 Similar to present-day Western society - and very different from historical 17th Century societies - women in this world can and do have jobs and careers, on both the bottom and the top of society.Within a few chapters of "Red Seas Under Red Skies" the (male) protagonists encounter female dock workers, female carpenters, female assassins, female captains of both naval and pirate ships, and women in various other positions.Lynch has described each novel of the series as "[covering] what you might call a different general situation" in which "the same characters getting into trouble but the backdrop changes."