I'm trying to figure out when news specifically started mentioning women and children were killed
when reporting fatalities.
Does anyone have any reference or idea when this differentiation happened - and even more important, what was the context of this emphasis?
My five cents. Personally my thought process started at
- when classical armies were facing each other (mostly) men died
just to go further and further back in time to find a war where this was true.
Operation Enduring Freedom (2001, War in Afghanistan)
War in Vietnam
War in Korea
WW2
WW1
Napoleon
Roman something..
For me my personal feelings there's a secession which happens around WW1, more into the direction of 'only soldiers died in war' - but I cannot assess whether my feeling has some truth to it. Also I suspect some context that nobody can remember (picturing for example the war in Vietnam but I'm not limiting it to that).
It does remind me of the idiom '10 people died, 3 of them were (replace with your nationality)'. This one I understand where it's coming from - speaking to the local people and framing it because you're writing in a specific language to start with. I'm struggeling to find the motivation behind the separation in fatalities.