Everything (everything human, at least) is male-centric because verisimilitude demands I recognize that humanity is sexually dimorphic and its society here hasn't gotten past "big guy right, ugh." The bad guy we never met in the prelude was able to force his will on the maid because she didn't have the means, physical, social, or to herself credible, to stop him. In the same situation, Aria would have all three; she's actually trained in physical combat, her station gives her retributive options as a deterrent, and she has a firm belief that she has the means to be better off at least trying to break him in half.<br/><br/>It all boils down to power and it's responsible application. If humanity were evenly potentialed, experience levels being the only determinant of greater or lesser power, many of the conflicts we take for granted would cease to exist. Men could not be automatically assumed capable of taking advantage of women. The nobility of the commoner. The strong over the weak. And on and on. These are the conflicts that forge big damn heroes, and why we noted humans are the most common villains when ulthakptah was building Ted. Aria, just by her example as a girl who beats up boys, has shown the maids here there is another way. She has taught Mayaheine's word without speaking it.<br/><br/>On to the specific subject of Aria's place. She doesn't need a man to defend her. She can enter a marriage as an "equal" (or as equal as any western ideal of an equal relationship). The laws and customs don't explicitly place women lower socially, they place those who choose the "feminine path" (the best way I can describe it in a quick post) lower.<br/><br/>For the nobility, at least one with Nyrond's adaptation of medieval feudalism, the duty of the ruling classes is to fight. The king rules because he (or his first-king ancestor) is the best man to lead the assembled host of the people. He chooses the best among them to be his lieutenants and they become the various nobles and so on. As this derives from a time when a child's only formal teacher is the parents, children follow in their parents' trades. So the son of the best war leader will obviously take on the profession of best-war-leadering just as the son of the smith will take on the profession of smithing. Now, if women are naturally weaker (ignoring our big damn heroines, that's a big reason why they're heroic) then they are less good at fighting. So if a noblewoman has no useful skills for war, she is "typical of a woman". If a nobleman doesn't, he is an embarrassment to his family. If his skill is taken by an accident rather than use, that is a tragedy; by malice or his own misconduct, a grave crime. But a noblewoman who does develop useful skills (at arms, at magic, at strategy, etc) is obviously equal to a man; she shoulders a man's burden of her title and can likely answer a man's challenge to her assumption of a man's rights. So it comes back to power and its application.<br/><br/><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 14pt;">TL;DR - yep, society is male dominated 'cause it's grounded in the real world's baggage but it's more easily re-shaped around strong personalities. </span>