Two points:

1) By using the phrase "there's no such thing as "volunteering" when dealing with meat grinders like WW1 or WW2", m0zg denies that any Soviet women volunteered to fight on the front lines, or as partisans in German held territory. Quoting from Wikipdia:

> Manshuk Mametova was a machine gunner from Kazakhstan ... Mariya Oktyabrskaya and Alexandra Samusenko were tank drivers. Tatyana Kostyrina had over 120 kills and commanded an infantry battalion in 1943 following the death of her commander and a majority of the staff.

> The 1077th Anti-aircraft Regiment ... fought during the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942 ... like many of the anti-aircraft units, was made up almost entirely of young women volunteers, barely out of high school. They are mostly known for their bravery in the defense of Stalingrad (now Volgograd), when they engaged an advancing Panzer unit by setting their guns to the lowest elevation and firing them directly at the advancing tanks.

The fact that there were relatively few such women doesn't detract from my point that they were volunteers, making m0zg's statement simply wrong.

The earlier argument was that women shouldn't be drafted into the military because their wombs need to be ready for post-war repopulation efforts. My question again is, if that is a valid argument, why should women even be allowed to volunteer? And my follow up is that women can be drafted without being ordered to fight on the front lines. .. eg, as service personnel.

2) You write "perceived". How much of that perception is due to propaganda? In the US, post-war propaganda de-emphasized the importance and competence in doing what was previously considered "male" jobs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_women_in_World_War_II#W... suggest a similar effect in the USSR.

> 1930s Stalinist propaganda promoted the image of women in the home, caring for their families. This ambivalent conception of women's role in society parallels the state's attitude towards females in the military; women's patriotic duty did not include combat until it became absolutely necessary. Even when the efforts of female soldiers could no longer be ignored, state propaganda concealed the full extent of their participation.[24]

> Propaganda concerning female soldiers often functioned to preserve male societal dominance, portrayed them as motherly and sisterly figures, an image more consistent with women's role in Soviet society. Furthermore, propaganda emphasized that women joined the army for patriotic reasons, such as protecting the fatherland or avenging dead relatives. These commendable motivations explained women's ability to kill in combat, a phenomenon that contradicted established gender roles.[25]

> The Soviet state resisted the deployment of servicewomen, using propaganda to justify female combatants after they became necessary.[26] Conze and Fieseler argue that once women soldiers were no longer needed, they stopped appearing in the media. The state prevented female soldiers from marching in the Moscow Victory Parade. The gains of servicewomen towards female emancipation were ignored after the war, and the state encouraged women to return to their duties at home.[