Well certainly everyone does backbreaking labor, but women had it even worse from what I have read. Though without a time machine it is hard to say absolutely how things really worked for peasants, since mostly it was the middle to upper class that are written about. But from what I have read women could not inherit property or titles, unless there were no other boys, she didn't marry, and/or there were extraordinary efforts made. They couldn't be ruler either until Queen Mary and that was as England was starting to leave the medieval period.

Prior to that when Henry I wanted his daughter Matilda to succeed him he had to go around making all sorts of deals with the barons to support her. Then when he died they switched over to her cousin Stephen anyway. Women may be the power behind the throne, but they were almost never allowed to have power in front of it.

There are a number of actual documented cases of women dressing as boys to go fight, though they are quite few and far between. I suspect that those women are what we might call today tomboys. It would be terribly nice if a society would allow those women who want to do things like be knights to go out and do it, but as you say it is rather a modern thing to view being knights as better than raising children.

The thing is that from an adventuresome point of view women don't seem to get to do many of the interesting things. They don't get to be knights, they are not allowed to be actors, and they are not allowed to go off and do things without a chaperone. Getting around those things makes for an interesting story, but often it seems that the restrictions on everything from education to occupation that were allowed to women seem to get forgotten by writers who are otherwise lifting bits of various medieval settings without much thought.

And thank you, I'm glad my writing is interesting even when I'm being a bit more serrious.

(I'm probably going to go off on the subject of sweets next time. Grrrr, Chocolate in the medieval kingdom. Grrr.)