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Comment by WaitWaitWha | Hacker News Reader

> For the first time ever, SIS officers reveal why women often make the best spies for our times

I was unable to find where this was answered in the article. It also reads like the author relied mostly on novels, movies, and such instead on a the interview.

Women spies have been around just as much, if not longer - Virginia Hall, Mata Hari, Jane Whorwood, Elizabeth Van Lew, Anne Dawson, Violette Szabo. Going even further back consider the Japanese kunoichi (sp?), Empress Wei of China had a whole cadre of female spies. There are plenty of evidence of female spies in Ancient Greece, and in the Roman empire. There are Biblical stories of female spies.

Indeed there are novels & movies that depict female spies in a sexual way (and just as many depicting men as simple fighting machines) but pretending that women where not allowed to be spies is a disservice to women.

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> I was unable to find where this was answered in the article.

For example here it makes an explicit point:

"The UK’s main adversaries today — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — are repressive societies with few women in positions of power. For the female spy, this weakness in the enemy is exploitable. Precisely because they are so likely to be overlooked, women have the potential to be the best spies of all."

> pretending that women where not allowed to be spies is a disservice to women.

Where does it say they were not allowed? Mata Hari is explicitly discussed in the article. A lot of examples in MI6 itself are made, but the article talks at length about how their careers were more difficult.

> It also reads like the author relied mostly on novels, movies, and such instead on a the interview.

I think the article is amazing. It literally interviewed three of the top british spies. How can you say that? And the last paragraph is all about all the things that the author could not cover.

> "The UK’s main adversaries today — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — are repressive societies with few women in positions of power."

(I know this is from TFA, not written by you)

At least Russia and North Korea have women in positions of power, so it seems disingenuous to lump them together with Iran, at the very least. I'm unsure about China now, but there used to be very influential Chinese women.

Also, Russia mastered the art of using women in intelligence (and sure, honeytraps), particularly because the West also tends to overlook them. Or are we going to pretend it's only our enemies that do this, as if the battle for equality was already won on our side?

Fair point, but in defence of the author, I think there's a huge difference between having some women in positions of power and the attitude that people have towards women in daily life. I can totally imagine a society in which certain women from privileged background can rise to power (if, regarding north korea, you're talking about Kim Jong Un's sister, that's a great example), and yet the assumption most people have when they meet a woman is definitely not that she is someone powerful or to be wary of.

Also, what spies have is not 'power'. I wonder for example how many women there are in the high ranks of the army, even for the countries you listed and many others.

Yes, I was thinking of Kim Jong-un's sister.

Agreed that spies do not have "power" in that sense; I was just echoing the words of TFA and showing counterexamples.

Most armies of the world are sexist in any case, why single out the current adversaries of the West? Western armies are traditionally sexist as well. Yes, now there are some high ranking officers and even generals in some of the most modern Western armies -- meaning the general rule is still that sexism is rampant.

> yet the assumption most people have when they meet a woman is definitely not that she is someone powerful or to be wary of

Yes, but this seems to be the rule in many countries which are traditionally aligned with the West.

Yes, in this sense I agree.

NK? Where do you see women represented in positions of power? Honest question.

Kim Il Sung (or his son? memory is hazy) had a special all-female army unit that was his literal harem. I don’t think they value women very much, outside perhaps of nepotism.

Kim Yo-jong, Kim Jong-un's sister, is a woman in power in North Korea [1] (yes, probably because she is his sister, but she's no figurehead, and how else does one rise to power in North Korea anyway?) and is deemed by some analysts as a possible successor to her brother.

This doesn't make it a rule, but it shows there are women with power in North Korea. Because it's such an opaque country to outside observers, who knows how many more are there? Keep in mind the world didn't even know of her existence until relatively recently (about 2014).

I don't think something like this -- a woman being considered to run the country -- would be even thinkable in Iran.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Yo-jong

Ironically there's a female only division in North Korea's army though it's claimed that they are comfort woman from South Korean sources that doesn't really seem accurate. Especially considering the statements made about being solely for Kim Jong Un and the fact that the same sources also go on to state how he exclusively only dates European models, which is also ironic when you consider he seems to be in love with his with who is also Korean. In which she is obese so it's hard to consider him choosing her for her appearance.

I believe the term "comfort women" only refers to the women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army, the term is a direct translation of a Japanese word.

It's possible North Korea had a division made up of former comfort womem at some point, but I've never heard of it and the youngest members left would be in their 80's now.

> Where does it say they were not allowed?

The first couple of paragraphs talk ad nauseum about how hard it was for women to become spies.

"it is difficult" and "it is not allowed" are two different things.

china has more women in positions of political representation than the us

By % of total offices or just raw total? China has over 4X the population of the US. Not to even mention different countries have different #s of political offices.

Just seems like a difficult comparison to make.

by % of total offices

> Just seems like a difficult comparison to make

>> China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — are repressive societies with few women in positions of power

but generalizations like this are pretty easy

Voters who are told how to vote, sure. But certainly not power:

No promotions for women at China’s party congress? Mimi Lau Published: 2:08pm, 10 Oct, 2022 https://www.scmp.com/news/article/3195409/no-promotions-wome...

Why are women unlikely to win promotion race at China’s Communist Party congress? Female cadres tend to rise through gender pathways in areas such as education and civil affairs, and in mass organisations But they’re rarely assigned to more high-profile portfolios such as economics, finance, industry and technology Mimi Lau Published: 11:00pm, 2 Oct, 2022 https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3194570/why...

China has a lot of figureheads and rubber stamp officials. For example, their >1K legislature is a rubber stamp no real de facto power. So the female representation in de jure leadership might not match the female representation in actual leadership.

im not talking about merits of chinese political system. but the thesis that communist-party-ruled societies are more favoured toward men than it is the case in most western governments is false. also according to statistics rwanda and cuba are world leaders in terms of % women holding office

Huh? This is just false. What is the basis for your opinion?

There is no woman in the 24-member Politburo, the highest body of Chinese leadership. None. It had a single woman in the last cycle 2017-2022. The Standing committee, the top echelon with seven members has never had a woman as member. Of 205 members of the Central Committee, only 5% are women.

https://amp.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3196848/abs...

Rawanda requires 50% of elected representatives to be female.

In practice, it lets the ruling party keep power. Winning and election against them isn’t enough- you have to win with at least 50% female candidates.

http://archive.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm

Usually fluff articles like this are a prelude to a recruiting push. MI6 advertises in the Economist and I think the FT.

I think it's a prelude to restarting the Bond series with a female character.

Barbara Broccoli ruled that out recently

But women still make up less than 20-30% of operations agents in most western agencies. Only in the past decade has new recruits in MI6 and the CIA got to 40% women.

Can you point me to this data?

"> For the first time ever, SIS officers reveal why women often make the best spies for our times"

--> If that were true, should those spies be paid more than their not-as-good male counterparts ? And if yes, should the gap-salary which would follow, be then gapped by hiring more men as top spy positions despite their lower performances ?

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