This be very funny.
The game is set in a fantasy medieval world.
In such a world, without technology, as provided by Sam Colt and his competitors, (and assuming she isn’t a powerful magician) women ARE more or less helpless and dependent on men for protection. What is amazing is that Western Civ during the Middle Ages developed the notion of chivalry, that men should voluntarily sacrifice themselves in the defense and protection of women rather than cheerfully abusing their power over them as has been the norm throughout history.
The master/journeyman/apprentice system was not originally particularly exploitative. The apprentice became a journeyman and then a master himself as he learned the trade. The semi-slavery of the apprentice was necessary to provide the master the control he needed to force the apprentice to learn. It merely gave the master about the same degree of control as a father teaching his minor son his trade. In fact, a father usually had to cough up quite a significant sum to get a master to take his son on as an apprentive. The system did indeed become exploitative as it decayed in the early modern period.
Ya know, Marx recognized the necessity of such systems given a particular system of production. He wasn’t as stupid as many of his followers, who seem to think modern ideas of equality can thrive in an economic system possibly 1% as productive as ours.
You’re absolutely right. This is a game, a FANTASY game. In the real world, women wouldn’t last long without male protection. Can you imagine most women going toe to toe in a sword fight with a man? There were very, very good reasons why men fought the wars and women stayed home to raise children. Sadly, men are simply more expendable than women, that is if you want to actually survive as a tribe, a village, or a country. Plus, women dying in droves on the battlefield wouldn’t have likely changed the outcomes much.
It’s entertaining to see a 105 lb woman take down a 230 lb man a la Lara Croft (if it wasn’t, then they wouldn’t make movies like that). I don’t doubt that woman are in fact better than men at many things, but man and woman complement each other. They aren’t really meant to be rivals in the first place. We go well together in more ways than one, and that’s the natural order of things.