABC-Clio, 1997).