I've been brainstorming about a new culture, and I thought about the people being given certain societal roles. I know that there are four of these societal roles in total (two exclusively for women, two exclusively for men), but I can't think of what's expected of each of them. I've explored certain avenues that I don't really like (such as having one of the roles be destined for priesthood or something). Anyone have any ideas?
Farming, fighting/defense, hunting, childrearing, housekeeping/household chores, crafting, trading, and of course ruling? Just a few suggestions ^^;
Maybe focus on what your society values the most and go from there. Some examples of things your society can value:
- family: so here categories that sort people into providers, teachers, homedwellers and maybe a category for those who have no ties to anyone
- wealth: this would be splitting it into categories of rich/not rich or rich by blood/rich by hard work/rich by luck (if you wanted to split it along lines of gender as you suggested it could be of both males/females the catgory of decoration-they're at that point of wealth where they dont need to work ever again and the category of still working, and make the goal everyone has to become part of the first category)
- religion: if your society's focus is pleasing some sort of deity you could make the social groups in relation to how close they can get to the actual deity- like common folk, who can only reach the deity by request, footmen, who do the dirty work for the deity but get ordered around by people closer to it, then priests who get to meet the deity and tell everyone else what it says and maybe then a category for omens who are those that say f* the system and have contact with the deity regadless of the social rules that might limit them otherwise (again, if you want to split this along lines of male and female, you could say only one gender is allowed to legally be clos-er to the deity - as in become footmen and priests and the other gender is therefore confined to being common folk but those who rebel are then the omens)
- warriors: you could split this into a aociety where you're either a warrior, serving warrior, training to become a warrior or a nobody
- justice: a society split into the roles of pure/innocent, judges, criminals and renegades
- …
I think you get my point. I don't know if any of these ideas were helpful at all, but i hope it at least helps you wonder about what the main focus of your society is going to be and then brainstorm some fun ways your roles can be built up to help society try to reach thar goal :)
