There is a birth crisis. Modern, liberal women are not actually reproducing, they are not keeping their end of the evolutionary bargain (men protecting, sacrificing and dying, while women giving birth). Therefore, there is no need to maintain the old-fashioned, patriarchal system with women as a more protected group. Everyone should contribute equally, pull their own weight. Equal rights, equal lefts (responsibilities).

Western women are already only producing ~1.5 kids (many with none!), you could send 50% of young women to die in war, then have the other half have a fertility rate of 6, like what their great great grandmothers had, and we would be far far ahead already.

50 men and 50 women. You have to send 50 people to the front. You'd send 49 men, leave one behind for reproduction purposes, have 50 women at home and be short of 1 person.

Or we could embrace equality and send 25 men and 25 women, leaving behind 25 of each to do whatever they want.

Can you share examples of this happening in modern history at scale?

That's a thought game, not reality.

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Why should men sacrifice and die for nothing, by not getting anything in return, not even a simple appreciation? Why should only men die when things get tough? I also would much rather see other unknown women die, than to send myself or my son to die for them.

Women need to pull their weight. And since they aren't doing that from the evolutional POV, neither in practice (birth crisis) nor in theory (not like giving birth is a legal duty, unlike a draft), then they can at least be useful for a society as a cannon fodder. The more women start pulling their weight and contribute, the less weight there will be for men to pull. What not to love about this equality!

> That's not feminism, that's insanity.

No, it's equality.

Taken to its logical conclusion, you cannot have gender equality without either making the draft cover everyone or abolishing it entirely.

The fact that women losing their lives is so much larger a risk for the nation only serves to test the resolve of those people claiming to want gender equality, but this is not the only time you'll find a conflict between idealism and reality, even within the scope of gender equality.

This goes missed a lot in debates about conscription. The Iran war in the US and the Ukraine war in Russia enjoy very little popular support among military aged men. This is in stark contrast to WW2, and even in Vietnam there was still a strain of thinking of draft resisters as cowards. But wars in this day and age enjoy a shockingly tiny public mandate, and it's entirely possible that governments can only do a draft on paper. Putin is practically unable to push further mobilisation because the first round provoked such stiff violence and resistance.

There is another option too: cooperate.

Any ruler wants active units of production (humans extracting money or gold or food), and for that it has to bring some sort of stable life environment and not be too greedy so people don't try to revolt.

Whether you get such through political negotiation before or after a war, or through a vote, or through a revolution, is the same as the end.