Women in Bannerlord

[Varrak]

So i saw Callum's this message in steam forum

Your experience as a woman in Bannerlord will depend on which faction you play. Some factions will be more patriarchal, such as Vlandia, and others will be more gender neutral, such as Battania.

Personally i find this amazing, what are your thoughts?

 

[Kortze26]

I often play as a female character in games (redhead with pigtails, my ideal women cuz I'm a nerd).  So, I'm down, particularly with Battania.

 

[Kehlian]

Agreed, having faction dependant se,ism opens the door for a huge amount of mods possibilities, as much as rp with the native game.
This is both awesome, and feels realistic in the way that vikings and celts women had a more respected role in the communities than in franks and roman cultures

 

[The Bowman]

By studying different development patterns of cultures throughout history, I found it interesting that smaller and more primitive communities tend to be inherently more gender inclusive, meaning that men and women shared quite similar roles, stretching as far as taking female warriors in battles.

The more numerous and developed the community gets, the more it seems like males and females are the subject of division of labor, consequently creating a ridge between their rights and roles.

 

[KhergitLancer80]

It is actually about the agricultural developement.

Let me explain this, in agricultural lifestyle women are less useful than men.
Because of this, the culture developes in a way that women become less valuable.

In nomadic lifestyle however, because both men and women are useful, culture developes in a way that both genders be equal.

In middle east for example, because that area probably has the oldest agricultural history, women value is on grounds and they are seen as useless sex objects.

Edit:Not to mention the reason we can understand how developed a society from the value it gives to women is because in modern lifestyle women are useful again and the equality shows how long of an experience has the society been through under modern city lifestyle.Longer it is more equal women are.

 

[Kehlian]

It is actually about the agricultural developement.

Let me explain this, in agricultural lifestyle women are less useful than men.
Because of this, the culture developes in a way that women become less valuable.

In nomadic lifestyle however, because both men and women are useful, culture developes in a way that both genders be equal.

In middle east for example, because that area probably has the oldest agricultural history, women value is on grounds and they are seen as useless sex objects.

Edit:Not to mention the reason we can understand how developed a society from the value it gives to women is because in modern lifestyle women are useful again and the equality shows how long of an experience has the society been through under modern city lifestyle.Longer it is more equal women are.

That's an interesting study, it feels very plausible and I never thought about this this way. Where did you find your sources ?

 

[Innocent Flower]

Nah women are basically equals in aggriculture. The lowborn have a lot of work to do and can't really discriminate too much there. Hunter gathering had more dimorphism in gender rolls, since women suffered more in hunting. I'm really interested in your sources, because they sound the opposite of what I was taught.

I learned that there's a few (very primitive) tribes that are matriarchal or near enough in either south america or africa. So, there's precedent for it. My problem is that I don't know taleworlds can do it with tact. It's really too common that someone wants to empower women in a fictional setting and contrives an unrealistic scenario and then procedes to beat you over the head with how inclusive it is.  Honestly,  i'd rather see a difference between -women are property, I own three,I hear you can buy them in X and sell them in Y for a tidy profit- and -women have all the rights men do but only in theory-  and maybe even the curvbal of "men do everything so it's easier on women"

 

[Varrak]

Nah women are basically equals in aggriculture. The lowborn have a lot of work to do and can't really discriminate too much there. Hunter gathering had more dimorphism in gender rolls, since women suffered more in hunting.

This.

About women in Bannerlord, just to see how different political and economic role women could have in different factions, i could travel all factions one by one 

 

[DanAngleland]

So i saw Callum's this message in steam forum

Your experience as a woman in Bannerlord will depend on which faction you play. Some factions will be more patriarchal, such as Vlandia, and others will be more gender neutral, such as Battania.

Personally i find this amazing, what are your thoughts?

It does sound like a neat idea, a bit of meaningful and believable variety in the world of a game is always welcome in my book.

 

[Kortze26]

From what I recall of my anthropology education, women were important in hunter gatherer societies , not because of their equal prowess, but because of the 20% greater processing power in olfactory function (smell and taste) which helps to read the wind to determine the direction of game and in scavenging in determining level of rot when finding a random carcase.

It's important to note that these are all just theories with varying levels of evidence to support them.

 

[KhergitLancer80]

It is actually about the agricultural developement.

Let me explain this, in agricultural lifestyle women are less useful than men.
Because of this, the culture developes in a way that women become less valuable.

In nomadic lifestyle however, because both men and women are useful, culture developes in a way that both genders be equal.

In middle east for example, because that area probably has the oldest agricultural history, women value is on grounds and they are seen as useless sex objects.

Edit:Not to mention the reason we can understand how developed a society from the value it gives to women is because in modern lifestyle women are useful again and the equality shows how long of an experience has the society been through under modern city lifestyle.Longer it is more equal women are.

That's an interesting study, it feels very plausible and I never thought about this this way. Where did you find your sources ?

My father told me. 
We were discussing about why do women in middle east are traditionally the most downtrodden.
He told me that he read this from a book though.
But it made sense to me.
There is a thing they teach us in school.They say that in orginal Turkic culture women are one of the most valued on earth.
But as we converted to islam the women's value also decreased.

