The recruitment of women was not on the agenda when the Palmach was first established as a guerilla force, in May 1941. Only a small number of women were accepted at the start. However, as mentioned in Chapter 7, the idea of the hakhsharah, a unit combining young men and women, came into being in 1942. As the structure of the hakhsharah took root, women became an integral part of the Palmach. However, as early as 1943 it was decided that the women would train separately from the men, would be commanded by women, and would mainly carry out auxiliary military functions. The number of women in the Palmach reached its peak at the beginning of 1948 – over a third of the Palmach as a whole.

The participation of women in the Palmach became at the time a symbol of its existence – a young woman in shorts with a tent or a desert landscape in the background was the popular image. Women's incorporation into the Palmach had ideological roots in European socialism. August Bebel's influential book Woman under Socialism ([1883] 1904) had a lingering formative influence on socialist movements, of which the Palmach perceived itself as an offshoot. Socialism, argued Bebel, could succeed only if women were liberated from the family role imposed on them by the capitalist mode of production. The most direct influence on the Palmach came from the Soviet bloc.