Which is GW's fault, not the Imperium's. And one throwaway sentance is all it takes to establish that equality exists. By that logic they've never shown Marines going to the toilet more than the briefest mention - does that mean they're all constipated?
Just for more examples, the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer has a check-off for the owner's gender, and the intro refers to "a soldier in the Imperial Guard... regulations by which he/she will live his/her life".
I doubt the Imperium would waste time with such niceties if there wasn't a significant portion of female guard. Also don't forget that we only see a tiny portion of regiments, and even then only a tiny portion of that regiments manpower - the fighting bit. We never see support guys (or gals), signals, cooks, drivers etc. Doesn't mean they don't exist or are some repressed underclass of Imperial society.
Even if we're talking discrimination, all the examples you're coming up with are rooted in GW's bias, not that of the Imperium.I disagree, but that's okay; a sematic argument here would be unhelpful.
Lack of models & art is due to the misconception that female toys don't sell to boys, so they don't make the models, so they don't do art based on the models that don't exist. No point doing a super sweet picture of a female guardswoman that'll make veryone want to buy them if they don't make them (to note, I think the idea is flawed, but it is still GW - not the Imperium).
Well can you name any of the high Lords? There is no evidence they're not all female either. There is evidence that any of the positions held by the HLs can be held by women.So the head of an all-female sect? What about the other High Lords? You know, the ones that allow both genders? Any women there? Or does the Imperium make women have to stay amongst their own kind?
SoB, SoS, Marines - the only organisations that segregate on gender. Also three of the six most elite organisations out there. The others being Assassins (take anyone), Custodes (who are also all male as far as we've seen) and the Inquisition (take anyone).Kind of my point: why weren't theyrecruited into the Sisters of Silence too? The answer: the Imperium segregates it's people based on gender quite a lot of the time.
But it does make the lack of representation in two thirds of the media (models and art vs fiction) not the fault of the Imperium, but GW. And I agree it is a terrible thing.This old chestnut. Saying "this is the reason" does not make the reason okay!
So that's one, for which we can basically blame John Blanche... anything else? You did say the Imperium is the worst place imaginable to be a woman in and you've got one example of a small sub-set of a small faction. Hardly a compelling argument.Sisters Repentia. Marines who fail are given the "punishement" of being made a Dreanought (if we're going 1st edition), or consigned to suicide missions (in their spiffy armour and with their honour intact). Sororitas who fail get stripped of their armour, and made to wear negligees made of purity scrolls, humiliating them (in the artwork), masks to nullify their faces so they're not real people any more, then literally whipped by a fellow Sister, forced to die as atonement. If they're really unlucky, it's the Penitent Engine for them! Truly the price of failure for a the toughest female warriors in 40K is so much worse thanthat of their peers.
So there's that.
Plus, just the abscence of female sculpts. For me, that's disrespectful enough.
And again, lack of sculpts does not, in a background sense, make the Imperium a discriminatory place to live.
So I'll set you a challenge similar to the one you set me: find me a picture, model or piece of background that explicitly says all of womankind is repressed as badly as can be imagined by the Imperium as a whole, solely based on gender (not on the fact that their all female organisation is messed in the head, or it is a singular woman being punished - it must be the Imperium as a whole, ever facet of it).
That was your original statement ("because let's be fair; the Imperium is about as misogynistic a place as could be imagined"), so back it up.