Now from now on this is my speculation but I think that is because islam appeared in Middle east and since people of middle east invented islam(yes I am atheist) it contained their mentality in it as well and the reason for this mentality is because they had the oldest agricultural culture.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

By studying different development patterns of cultures throughout history, I found it interesting that smaller and more primitive communities tend to be inherently more gender inclusive, meaning that men and women shared quite similar roles, stretching as far as taking female warriors in battles.

The more numerous and developed the community gets, the more it seems like males and females are the subject of division of labor, consequently creating a ridge between their rights and roles.

From what I recall of my anthropology education, women were important in hunter gatherer societies , not because of their equal prowess, but because of the 20% greater processing power in olfactory function (smell and taste) which helps to read the wind to determine the direction of game and in scavenging in determining level of rot when finding a random carcase.

It's important to note that these are all just theories with varying levels of evidence to support them.

The problem is that there are tons of exceptions to both these theories. A lot of hunter-gatherer-herder societies are intensely patriarchal, possibly because women are expected to spend a lot of time pregnant or looking after children. Also, agricultural societies can range from the full-on matriarchies in western china, to Saudi Arabia.

Women aren't actually naturally "weaker" than men in a noticeable way, they just have lower strength ceilings at the Olympic level, and don't build muscle as quickly, although there is tons of overlap, and the strongest woman in the world is stronger than most male strongmen. The main reason that we assume women are weaker is because a weak woman is considered attractive in much of the world (for a number of reasons), so women who want to fit in don't do press-ups.
Therefore the kind of "strength determinism" arguments some people make don't really hold much water. More likely there's a number of unrelated reasons why a society might become patriarchal or matriarchal or something in between, and they remain the root causes even when they've become arbitrary or obsolete, since it's extremely hard for a society to change without some massive upheaval, or near total population replacement (Europe is still mostly patriarchal after 4000+ years of war, migration, socioeconomic revolution and so on, while my parents come from Jamaica which is Matriarchal seemingly with no precedent whatsoever).

There is always a starting point for every element of a society, but since (m/p)atriarchy is just a way of organising labour, the reasons might have been as simple as "men have deeper voices and are better at coordinating a hunt", and then all their descendants for 100,000 years did the same.

 

[The Bowman]

Yep, all these count, and there are exception indeed. In Mesopotamia and Babylonia, women were mostly directed at producing textiles and crushing wheat for flour during the harvesting season, while men were engaged in digging canals, processing the fields or were in the military service.

I have never heard of matriarchal society, because I'm living in a patriarchal one, so at first sight it's tricky for my brain to process that idea.

 

[vicwiz007]

I love it. I hope to see Boudica somewhere in the Batannia faction XD I have mixed feelings about cutting up women, but if they feel so inclined to draw their sword on me, so be it! Will be awesome to be able to marry a female warrior, rather than the usual noble lady. We can start a beautiful, violent family.

 

[KhergitLancer80]

These are very complicated questions that scientists oftenly argue about.

Not all societies are same since a tribe which you simply call ''nomad'' is very different than another nomad.

There are hunter gatherers for example who have no similiarities with semi nomads.

Steppe nomads are in fact not nomads. They are semi nomads and they migrate twice in a year.
They have yaylak(for summer) place and kıshlak(for winter) place.
Turks and Mongols are in this category.
Ottoman beylik for example(when it was just a beylig in 1299) had Sogut as kıshlak and domanic as yaylak until they conquered Nicea and settled.
wiki:

隐藏

Compared to other civilizations, Mongolian women had the power to influence society. Even though men were dominant in society, many turned to women in their lives for advice. While developing organizations within the Mongol Empire, Genghis Khan asked for assistance from his mother. He honored the advice women in his life offered. Genghis Khan permitted his wives to sit with him and encouraged them to voice their opinions. Because of their help, Genghis was able to choose his successor.Mongol women enjoyed more freedoms than those in their foreign vassal countries. They refused to adopt the Chinese practice of footbinding and wear chadors or burqas. The Mongolian women were allowed to move about more freely in public. Toward the end of the Mongol Empire, however, the increasing influence of Neo-Confucianism, Buddhism and Islamicization saw greater limits placed on Mongol women.

We dont have to know the reason for Bannerlord thankfully.We already know the position of women in in-game cultures.
But I feel like there will be controversy for some factions/cultures.

 

[Kortze26]

Conception ratio is also a huge factor for unstable populations are far as women's place in the social hierarchy.  In the time it takes a woman to conceive and bear 3 children a man can conceive 2000+.  Also, men rarely die in the process.  In some cultures this ends up translating to women being covered and "possessed" as property while in others it translated to women being far more socially valuable and revered.

 

[Baltic Marauder]

Lets also not forget that in many supposedly patriarchal societies, women had/have almost absolute control of household matters, including the hiring/firing of servants and how the money is spent.

 

[Gibbylimmer]

It also could be cool if when a king and all of his sons die in a battle, or all of the faction heirs die and only a daughter / wife is left, that when the daughter or wife becomes the heir and gets the throne, it could spark rioting or rebellion from the people that oppose her.

Guessing that goes too deep into the game huh.

 

[stevehoos]

I think some of you could use to take another smattering of Anthropology courses, this time without the propaganda, fads, and fashions in the universal egalitarianism liberal progress narrative. 

 

[Ruler of Calradia]

Oh sounds awesome!